Anxiety Support Group
Anxiety is a physical condition marked by intense and persistent feelings of distress, fear, angst or dread. General anxiety caused by routine day-to-day stresses usually passes quickly and is experienced by almost everyone at one time or another. However, such feelings that linger over time and are very difficult to cope with, and which lack a clear cause, may indicate...
This is how I view Derealisation/Depersonalisation or Unreality.
Here is a handy breakdown of the 'condition' commonly referred to as Derealisation/Depersonalisation or Unreality. Its not a condition at all, its just a subset of heightened anxiety.
Like all anxiety experiences it is logical to break down the 'phenomenon' into manageable chunks.
Why? Because all good therapies do this in their literature ... Medical pamphlets, Claire Weekes, CBT, Linden Method, Panic Away, etc. etc. etc.
Why? Because with new beneficial information the internal imagery we play in our minds changes, this imagery becomes safe, we become unimpressed, in time we recover.
I remember reading a site by a Neil Sideman called paniccure, (well worth a read) he advocates the analogy of a pizza, each sensation can be viewed as a slice of the pizza, and when it arises we can digest it without fear once we know the benign and beneficial reason for its existence.
The sensation that bothers us will stay with us as for as long as we fear it or are bothered by it, we need to resolve the fear of the sensation.
If you are not bothered by a sensation then naturally ignore it.
If you are bothered by a sensation it can cause you to panic about that sensation, if you find yourself panicking about it then face your fears, BRING IT ON!! Insist that you experience the fullness of the sensation, stay with it, and dont retreat/withdraw until your fear diminishes (by a lot or even if it by a little). Once your fear diminishes your subconscious will add this new understanding into your relevant-fears memory bank, if you stay with the sensation long enough for the diminishment to happen the circuitry that was previously supporting that fear will start to be erased and the new rules that this is no longer a danger will be added to the amydgale memory. Which ensures that next time you will be less scared AND your sensation will be less in intensity.
Why do we feel compelled to concentrate on certain sensations and other folk seem compelled to concentrate on other sensations which hardly bother us at all? Surely if we all have the same fight-flight response we should all get the same sensations? Well we do but some are more prominent for us tan for others.
Well the stress response is not purely a big cluster bomb; it's a complicated and targeted fear-resolving system like a laser guided missile.
Why does it do this, because it is desperate for us to RESOLVE OUR FEARS, IT WANTS us to return to a state of calm as fast as possible. For example, if you are not worried about your heart because you have read all the traditional literature and become correctly convinced that heart damage is impossible during a panic attack, your fight flight response will direct more stress chemicals to the sensation that you fear, you will not notice your heart beating fast and it wont beat as fast (this is the reason behind limited symptom 'attacks'). No different that the immune system sending white blood cells to your finger to resolve the bacteria when you cut your finger. As the body and mind are an integrated system there is another mental filtering system that operates in the same way. It's called the Reticular Activating System (RAS). This system filters for only what you concentrating on, it filters for whatever you have deemed most pertinent. The operation of this system is the mechanical reason behind superstitions forging the law of attraction. Interestingly, the RAS does respond to conscious thought.
Back to anxiety, when we stop fearing one sensation (because we have resolved it through knowledge ... e.g. ... my heart cant stop during panic), often another sensation pops up and says "what about me? ... Everything looks like a cartoon". This, yet again is the body trying to resolve your fear so you can return to homeostasis (calm). So resolving your fears of bodily sensations is a bit like peeling an onion, or eating the pizza slice by slice. Once you have digested the entire pizza (each slice may take practice, because quite frankly this is not the best tasting pizza in the world, an anchovy, jam & earwax pizza perhaps ... ACCEPTACE IS AN ACQUIRED TASTE) all your fears are resolved and your body enters relaxation Why because YOU know its all a load of b*llocks.
So with this in mind, I'll explain to the best of my knowledge the collection of sensations known as depersonalisation/derealisation/unreality
ACCEPT AND FLOAT THROUGH....
