A few weeks ago I was at the library. There was a guy dressed in dirty clothes (he looked like a homeless man) and he was trying to get something open while he stood in the corner. He was being really sneaky and looking around like he didn’t want to get caught. I started to feel all anxious and panic because I didn’t know what he was doing. Right then I looked on the shelf and saw “10 Simple Solutions to Panic” right in front of me. I took it as a sign and checked it out immediately.
So for the past few weeks I’ve been working through the little book, and I’m really feeling much better. I had never really experienced panic until after my friend, Nick, was murdered by one of our co-workers. The next year our first baby died, and then the year after that was 9/11. Between those 3 events and a few smaller ones, I started to get really anxious about the safety of my family. I figured it was time to do something about it.
During the first week of reading, the authors ask you to write down all of the times that you are anxious, including the thoughts that you have to yourself and the symptoms that you feel. As I started writing them down, I realized that it happened more often than I had previously acknowledged. It was very humbling. I also started to challenge my thoughts, like my panic attacks that happen whenever Matt gets REALLY flushed. Even though its scary to see his cheeks turning purple and getting so flushed (when he’s just sitting there – not running around or anything), the fact is that nothing bad has ever happened and no doctors have found problems with him. I realized that I need to look at the fact that he has never had anything bad happen to him from the flushing, so my anxiety was not proportional to the risk.
The authors also point out that people who suffer from panic are more in-tune to their body than the regular person. We notice a rise in heart rate faster. We notice little symptoms more quickly. We assume that they’re signs of something catastrophic where most people ignore them.
I also learned that people with panic often recall terrible, flukish stories when something happens that scares them, and normal people don’t. I didn’t realize that it was odd for that to happen. I thought that it was normal when you hear a funny sound of something dragging from your car, then you think of the Oprah story of the woman accidentally dragging a person for miles…
Anyways, so I just wanted to share because making a few changes to my thinking has already given me such amazing relief. Its also nice to know that I’m not the only freak who worries about this stuff, and this book has reassured me of that fact..
Oh, and I also learned that I’m really lucky that I don’t have panic attacks where I feel like I’m going to have diarrhea. That’s so horrible. I’ll take an inability to breathe any day…
