It wasn't until I hit a brick wall with my anxiety that I decided it would be time for me to start putting pen to paper. Mainly because I was getting tired of having all these things happening to me while I was at sea, the recurring thought was FUCK, I'M GOING TO DIE.
This is a perfectly reasonable response the first time your heart is bouncing around your rib cage like a brick in a clothes dryer. But after the third or fourth time it happens and you don't die you start to get scared on a whole different level. Scared that your not going to die.... Yet. Its a bit like playing Russian roulette by yourself. Every pull of the trigger brings you one click closer to the chamber with the bullet. It is going to get you eventually. Because the doctors have told you its "unlikely" that anything is wrong, not that nothing is wrong. So there is always that little pestering niggling voice in your head when your heart starts banging away and you feel hot and tingly that maybe, just maybe this is it. This is the one with the bullet in it.. "click" goes the hammer, and nothing happens. the time when something really is wrong and what do ya know? FUCK, I'M GOING TO DIE. comes screaming back out of the recesses of your mind.
What defenses do you have when this happens ? Try and convince yourself otherwise!
You say to yourself. Self, i'm not going to die. and self replies, YES YOU ARE, YOU'RE GOING TO DIE. Being the tough person you are, you believe yourself because you don't have any further ammunition to prove otherwise. You accept the argument that you are going to die. Thus the logical thing to do is to half shit your pants and start to lose the plot
With all this talk of defenses, ammunition and attacks. It feels like war.
In a sense it is.
So, Lets go to war then.
First we need to find a weapon and some ammo.
I started keeping a journal while at sea, when my anxiety was worst.
I made daily entries, and forced myself to do it even if it was a tough long day and I was wrecked. I committed to it.
these are the main things I focused on
1) Writing what had happened during the day
2) How I was feeling both good and bad
3) Writing something positive that i had done that day
4) Telling myself that I was really proud of myself for getting through it, no matter if it was a success or a failure
Secondly we need intel so we can thwart the enemy at every turn
Reflecting on my journal, I started to see that I wasn't having nearly as many shit days as I had initially believed.
The first week was pretty much the same as it was when I wasn't writing the journal, I was still feeling pretty crap and like I was all panicky and jumpy. But gradually, day by day the journal got thicker and more powerful and carried some strong arguments that I could use when the old self started trying to tell me that I was going to die.
Finally we take the fight to em, full frontal attack and defeat the enemy
Old self would say shit, I feel bad, my heart is racing and I'm hot. I feel like I'm going to die.
Then new self would run back to the cabin and read the blog. Then new self would say "Old self, you are hot because you are working in a hot area, we did this yesterday and we are not dead. Maybe we are not going to die"
And so it went, back and forth. At first frequently, but as the old self found that he was getting beaten, he stopped arguing so much and eventually gave up on a lot of fronts.
For me, this was the breakthrough I had been searching for. It gave me the backup to have the confidence to push on when i got scared or anxious.
With this technique I came forward in leaps and bounds, it was the single biggest step towards living a positive healthy life I have made. Having that bank of positive outcomes there on hand whenever things went south, the ability to reflect and see that I was actually doing well, and that maybe I was being a little too critical of myself and expecting to run a marathon when all I really needed to do was put one foot in front of the other.
below are some of the more persuasive entries that I wrote to myself on that first trip away, which was a 3 week crossing over the Indian ocean, from Cape town, South Africa to Perth Australia.
I had a really good day today, at one point I looked at myself and thought, this is how I used to be. Working hard and getting things done. I think the last few days of not sleeping very well and working hard have caught up with me though. I was just congratulating myself on a good day and thinking about emailing my psychologist and telling her how well I was doing when I started feeling funny, the strange thing is that it wasn’t the normal anxiousness that I usually get, it was tired and dizzy. Which I guess is normal considering that I was working hard all morning and the last 3 too. I had to stop what I was doing and go and have a drink and a rest for ten mins, then I went back to what I was doing and finished the job, I wasn’t proud of myself for walking away but I really wasn’t feeling well. However I was proud of myself for going back and finishing the job. I know that im not always going to have a great day and sometimes im not even going to have a good day, but ill cope, ill get through and ill show this anxiety whos boss.. despite still feeling a bit anxious, im really proud of the way I managed today.
17/11/11
I actually had some success today which was pretty good. After 4 days of fucking around with the purifier I finally managed to get the damn thing running, mostly it was a fuck up because I had never done one of these ones before. After a few messy angry bits I managed to get the thing back together, the last two days have really taken it out of me and I feel a bit exhausted, but I have been having trouble sleeping... once I get to sleep I feel a million bucks, but I haven’t been able to get to sleep for ages. This makes me run down and feel anxious a bit, having said that the last two days I have been doing pretty well, most of the time I actually felt like I was doing great, like the old days. That's at least 3 days where I have felt how I used to feel which is something I thought would never happen again... Im pretty proud of myself for that!! Also today I had one of the worse panic attacks that iv had since I got here. It was mainly coz I got really hot and a bit dehydrated which I guess was pretty close to what it was like before...
I cooled off and had a few drinks of water and after about 5 or 10 mins I started feeling much better, and whats cooler is that I went back to work and spent another 5 hours down there, finished off the purifier and all in all was pretty damn proud of myself!! Once again im pretty bloody happy with how im doing. Its not always great but I feel like the good is outweighing the bad right now !
22/11/11
Today and yesterday were surprisingly hard work. I am finding the mornings much harder than the rest of the day and its because I'm by myself for much of it. I had horrible chest pains yesterday and it really really threw me... I got all panicky. Which I actually delt with really really well. It just really scared the shit out of me not knowing what was going on. Then today at the end of the watch I got all anxious while I was working in the purifier room. It just made me feel like I'm writing a self fulfilling prophecy at the moment where I'm going to start feeling worse and worse as they days go on. I am trying my best to get myself positive and changing the way I do things, I'm going to try and chip away at a blog for the next few days and hopefully that will make life much better. I'm still really proud of myself for getting through a pretty tough few days. We are under the two weeks mark now which is a MASSIVE achievement! I just have to remember to look back and think about the amazing things that I have achieved this year and even this trip. I have worked hard like I used to. Yeah I might not be back to where I was a few years ago but I'm getting better and better every day, even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time. My whole outlook has changed so much in the last few months for the better.
26/03/2012
Been having trouble getting much sleep lately. But I managed to get a bit more last night and have been feeling better. I was feeling a bit low earlier today, when I realised I had been sitting around achieving nothing and doing nothing today. But I recognised that. And did something about it. And achieved something today and it made me feel better. I have also started getting back into my routine of going up on the bridge or out on deck one day and then going back to the gym and the cabin the next day. It does two things, gets me out of the cabin and helps the time pass faster. Im doing pretty well at the moment. Time is passing quick and I have a few projects to do at work which will be good.
Been having trouble getting much sleep lately. But I managed to get a bit more last night and have been feeling better. I was feeling a bit low earlier today, when I realised I had been sitting around achieving nothing and doing nothing today. But I recognised that. And did something about it. And achieved something today and it made me feel better. I have also started getting back into my routine of going up on the bridge or out on deck one day and then going back to the gym and the cabin the next day. It does two things, gets me out of the cabin and helps the time pass faster. Im doing pretty well at the moment. Time is passing quick and I have a few projects to do at work which will be good.
