Here is how most people see anxiety disorder – trigger (symptom, thought or memory) followed by emotional, behavioral and physiological reaction. In my experience, this perception of anxiety leads people to think that there is nothing they can do about it, which eventually makes them develop victim mentality due to helplessness. This perception of anxiety suffers from lack of solution. Luckily, there is a solution that can help you take control back from anxiety and that solution is Automatic Thoughts. In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Automatic Thoughts are thoughts that we have after becoming aware of the Trigger (symptom, thought or memory). Depending on how that Automatic Thought will be – positive, neutral or negative, we will have similar Reaction (emotional,...
After I had my first panic attack and life with anxiety disorder became a daily struggle for me. I started applying some of the things I learned and they seemed to produce results. I changed my diet, started exercising and tried different breathing techniques. Life was good for about a month but eventually, motivation turned into a routine and eventually, anxiety was back with vengeance. Each time it was back, it made me feel even more hopeless because the moment I thought I found a solution, it proved me wrong. Looking back at my journey I clearly see that the mistake that I made was relying on what is called Natural Exposure. Natural Exposure is basically relying on luck when...
As someone who had gone through harm OCD urges, I can say with confidence that they are among the most disturbing anxiety disorder manifestations you can have. Even though you can never act on them, I decided to find out why do they feel so real? Why do harm OCD urges feel real? Harm OCD urges evoke strong emotional reactions of fear, shame, and guilt that capture your attention completely. However, what makes them even more personal and real is the fact that they go against your deeply held beliefs of what is right and what is wrong. There are many types of harm urges a person can have. They can range from harming a stranger to harming yourself or...
I often get asked about depersonalization, so it’s about the time I address it. From the messages I get, some people had their first depersonalization episode after smoking weed, others after physically or emotionally intense period in their lives. But my approach to recovery has nothing to do with the past, if anything, dwelling on the past is a path to more anxiety, so I’ll quickly talk about my personal experience with DP and will jump to my main points. As part of my anxiety disorder, depersonalization was one of the experiences I had. My first DP episode was something I will never forget. I remember that moment vividly as if it happened yesterday – I got out of the...
If you've been suffering from anxiety disorder for some time now, you may have come across a term "anxiety acceptance." When I first heard about acceptance and nonresistance, my first thought was: “Why would I want to be defeated by anxiety? I’m a warrior and I should fight it!” So that idea didn't appeal to me at all, but I still decided to learn more about it and eventually gave it a try. So how can you accept anxiety for it to disappear? The core idea of acceptance is that you stop fueling anxiety by embracing it as a manifestation of yourself. As a result, expectation of anxiety is followed by nonresistance, instead of fear and frustration that fuel anxiety...
