Beginnings

You gotta start somewhere eh? This, I guess, is my starting place.

So, many of us at one point in our lives I suppose, have read a "self help" book of some kind.  Probably alot of us who suffer a mental illness can probably raise their hands and say 'yep, I've done that'.  I've read MANY self help books and thought 'oh dear god, this is shit'. One of those was Feel the fear and do it anyway. Can't remember the author, and really couldn't be bothered digging it up to find out.  On the other hand though, one of the really good books I read was 'Don't sweat the small stuff'. It was a great book and helped me at a time when I really needed it. At the tender age of 18.

The book at the moment that I am reading is 'Power over Panic- Bronwyn Fox'. If there are any of you suffering from PTSD or Anxiety and enjoy reading, I couldn't recommend this book enough. It's fantastic.  So unfortunately for you guys, the next few posts will be referencing this book alot, sorry lol.  In all seriousness though, I feel like I have to post about it. Not only because I hope that it will help other people in the same boat as me, but because I read things in this book that I want to elaborate on myself to get it out of my head.  So here goes I guess... Lesson one ...

You know those times when you have what Oprah calls the 'A-ha' moment? When you're reading a book or watching a show and its almost as if something jumps out and punches you in the face as if to say 'DUH'.  Well, I have had MANY A-ha moments whilst reading this book. (almost sounds like I am getting some sort of kick back for mentioning this book doesn't it haha! I'm not, honestly). So I pretty much have to jot down some of the stand out moments for me. One of them was;

       The ability to dissociate usually begins in childhood. Some people with an anxiety disorder have a history of childhood abuse, and the ability to dissociate enabled them to ‘escape’ from this abuse. People who do not have a background of abuse learnt to dissociate in other situations, such as being bullied at school or during lessons that they were not interested in, disliked or could not cope with."

      For me personally, this was the part in the book when I realised, I know this! Subconsciously, I know alot of what she is saying in this book.  And funnily enough she talks about emotionally vs. intellectually in regards to our anxiety.  Intellectually we realise 'this is not right' and we know what we need to do. But emotionally we can't get our head past the thoughts of 'what if'. Its like we're stuck IN the actual anxiety.

      One of the other major things I have been struggling with lately is NOT helping everybody else!!! I've always been the person who is there for everyone. You need someone to talk to? for 3 hours? sure I'm there. Never mind the fact that when I get off the phone from listening to your problems I am absolutely exhausted. And who is the one that suffers after that? Me, my partner, my children. I can't be everything I need to be to my partner and my children and my self if I am being everything to everybody else!  I always thought that my reasons for being like this was because I didn't have anyone to 'help' me or 'save' me from my problems growing up.

·         Even before our anxiety disorder developed, we did not know or feel any sense of self, any sense of who we are. Our identity is based on the roles we assume in our life. We are a wife, husband, father, mother, daughter, son, friend, work colleague.  Our identity is based on our own, and other people’s expectations and perceptions of who we think we should be. We think we need to be all things to all people, so that people will love us. To accomplish this, we suppress our feelings, needs and wants- in essence, ourselves. As a result, our sense of self is ‘externally’ based rather than centred within us.  Trying to be all things to all people takes an enormous amount of energy. It also takes an enormous amount of strength to continually hold ourselves back, to not show our feelings and not feel our feelings. To always be pleasant, smiling and helpful. To take responsibility for everyone else, and to make sure we do all the above perfectly!  We feel inferior and we worry that we will be ‘found out’ and exposed as being less than perfect.

I've always known that I am a people pleaser. I want and need people to be happy with me. Not strangers obviously, but friends and family. I go out of my way to make sure they're all happy and looked after. Always making sure if they need anything I'm there etc.  This would have to be one of the biggest things I struggle with. Learning that it's OK to need to look after myself and MY family (my children and my partner). It's not selfish.  Even typing that 'its not selfish' I scrunched up my face. Because it still feels selfish!  I know that it's something that is going to take time.  But I need to develop the art of being able to be there for someone and giving them advice but not getting emotionally invested every.single.time. To the point where I am not sleeping at night because I'm so concerned with how such and such is because she's having a marriage problem or because this person is fighting with her friend or this person is struggling getting pregnant etc (and please if you fit into one of those categories don't think I am talking about YOU personally. I just needed some examples off the top of my head). 

I could type forever, but I need to do it in parts. So I shall leave this post with one last quote. 

·         Recovery is like peeling an onion. As we work through the recovery process and peel away the layers, we discover these inner resources within us, and we find they have been there all along. We just didn’t know it.