Friday, February 26, 2016

Do it do it Do it. Or not.

I have had generalized anxiety since surgery. I also went through panic disorder and agoraphobia for a year in between caused by the post traumatic stress. that got better, But different levels of generalized anxiety are something I deal with every day. Anxiety about going out to any new place because I don't know if i will be able to find a place to sit. The darn balance and sinus issues mean I cannot sit anywhere except soft sofas to stabilize. Going out on a drive and the anxiety of getitng stuck in a jam, coz the car seat is bothersome as well.

I just started meeting a therapist to help me deal with generalized anxiety more easily and hence improve my day today life and experiences. One of the methods she suggested was exposure therapy (which isnt a fun name really). Keep exposing myself to different levels of the activities that make me anxious and soon they wont affect me as much.

There are several issues with this.
1. I have been doing that since many years, and every year, through the winter Sinusitis, I can't get out or do most of the things that I could do during the rest of the year. So the confidence resets and i have to start from scratch again.
2. Any kind of anxiety causes my balance to start to go off. The main reason for almost all of the activities that give me anxiety is the fact that when I get any level of anxious, even the least bit, about say going somewhere, it triggers my balance. If I do not let that pass and let the balance calm a bit, the upset balance feeds back into the loop where i get anxious about the fact that my balance is upset. That anxiety causes the balance to get even more upset, and hence more anxiety and so on. So exposing myself to more anxiety, leading up a very upset balance is just going to move me closer to getting panic and vertigo attacks. which isnt going to help me. So onwards to some other mixed therapies.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Richa,
    I stumbled on this blog from your Vegan Richa blog (which is great, BTW). It's really brave of you to blog about your symptoms and life here!

    Your description of your issues reminded me of this great book by Norman Doidge that I just finished reading : 'The Brain's way of Healing, which covers a lot of recent neurorehabilitation work. I would strongly recommend you read that book when you can (or maybe your husband can read it first, if the reading is too much for you). The Gaby chapter and the PONS chapter have some overlap with what I briefly gathered of your situation. I have some personal experience with Feldenkrais (which is also covered in the book) and I can say that the book seems like a very well thought through and reasonably written
    book to me.

    Hope that is useful, or at least interesting. :)
    All the best to you!
    cheers
    Sameer

    ReplyDelete