Hi everyone,
My CBT therapist introduced me to the concept of mindfulness, something that I imagine has been stumbled upon by many others suffering from anxiety. After months and months of practising mindfulness, setting aside 15 minutes most days to be mindful of something, I now realise that my natural thought pattern is quite the opposite to being mindful of the here and now. I was constantly thinking about what has happened, might happen or will happen and the only thing I was being mindful of is my anxiety.
I was pointed in the direction of Jon Kabat-Zinn, the mindfulness guru, to read and listen to some of his work. I purchased his Mindfulness for Beginners double CD, the second of which gives you the opportunity to practise being mindful of various seemingly mundane acts, such as breathing, eating and listening. It is with this CD that I have been doing my daily routine of being mindful. I still today complain about not finding the time.
But obviously, the objective is to integrate it into everyday life. Whether it be walking, working, watching TV or washing up, the idea is to be mindful of that activity, thus pushing all of your anxiety producing thoughts 'into the wings' as Kabat-Zinn would tell you.
So has it been successful? Hmm... difficult to say. When I'm doing the routine practise, it can vary... sometimes I have real difficulty focusing on whatever the chosen object is, sometimes I start falling asleep which is not helpful either. One thing I have learnt about this is how much you are not in control of your mind when you start falling asleep... it's like is racing out of control but not in a panicky type way (difficult to explain what I mean here, but it's interesting...) So in some ways the routine practise has been useful.
But integrating into everyday life less so. I've tried, in certain circumstances, to focus purely on whatever it is I'm doing, such as if I'm on a train I focus on reading the paper, or if I'm out walking I focus on countryside sounds. But it never seems to last long. And when it comes to doing the washing up, for example, well, to put it bluntly, it's boring and my mind has been racing away for ages before I notice it. Kabat-Zinn makes the point on many occasions not to force it, but I can't help thinking that that is the only way for me to be able to successfully integrate a mindful approach into everyday life.
Doing the mindfulness of the body has also proved difficult as a sufferer of health anxiety... focusing on your body is the last thing you want to do!
I suppose it all links in with one of the most simple yet most powerful phrases I learnt from my therapist... remember "I'm having the thought that..." I'm having the thought that I'm having heart failure, I'm having the thought that I'm a failure, I'm having the thought that I'm going to have a panic attack. They are just thoughts. In his CD, Kabat-Zinn gives us the mindfulness of thinking, which is a fascinating tool, difficult to implement but fascinating... what am I actually thinking?
I'd recommend giving it a go if your therapist suggests it. I think I need to work harder to make it life-changing for me, but it's certainly presented me with a different method of thinking and acts as almost a definition of what CBT is about, changing thinking patterns. Perhaps being somewhat sceptical to start with didn't help me :)
Best wishes
Al
Friday 22 June 2012
Thursday 21 June 2012
A bit about me...
So I've set the scene in the anxiety sense, but what is it that keeps me going?
As I said in my first blog, I'm 25 years old and I live in Stafford. I'm not a stand up comedian unfortunately, and instead I work in the sustainability section of a local authority. Yes I was lucky to get the job... I left University in 2008, and within a few weeks started an unpaid graduate scheme in Stoke. The current authority I work for then offered me unpaid work experience because I didn't know what to do. So all in all, I was working unpaid for over 7 months... but it was experience in a field I was interested in. I was becoming anxious at this stage about my future, but luckily the current authority offered me a casual paid post in January 2009, which turned permanent in April 2009. I'm still there now and as I said I am very grateful that I left Uni then and not now, otherwise they wouldn't have had the money to employ me!
My main role is to protect the county from severe weather and climate change, which basically involves numerous risk assessments and patronising people by telling them that they might get a bit wet.
I did my degree at Staffordshire University in Stoke (commuted from home) in Physical and Environmental Geography. Due to my circumstances (anxiety...) I wanted to live at home, so this was ideal. Unfortunately I didn't make the most of Uni in the first two years but I loved it in the final year... despite all the work. I was in a good place for most of that period.