Slice 1) Dizziness - Your blood pressure changes in the inner ear, causing you to feel off balance - SAFE ... See how dizzy you can actually get, IT CAN'T HURT YOU
Slice 2) Light-headedness - Your blood pressure fluctuates well within safe limits as a result of blood being sent to the strong muscles - SAFE ... See how lightheaded you can actually get. IT CAN'T HURT YOU
Slice 3) Numbness - Because your strong muscles become safely engorged with blood and expand these muscles press safely on superficial capillaries feeding the skin- This has the benefit of reducing blood loss in the event of a cut to your fighting extremities during a fight. - SAFE ... See how numb you can actually get. IT CAN'T HURT YOU
Slice 4) Everything seems brighter - Your Pupils are widened to let in more light. - SAFE ... Put away the sunglasses and see how bright things actually are. IT CAN'T HURT YOU
Slice 5) Cartoon vision - Because you have a safe build-up of stress chemicals between neurotransmitter sites, this acts as a safety buffer for the nervous system, it keeps your nervous system healthy in times of activation. SAFE ... See how cartoony your vision can actually get. IT CAN'T HURT YOU
Slice 6) You are mentally tired - Of course you are, you have been studying yourself for days, weeks years. See how tired you can actually get, at some point you will sleep. IT CAN'T HURT YOU
This seems like a confusing list of things, but if you look logically, you will see a pattern behind every sensation - That pattern is your A) muscles being primed for strength and 2) your senses being more alert
Slice 1) The result of changes in blood flow and because your muscles are primed for strength
Slice 2) The result of changes in blood flow and because your muscles are primed for strength
Slice 3) The result of changes in blood flow and because your muscles are primed for strength
Slice 4) The result of your senses being more alert
Slice 5) The result of your senses being more alert
Slice 6) The result of your senses being more alert
If you really didn't fear being Dizzy, Lightheaded, Numb, Everything Seeming Bright, Cartoonlike Vision or being mentally tired like you have been studying for hours on end, would you fear depersonalisation/derealisation/unreality.
I.e. If you really didn't fear your muscles being stronger and your senses being keener would you fear depersonalisation/derealisation/unreality?
I initially called this a phenomenon, as you can see there is nothing really phenomenal about it. OK its physiologically phenomenal, but its not medically phenomenal, its medically irrelevant.
The only phenomenal thing is that we intelligent people ever got duped in the first place into believing this was dangerous.
Obviously the same goes for all other anxiety sensations.
Claire Weekes says, and remember this "none of these sensations are important medically". She also says the anxiety state is sensitisation kept alive by bewilderment and fear.
Remove the bewilderment and fear cannot exist.
LET TIME PASS...
Without bewilderment fear cannot exist, without fear, desensitisation is inevitable and homeostasis returns in time.
I sincerely hope this helps. If not, you have my sincerest apologies.
Keep practicing, face your fears and let your body do the safe thing it's always done until it calms down.
Your body is not even remotely bothered by these sensations, why would it be? They are completely normal. The only reason it keeps activating them is that you are scared and it responds by directing safety seeking stress chemicals to the source of your fear.
Hope fully this message will enable you to change your understanding and stop your bewilderment which will in turn change your internally imagery, which will in turn remove your fears, which will in turn guide you on the path to *desensitisation.
*Desensitisation - bothering less about the sensations being less scared which result in less targeted adrenaline which results in fewer sensations of diminished strength. Desensitisation is the positive feedback loop of recovery which is initiated after the removal of your conscious fear
Kind Regards,
Chris
Here is a handy breakdown of the 'condition' commonly referred to as Derealisation/Depersonalisation or Unreality. Its not a condition at all, its just a subset of heightened anxiety.
Like all anxiety experiences it is logical to break down the 'phenomenon' into manageable chunks.
Why? Because all good therapies do this in their literature ... Medical pamphlets, Claire Weekes, CBT, Linden Method, Panic Away, etc. etc. etc.
Why? Because with new beneficial information the internal imagery we play in our minds changes, this imagery becomes safe, we become unimpressed, in time we recover.
I remember reading a site by a Neil Sideman called paniccure, (well worth a read) he advocates the analogy of a pizza, each sensation can be viewed as a slice of the pizza, and when it arises we can digest it without fear once we know the benign and beneficial reason for its existence.
The sensation that bothers us will stay with us as for as long as we fear it or are bothered by it, we need to resolve the fear of the sensation.
If you are not bothered by a sensation then naturally ignore it.
