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Freebase Dali · 06-12-2010, 11:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tore

I've recieved quite a few bumps to the head during my life, the worst bordering on quite severe. I have a reasonably good ability to completely immerse myself in something. My GF can't get any sort of response from me if I'm writing on the forums for example. It's not such a bad thing, but I sometimes wonder if the two - my ability to shut out the world and my accumulated brain damage - are related, hehe ..

When I was a teenager, I also suffered from general anxiety disorder as if that somehow describes well the particulars of my difficulties. Anyways, I understand now that it came from a lack of control and I managed to battle all that. For example way back then, I was a bit scared of driving in cars or sitting in the middle of a row in the cinema, situations that were hard to escape. Eventually, I managed to turn the tables on my fear. I told myself something along the lines of "right fear, you don't like me driving cars, do you? Well guess what, it's not your show, it's mine, and I'm gonna drive cars whether you scare me or not - right now!". Turning that into a general principle in my life gave results real fast.

What I learned then from working with myself emotinally have helped me later in life, for example when I lost much hearing in my right ear and got permanent tinnitus from a silly rifle accident

I'm still somewhat of a worry wart, but I am capable of suppressing it (until I get kids I'm sure). The fear which was once great sometimes manifests itself, but it's usually a tiny squeaking voice in the back of my mind. If I notice it, I can still turn the tables on it. For example when I decided to move up to the arctic, a had some fearful distorted thoughts like "suicide rates are really high there, it's dark 4 months of the year, you might get scared up there!". I mentally replied with "Oh, so you wanna stop me moving to the arctic, do you, fear? Well, guess where I'm gonna go, you sucker!"

I also think part of what gets me through is that I'm an optimist at heart. Sometimes when I worry, I also think that I exaggerate my problems. So what if I have a little tinnitus for example? Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison and look at what he accomplished when he was released. People with bigger problems than me get by just fine. I'm gonna do fine as well, that's a promise to myself.

I would like to say at the end that growing up has helped a lot. Getting to know myself and the world I live in and becoming more comfortable with all that. Studying science helped as well. When I was younger, I had a distorted fear that my life would become an uncontrollable mess. It hasn't and I've learned that I've been capable of dealing with life's bumps in the road so far and that gives me confidence for the future. Some of you who have it hard now will find that out for yourself soon enough.

Man, it's cool to hear you pretty much overcame the anxiety. For me, it didn't start manifesting itself until more recently (within the past 7 years or so) and regardless of how much I try to psych myself out, I can't manage to push myself down to a baseline in new stressful situations. While it's 90 percent an inner battle that isn't perceivable to anyone else but me, it still seems like an insurmountable obstacle to try to convince yourself of how something is irrational when you already know it's irrational. It's like you literally have to reshape your brain and the chemical reactions that happen inside it in order to gain control of the thoughts and fears, because simply knowing they're not real isn't enough.

I read up a lot on this sort of thing and it appears as though medications are only temporary resolve, and where the real change happens is repeatedly facing your fears and learning how to deal with them therapeutically until they no longer exist. It's just really hard to do that on your own, which is probably why group therapy is successful enough to be standard.

Although compared to generalized anxiety I probably fit more into the social anxiety category, I think it's worth it to note your success in the matter as a basic template for how to deal with a lot of these types of issues and it's really commendable that you did it on your own.