Stories

Panic Anxiety Education
Management Services

Self-Issues

Self issues can play a very big role in recovery. Hopefully you may be able to identify how some of these self issues held back and increased people's anxiety and delayed recovery. Much of our work involves educating people about healthy ways to deal with the stresses that come along. Sometimes, we are not aware of how these issues are effecting us on all levels.

For example, this lady had for many years avoided going into the supermarket for fear of having a panic attack. Usually, she sent her husband or daughter in to get the groceries. She felt a great deal of guilt about this but couldn't seem to break the cycle (or wall) that prevented her from going in.

On this day she was in a rush. Many things to do, with so little time to do them all. She parked her car and sent her teenage daughter in to get the necessities. She sat and sat .. waiting not so patiently for her daughter to return. Little did she know that her daughter's latest infatuation was with the boy in the fresh produce section of the supermarket. She had forgotten the time as she chatted and flirted with him. Finally, in a burst of shear anger, the mother got out of the car, slammed the door and marched right into the supermarket, grabbed her shocked daughter and promptly paid for the groceries.

It wasn't until she was back in the car that she realised what she had actually done. One point for anger, zero points for the fear cycle. Needless to say, the thing she feared for so long had not happened--and a huge dent was visibly seen in the cycle of fear.

Extremely Sensitive to Others

Patricia was suffering terribly from the increasing cycles of an Anxiety Disorder. Sometimes she thought it was divine retribution for something she might have done in the past - she basically felt she deserved it. She should be kinder, more giving, more compassionate, more everything. One day her friends turned up with an urgent request. Can we borrow your car, they asked. How could she say no, she wondered. They need it and if I say no I would be so selfish. So the car was their's to use. A couple of days later the "friends" returned the car. Apparently they had an accident in it. They rear ended another car. These "friends" hadn't even bothered to tell her when it happened. They didn't even bother to tell her when they returned the car.

Nothing like a couple of hundred dollars repair bill to increase the suffering. The story didn't end there. A month or two passed and in the mail came an urgent request to pay a parking ticket. Obviously the "friends" had neglected to mention this also. Patricia thought to herself, "How can I ask them to pay for this? It is my car after all." And so the cycle rolled on.

One noted characteristic of people with an Anxiety Disorder is they are incredibly sensitive individuals. Not that everyone else isn't. Klara was very sensitive to other people's opinions. She was also sensitive to what she said to others. If she spoke to someone on the phone, she was intensely alert to even the inflection in her voice. After a phone call her mind would go over-and-over the whole conversation. What she said, how she said it, whether it was appropriate, whether she had displayed the appropriate emotions.

Usually she would find something she said which might have been misconstrued by the other person. After a huge debate within herself, Klara would end up calling the person back and apologising for saying "hello" the wrong way, or apologising for something said inappropriately, or for not being sensitive enough to the other person's dilemma. The other person had no idea what she was talking about. They would then try to assuage her fears that she had said anything wrong at all. It went round-and-round in circles. So for every phone call, there would be multiple call backs.

top | continued

self-issues | coping | therapist stories | readers input | meditation
thoughts about recovery | road to recovery | something different

about us | panic-anxiety info | treatment | paems program | articles | q & a
newsletter | research | stories | famous anxiety sufferers | top 10 | email us