If you are bothered by a sensation it can cause you to panic about that sensation, if you find yourself panicking about it then face your fears, BRING IT ON!! Insist that you experience the fullness of the sensation, stay with it, and dont retreat/withdraw until your fear diminishes (by a lot or even if it by a little). Once your fear diminishes your subconscious will add this new understanding into your relevant-fears memory bank, if you stay with the sensation long enough for the diminishment to happen the circuitry that was previously supporting that fear will start to be erased and the new rules that this is no longer a danger will be added to the amydgale memory. Which ensures that next time you will be less scared AND your sensation will be less in intensity.
Why do we feel compelled to concentrate on certain sensations and other folk seem compelled to concentrate on other sensations which hardly bother us at all? Surely if we all have the same fight-flight response we should all get the same sensations? Well we do but some are more prominent for us tan for others.
Well the stress response is not purely a big cluster bomb; it's a complicated and targeted fear-resolving system like a laser guided missile.
Why does it do this, because it is desperate for us to RESOLVE OUR FEARS, IT WANTS us to return to a state of calm as fast as possible. For example, if you are not worried about your heart because you have read all the traditional literature and become correctly convinced that heart damage is impossible during a panic attack, your fight flight response will direct more stress chemicals to the sensation that you fear, you will not notice your heart beating fast and it wont beat as fast (this is the reason behind limited symptom 'attacks'). No different that the immune system sending white blood cells to your finger to resolve the bacteria when you cut your finger. As the body and mind are an integrated system there is another mental filtering system that operates in the same way. It's called the Reticular Activating System (RAS). This system filters for only what you concentrating on, it filters for whatever you have deemed most pertinent. The operation of this system is the mechanical reason behind superstitions forging the law of attraction. Interestingly, the RAS does respond to conscious thought.
Back to anxiety, when we stop fearing one sensation (because we have resolved it through knowledge ... e.g. ... my heart cant stop during panic), often another sensation pops up and says "what about me? ... Everything looks like a cartoon". This, yet again is the body trying to resolve your fear so you can return to homeostasis (calm). So resolving your fears of bodily sensations is a bit like peeling an onion, or eating the pizza slice by slice. Once you have digested the entire pizza (each slice may take practice, because quite frankly this is not the best tasting pizza in the world, an anchovy, jam & earwax pizza perhaps ... ACCEPTACE IS AN ACQUIRED TASTE) all your fears are resolved and your body enters relaxation Why because YOU know its all a load of b*llocks.
So with this in mind, I'll explain to the best of my knowledge the collection of sensations known as depersonalisation/derealisation/unreality
ACCEPT AND FLOAT THROUGH....
Slice 1) Dizziness - Your blood pressure changes in the inner ear, causing you to feel off balance - SAFE ... See how dizzy you can actually get, IT CAN'T HURT YOU
Slice 2) Light-headedness - Your blood pressure fluctuates well within safe limits as a result of blood being sent to the strong muscles - SAFE ... See how lightheaded you can actually get. IT CAN'T HURT YOU
Slice 3) Numbness - Because your strong muscles become safely engorged with blood and expand these muscles press safely on superficial capillaries feeding the skin- This has the benefit of reducing blood loss in the event of a cut to your fighting extremities during a fight. - SAFE ... See how numb you can actually get. IT CAN'T HURT YOU
Slice 4) Everything seems brighter - Your Pupils are widened to let in more light. - SAFE ... Put away the sunglasses and see how bright things actually are. IT CAN'T HURT YOU
Slice 5) Cartoon vision - Because you have a safe build-up of stress chemicals between neurotransmitter sites, this acts as a safety buffer for the nervous system, it keeps your nervous system healthy in times of activation. SAFE ... See how cartoony your vision can actually get. IT CAN'T HURT YOU
Slice 6) You are mentally tired - Of course you are, you have been studying yourself for days, weeks years. See how tired you can actually get, at some point you will sleep. IT CAN'T HURT YOU
This seems like a confusing list of things, but if you look logically, you will see a pattern behind every sensation - That pattern is your A) muscles being primed for strength and 2) your senses being more alert
Slice 1) The result of changes in blood flow and because your muscles are primed for strength
Slice 2) The result of changes in blood flow and because your muscles are primed for strength
Slice 3) The result of changes in blood flow and because your muscles are primed for strength
Slice 4) The result of your senses being more alert
Slice 5) The result of your senses being more alert
Slice 6) The result of your senses being more alert
If you really didn't fear being Dizzy, Lightheaded, Numb, Everything Seeming Bright, Cartoonlike Vision or being mentally tired like you have been studying for hours on end, would you fear depersonalisation/derealisation/unreality.