Interests? Blogging, clearly. But my main interests are football (Liverpool FC fan, opinions on a postcard please) and creating electronic music on my PC. I'm also lucky enough to live near to Cannock Chase and I'm beginning to appreciate the outdoors more and more; consequently, I do plenty of walking.
I live in a house share which is about 4 miles away from 'home,' i.e. where my parents live. The rest of my small family live in Warwickshire, with my Gran, Uncle, Aunty and Cousin living near Rugby where I was born, and my other Aunty and Uncle living near Leamington Spa.
The best thing about my personal life though is my friends. I'm not going to lie, I don't have many people who I can truly class as friends. I don't even have many Facebook friends, which is surely a social failure in today's age?? However, I'm lucky enough to have some extremely close friends, one of whom I live with, another of whom shares my music creating hobby with me.
On the surface that's about it.
It all looks rosy huh? Yes, all of this is great and the achievements listed above haven't gone unnoticed. I'm also extremely grateful for what I do have, something I have learnt to be over the last year or so. But it has been bloody hard work getting here and remains so at times. Such is life.
Right, I've done setting the scene now. Future blogs will be based around certain themes to do with anxiety, my experiences and general opinions. Excited? No me neither :p
As I said in my first blog, I'm 25 years old and I live in Stafford. I'm not a stand up comedian unfortunately, and instead I work in the sustainability section of a local authority. Yes I was lucky to get the job... I left University in 2008, and within a few weeks started an unpaid graduate scheme in Stoke. The current authority I work for then offered me unpaid work experience because I didn't know what to do. So all in all, I was working unpaid for over 7 months... but it was experience in a field I was interested in. I was becoming anxious at this stage about my future, but luckily the current authority offered me a casual paid post in January 2009, which turned permanent in April 2009. I'm still there now and as I said I am very grateful that I left Uni then and not now, otherwise they wouldn't have had the money to employ me!
My main role is to protect the county from severe weather and climate change, which basically involves numerous risk assessments and patronising people by telling them that they might get a bit wet.
I did my degree at Staffordshire University in Stoke (commuted from home) in Physical and Environmental Geography. Due to my circumstances (anxiety...) I wanted to live at home, so this was ideal. Unfortunately I didn't make the most of Uni in the first two years but I loved it in the final year... despite all the work. I was in a good place for most of that period.
Interests? Blogging, clearly. But my main interests are football (Liverpool FC fan, opinions on a postcard please) and creating electronic music on my PC. I'm also lucky enough to live near to Cannock Chase and I'm beginning to appreciate the outdoors more and more; consequently, I do plenty of walking.
I live in a house share which is about 4 miles away from 'home,' i.e. where my parents live. The rest of my small family live in Warwickshire, with my Gran, Uncle, Aunty and Cousin living near Rugby where I was born, and my other Aunty and Uncle living near Leamington Spa.
The best thing about my personal life though is my friends. I'm not going to lie, I don't have many people who I can truly class as friends. I don't even have many Facebook friends, which is surely a social failure in today's age?? However, I'm lucky enough to have some extremely close friends, one of whom I live with, another of whom shares my music creating hobby with me.
On the surface that's about it.
It all looks rosy huh? Yes, all of this is great and the achievements listed above haven't gone unnoticed. I'm also extremely grateful for what I do have, something I have learnt to be over the last year or so. But it has been bloody hard work getting here and remains so at times. Such is life.
Right, I've done setting the scene now. Future blogs will be based around certain themes to do with anxiety, my experiences and general opinions. Excited? No me neither :p
Sunday 17 June 2012
Why am I doing this?
Setting up a blog that focuses on anxiety may seem like I am over-immersing myself in the condition. This in turn could exacerbate it and make it worse by focusing on it too much. However, I believe that by talking about it, or at least writing it down, has many more benefits than disadvantages:
1) I have often found that jumbled thoughts can suddenly un-jumble themselves when you write them down; writing can unlock a hidden logic to proceedings and really help you to understand what's going on.
2) Sharing your thoughts with other people, particularly those who have had similar experiences, is greatly beneficial from an anxiety point of view. Engaging with those people is the best form of therapy to dealing with anxiety, from what I can tell.