I.e. If you really didn't fear your muscles being stronger and your senses being keener would you fear depersonalisation/derealisation/unreality?
I initially called this a phenomenon, as you can see there is nothing really phenomenal about it. OK its physiologically phenomenal, but its not medically phenomenal, its medically irrelevant.
The only phenomenal thing is that we intelligent people ever got duped in the first place into believing this was dangerous.
Obviously the same goes for all other anxiety sensations.
Claire Weekes says, and remember this "none of these sensations are important medically". She also says the anxiety state is sensitisation kept alive by bewilderment and fear.
Remove the bewilderment and fear cannot exist.
LET TIME PASS...
Without bewilderment fear cannot exist, without fear, desensitisation is inevitable and homeostasis returns in time.
I sincerely hope this helps. If not, you have my sincerest apologies.
Keep practicing, face your fears and let your body do the safe thing it's always done until it calms down.
Your body is not even remotely bothered by these sensations, why would it be? They are completely normal. The only reason it keeps activating them is that you are scared and it responds by directing safety seeking stress chemicals to the source of your fear.
Hope fully this message will enable you to change your understanding and stop your bewilderment which will in turn change your internally imagery, which will in turn remove your fears, which will in turn guide you on the path to *desensitisation.
*Desensitisation - bothering less about the sensations being less scared which result in less targeted adrenaline which results in fewer sensations of diminished strength. Desensitisation is the positive feedback loop of recovery which is initiated after the removal of your conscious fear
Kind Regards,
Chris
Ok so the geek side of me has to ask...
I thought I knew most of the technical stuff behind anxiety but you bring up the RAS. Very interesting. But one question. You said the RAS filters according to what we deem important and where our focus is, but then you said it doesn't respond to conscious thought. Can you explain what you mean by these two statements?
For example if you told yourself 10 times tomorrow morning you will notice every red car you pass, you will notice every red car you pass.
In a similar vein if you told yourself not to think of pink elephants, you would think of pink elephants. The subconscious does DO negatives, because it is comprised of mental sensory based imagery. The image here is the pink elephant. See NLP submodalies for examples of this using different senses.
Slice 7) Everything seems more physically sensitive both on the skin and inside the body.
Yet again this is due to the sense of touch being more active.
The sensory confusion with this is that the skin can seem numb from decreased blood flow to reduce blood loss and more sensitive at the same time due to increase nerve impulses to give a more accurate picture of the environment both internally and externally. This gives rise to the odd sensation. Which is hard to process consciously. I suppose an analogy is that each nerve is like a wifi device like an iPhone ... benefitting from a boosted signal strength whilst the hub is safely wrapped and protected in bubble wrap. The bubble wrap is the numbness, the wifi device with the boosted signal is the nerve impulses. I can't think of a better analogy at present, please feel free to think of a better one for me. I'm struggling with this explanation.
That totally makes sense. Misread "does" as "doesn't" obviously.
Interesting, so the takeaway there is that essentially the more our focus is on the symptoms/anxiety... the more it assumes we need this protection, even if we are searching for ways to RID ourselves of it.
Correct?
So then what about this....
What about those of us who have tried to implement the wisdom from ALTM and found that setbacks seem to keep us in a loop? In particular, my setbacks almost seem cyclical and come from a sleep state. It's not as if I'm sitting around pondering my anxiety all day. I THINK I've chosen to integrate back into life the best I can. I really only get tangled up with symptoms on super-bad days, and on good, average or even kind of bad days... I really don't focus on anxiety topics.
Do you have a thought on that? I've been working for a couple years on it and have seen nice progress. But it almost seems like my mind is stubbornly trying to keep me in this pattern, even if it has to do it while I'm sleeping.
I still know in my brain and heart the methodology works. But, the looping setbacks keep reappearing. So for me it's not so much the individual symptoms that confound me. I get those. (The how's and why's.) It's the larger cycle/condition that keeps me frustrated... as it seems when I am almost better... BAM!
Just wondering how you think the methodology applies to this stage of recovery?
PS - This is so amazingly informative. Thanks so much again for sharing. Really helpful and interesting on top of it.
Think about it this way. You are in the wild and you run from a lioness. You survived, but after the encounter you still get adrenaline release JUST IN CASE you meet another one.
It is not until you know you are safe that your protection response is removed, or know that you are safer and your protection response is lowered.
Your brain is working for you seeking a resolution, it's doing what it's supposed to do.
there are two resolutions. 1 divert yourself with enough mental stimulation that you forget about the stress sensations. 2 know the stress sensations are completely safe and you can actually play around with them and you can quite happily experience the adrenaline rush without the what if thoughts. Or do a combination of both, when you experience the bodily changes, fully accept them as part of your life 100% when they crop up and when they lower just get on with your day.
Regarding 1 some people panic because they sweat, which of course means more sweaty panic. Other are not bothered about sweating and never enter an anxiety state. This teaches us that the sensation of sweating is not important, it's our reaction to the sensation, ad version to the sensation is a choice, a conscious choice . Now as anxiety is just a collection of sensations, the choice to not avoid sweating can be used as a template to not avoid any of the sensations.
If you truly want to experience any sensation and any combination of sensations your fight flight response will no longer seek a resolution and all relaxed and clear thought brain function is re-established. This is acceptance. With this in your back pocket, it becomes natural to do nothing. Technically in hindsight you did nothing about your sensations and nothing about your recovery. In order to do this well it is best to know the REAL reasons behind the protection response, once you are armed with the proper imagery about how profoundly safe it all is it becomes impossible to get consciously scared about the sensations. Without this conscious fear, no resolution is necessary. Which is why all good programs include a description of symptoms/sensations with descriptions of why they occur and why they are mechanically completely natural.
Using sweating as an example, you may have somebody who has a real fear of this part of the response ... They may have created all kind of internal images which catastrophise the sensation, they may create all kinds of scenarios such as an unrelenting sweating episode leading to dehydration ... They would play these movies in their mind ... If you were to show them this video
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=musHDO8q5VM at 2:55 - 3:05 they would see the real mechanism behind the response and their mental imagery would change, their fear would collapse and the mind would no longer need a resolution because the resolution has been resolved in the language of the subconscious NLP sub modalities (mind movies).
Now to me this fear of sweating is ludicrous, but completely understanding in a state of bewilderment.
My previous fears of the sensations were equally as ludicrous, but they felt real to me. I used to fear amongst other things moving my own arms for goodness sake! Equally daft and equally understandable.
Panic and anxiety is a collection of phobias, phobias of the sensations themselves.
If you are scared of spiders, the resolution is not to kill every spider in the world. The resolution is to face your fear of spiders and accept that spiders exist 100%
If you fear having a fast heart rate, accept that hearts can beat fast. Let them beat fast.
Once you dissolve your phobic collection of your sensations, you have a resolution.
Your mind clears, and you move on with your life.
But this time you move on knowing that not even fear itself can scare you.
So it goes to show that FDR was wrong with his statement "the only thing to fear is fear itself" you don't even have to fear fear.
Fear is an opinion. A conscious decision to withdraw from a few utterly safe sensations.
I hope this helps.
Some people refer to the fight flight response. Other more learned folk call it the fight flight freeze response. But the best description is the fight flight freeze chase response.
Fight - the threat is defeatable - I'm going to fight - ANGER
Flight - the threat is bigger than me but I'm faster - I'm going to run away - FEAR
Freeze - the threat is bigger and faster than me - I'm going to play dead - DEPRESSION
Chase - I'm the predator, and I love the thrill of the chase - EXCITEMENT
Exactly the same sensations in the body - with different reactions.
All because of the conscious identification of whether something is a threat and and assessment of the nature that threat.
Only excitement comes without the brain fog.
Not one of the sensations of the fight flight freeze chase response is harmful in any way.
When someone truly accepts the sensations and indeed starts to chase them, to hunt them. The mind clears and enjoyment is released.
Obviously when the notion of the threat is removed the adrenaline slowed and finally stopped.
Which removes all the sensations.
Does this help?
Really appreciate this. Going to read it over a few times and really try to ingest it properly.
Later, someone recommended me this treatment, and Im very grateful with it, i can go anywhere i want without problem, no anxiety, no panic attacks, i'm a new person. Read this article, it helped me a lot : panicsolutionkey.com
... how long did it take you to fully implement?
... and how do you describe acceptance?