3) I enjoy the feelings from the latter; I am a 'people person' as 'they' say and consequently I relish interacting with other people, making connections etc. Granted I could have combined this with point 1 but to only have two points seems a bit sparse given I'm trying to justify the existence of this blog.
By huge coincidence, I have recently discovered Anxiety UK's HealthUnlocked site where members can post blogs and speak to other people in the AUK community. This literally happened when I read about it in the latest addition of Anxious Times, which I received in the post yesterday, just two days after setting up this blog. This HealthUnlocked site looks brilliant, exactly the sort of thing that I want to be involved in, and I hope to make good use of it. Hopefully this blog can be somehow linked up to it.
So why I am doing this? For the three points outlined above, rather than to obtain or give any therapy advice.
It's my birthday tomorrow, and I have tomorrow and Tuesday off work :D but I intend soon to write a blog about myself, as I said in the previous blog, aside from the anxiety. Who is Al, what does he do and where does he go? More to the point, does anybody care?
Best wishes
Al
1) I have often found that jumbled thoughts can suddenly un-jumble themselves when you write them down; writing can unlock a hidden logic to proceedings and really help you to understand what's going on.
2) Sharing your thoughts with other people, particularly those who have had similar experiences, is greatly beneficial from an anxiety point of view. Engaging with those people is the best form of therapy to dealing with anxiety, from what I can tell.
3) I enjoy the feelings from the latter; I am a 'people person' as 'they' say and consequently I relish interacting with other people, making connections etc. Granted I could have combined this with point 1 but to only have two points seems a bit sparse given I'm trying to justify the existence of this blog.
By huge coincidence, I have recently discovered Anxiety UK's HealthUnlocked site where members can post blogs and speak to other people in the AUK community. This literally happened when I read about it in the latest addition of Anxious Times, which I received in the post yesterday, just two days after setting up this blog. This HealthUnlocked site looks brilliant, exactly the sort of thing that I want to be involved in, and I hope to make good use of it. Hopefully this blog can be somehow linked up to it.
So why I am doing this? For the three points outlined above, rather than to obtain or give any therapy advice.
It's my birthday tomorrow, and I have tomorrow and Tuesday off work :D but I intend soon to write a blog about myself, as I said in the previous blog, aside from the anxiety. Who is Al, what does he do and where does he go? More to the point, does anybody care?
Best wishes
Al
Saturday 16 June 2012
So, what's up then?
I thought I would get this particular blog out the way, however, it may be the most important for readers to get to grips with. This post isn't designed to assess my current situation or to disclose how things are, how anxiety has affected my life or how the symptoms have changed over time, but it will just set out the 'conditions' that I have been 'diagnosed' with over the years. Obviously those who have experienced similar feelings will be more drawn to this than others and if I'm honest I don't really want that to happen, but it would be foolish for me not to detail my more precise experiences so as to set the scene for future blogs.
Let's bring an unnecessary level of academia to proceedings and do it in the form of a list:
Health Anxiety (aka Hypochondriasis)
In non-official non-diagnosis terms, this is a belief that a physical symptom, pain, or discomfort will become something life threatening. A good example that I have persistently experienced is regarding the heart; any change in heart rate or pains in the chest or left arm automatically raises the panic alarm and the thought that "I'm going to have a heart attack" manifests. (Key note: 'the thought that.' More on this in future.) From what I understand, people with health anxiety can have preoccupations about one specific health problem, such as contracting cancer, or a multitude of problems or 'assumptions.' Whilst some symptoms produce more anxiety than others, I generally fall into the latter category. For me, HA can also be triggered by reading about health problems or other people talking about them. It's damn inconvenient, especially when you start taking phrases like 'pain in the arse' all too literally.
Panic Disorder
Again unofficially, this is effectively having a fear of having a panic attack. I have suffered from many panic attacks in my life and at times it has got to the point where I'm so scared of having a panic attack that I have a panic attack. It has meant that I have found it exceptionally difficult to go out into the public domain for fear of panic attack, and such a condition could result in the onset of agoraphobia. Again this is inconvenient, because it can dramatically affect all parts of your life. It is intrinsically linked with health anxiety; for example, if I get a pain whilst out of my 'comfort zone,' I then fear that I will have a panic attack because of the pain, which triggers the panic disorder, which then intensifies the pain... which leads to an actual panic attack. This, of course, is the worst case scenario but shows how each of these anxieties all work with each other.
Social Anxiety
I wouldn't say my social anxiety is severe, far from it. However I do have elements of it; eating out is the main thing, I have always found it very difficult. The more 'formal' the meal is the more difficult it becomes, although it also depends on who I'm with, where I am, how many people are there, what the atmosphere is like, how tight my trousers are... and so on. This, again, is inconvenient, particularly when eating so slowly results in you choking and subsequently you start panicking... you get the idea.
Obviously, and particularly given how each of these links together, it is far more complex in reality than it appears here. These complexities will no doubt be drawn out in future blogs, particularly those that detail some of my real life situations, but this is just to give you a broad overview of my anxious past. Anxious about what, exactly? No idea.
My intention was to paste the official definitions of these conditions next to my garble, but unfortunately, the Anxiety UK website currently has errors on its page. Apparently it is 'unable to modify the parent container element before the child element is closed.' It's enough to cause anxiety.
This will be the most difficult blog to write, I hope, and also the most difficult one to read. I'm anticipating plenty of positivity and optimism in future blogs so please stick with it. I might start by telling you a little about me. And I don't include anxiety in that.
Best wishes
Al
PS: You'd think that this particular website's spell checker would recognise the word 'blog'.
Let's bring an unnecessary level of academia to proceedings and do it in the form of a list:
Health Anxiety (aka Hypochondriasis)
In non-official non-diagnosis terms, this is a belief that a physical symptom, pain, or discomfort will become something life threatening. A good example that I have persistently experienced is regarding the heart; any change in heart rate or pains in the chest or left arm automatically raises the panic alarm and the thought that "I'm going to have a heart attack" manifests. (Key note: 'the thought that.' More on this in future.) From what I understand, people with health anxiety can have preoccupations about one specific health problem, such as contracting cancer, or a multitude of problems or 'assumptions.' Whilst some symptoms produce more anxiety than others, I generally fall into the latter category. For me, HA can also be triggered by reading about health problems or other people talking about them. It's damn inconvenient, especially when you start taking phrases like 'pain in the arse' all too literally.
Panic Disorder
Again unofficially, this is effectively having a fear of having a panic attack. I have suffered from many panic attacks in my life and at times it has got to the point where I'm so scared of having a panic attack that I have a panic attack. It has meant that I have found it exceptionally difficult to go out into the public domain for fear of panic attack, and such a condition could result in the onset of agoraphobia. Again this is inconvenient, because it can dramatically affect all parts of your life. It is intrinsically linked with health anxiety; for example, if I get a pain whilst out of my 'comfort zone,' I then fear that I will have a panic attack because of the pain, which triggers the panic disorder, which then intensifies the pain... which leads to an actual panic attack. This, of course, is the worst case scenario but shows how each of these anxieties all work with each other.
Social Anxiety
I wouldn't say my social anxiety is severe, far from it. However I do have elements of it; eating out is the main thing, I have always found it very difficult. The more 'formal' the meal is the more difficult it becomes, although it also depends on who I'm with, where I am, how many people are there, what the atmosphere is like, how tight my trousers are... and so on. This, again, is inconvenient, particularly when eating so slowly results in you choking and subsequently you start panicking... you get the idea.
Obviously, and particularly given how each of these links together, it is far more complex in reality than it appears here. These complexities will no doubt be drawn out in future blogs, particularly those that detail some of my real life situations, but this is just to give you a broad overview of my anxious past. Anxious about what, exactly? No idea.
My intention was to paste the official definitions of these conditions next to my garble, but unfortunately, the Anxiety UK website currently has errors on its page. Apparently it is 'unable to modify the parent container element before the child element is closed.' It's enough to cause anxiety.
This will be the most difficult blog to write, I hope, and also the most difficult one to read. I'm anticipating plenty of positivity and optimism in future blogs so please stick with it. I might start by telling you a little about me. And I don't include anxiety in that.
Best wishes
Al
PS: You'd think that this particular website's spell checker would recognise the word 'blog'.
Friday 15 June 2012
Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself
Good evening everyone, my name is Alan Carr.
There, that's enough to cause anxiety in anyone. I share the name with a comedian who you may or may not be a fan of. It can get quite annoying in certain situations, for example, introducing yourself to people. Many people seem to think that they are the first person to realise that I have the same name as the comedian by saying something like 'as in the comedian.' They then have a sudden realisation and quickly say 'you must get that all the time.' Yes, ALL the time.
If I have to deliver a presentation, I say "Hi everyone, now, apologies if you looked at the list of speakers on your agenda and thought 'great, we get a performance from our favourite comedian to come later,' because clearly, I am not the comedian." That usually generates a few laughs which is somewhat ironic, considering I've just declared myself to not be a comedian.
Anyway,
My name IS Alan Carr and I'm nearly 25 years old. I live and work in Stafford, a small and fairly ageing town in the Midlands somewhere between Birmingham and Manchester and often confused with Stoke by people who don't live in the area. The main point of this introduction is to disclose the fact that I have chronic anxiety and have done so for the vast majority of my life so far. I suppose it wasn't chronic when it first started as whether something becomes chronic, I assume, is at least in part determined by the longevity of it.
This blog will ramble like this for the most part, but with the main aim to simply share my experiences about living with anxiety in a world that pretends not to be anxious in the slightest. It is not meant to act as a form of therapy of course, but what I have found is that talking to people or listening to people who have had anxiety is one of the best things you can do. It's all very well professionals saying 'there are thousands of people who feel the same as you.' Yes fine, small crumb of comfort maybe, but you don't necessarily know any of these thousands of people.
But there is no excuse now; the age of social networking is upon us and another aim of this blog is for it to become a piece of information that can be shared and edited by numerous sources, with a hope to prompt others to share their experiences too. I will start by giving an overview of my anxiety conditions so as to set the scene, and will probably disclose more about myself as I go along. A flurry of blogs in the early days will probably follow, so brace yourselves.
My email address is on my profile so please feel free to drop me one (so to speak) or leave a comment.
Best wishes
Al
There, that's enough to cause anxiety in anyone. I share the name with a comedian who you may or may not be a fan of. It can get quite annoying in certain situations, for example, introducing yourself to people. Many people seem to think that they are the first person to realise that I have the same name as the comedian by saying something like 'as in the comedian.' They then have a sudden realisation and quickly say 'you must get that all the time.' Yes, ALL the time.
If I have to deliver a presentation, I say "Hi everyone, now, apologies if you looked at the list of speakers on your agenda and thought 'great, we get a performance from our favourite comedian to come later,' because clearly, I am not the comedian." That usually generates a few laughs which is somewhat ironic, considering I've just declared myself to not be a comedian.
Anyway,
My name IS Alan Carr and I'm nearly 25 years old. I live and work in Stafford, a small and fairly ageing town in the Midlands somewhere between Birmingham and Manchester and often confused with Stoke by people who don't live in the area. The main point of this introduction is to disclose the fact that I have chronic anxiety and have done so for the vast majority of my life so far. I suppose it wasn't chronic when it first started as whether something becomes chronic, I assume, is at least in part determined by the longevity of it.
This blog will ramble like this for the most part, but with the main aim to simply share my experiences about living with anxiety in a world that pretends not to be anxious in the slightest. It is not meant to act as a form of therapy of course, but what I have found is that talking to people or listening to people who have had anxiety is one of the best things you can do. It's all very well professionals saying 'there are thousands of people who feel the same as you.' Yes fine, small crumb of comfort maybe, but you don't necessarily know any of these thousands of people.
But there is no excuse now; the age of social networking is upon us and another aim of this blog is for it to become a piece of information that can be shared and edited by numerous sources, with a hope to prompt others to share their experiences too. I will start by giving an overview of my anxiety conditions so as to set the scene, and will probably disclose more about myself as I go along. A flurry of blogs in the early days will probably follow, so brace yourselves.
My email address is on my profile so please feel free to drop me one (so to speak) or leave a comment.
Best wishes
Al
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