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Self Help Beginning Again by Bronwyn Fox We begin the recovery process where we are right now; as opposed to where we think we should be, or shouldn't be. By this I mean thinking to ourselves, "Well once I lose my fears I will definitely look at what I can do to recover" or "once I get 'such and such' done, I will start working on recovery or "I shouldn't be like this anyway so why do I have to do all of this work"! Recovery doesn't work like this ! The process of recovery is learning to lose our many and varied fears. Once we lose our fears we lose our disorder ! So waiting for our fears to disappear is defeating ourselves before we start. So many people will say to me that as soon as they can finish doing whatever it is they are doing, working on a school and/or other committees; helping at the local volunteer agency; doing odd jobs for all and sundry who ask; taking care of other peoples' children at any time of the day or night; taking care of other people ; trying to fix everything for everybody; then they will have more time to concentrate on their recovery. Recovery doesn't work like this either. Our recovery needs to be our number one priority. Our mental health demands nothing less ! And while most of us with panic disorder initially feel "this is not me, I am not like this' the reality is we have an anxiety disorder. If we don't accept ourselves as having an anxiety disorder how will we recover ? All we will do is continue to fight, in the wrong way, what is happening to us. And all this will do is create more anxiety and panic. Begin again We start the recovery process by 'beginning again' with compassion towards ourselves, self acceptance and self responsibility. Beginning again. So many of us have tried so many different therapies only to find ourselves back where we started from. We can begin again by being objective and looking at, and understanding why the various therapies we have tried, have not been as effective as we had hoped they would be. It can help if we make a list of the various therapies we have tried and compare them to the list mentioned in the article The Struggle to Recover. This way, rather than blaming and 'beating' up on ourselves for not recovering, we can actually see the various reasons why our recovery seems so elusive. We can also do this if we have been using a cognitive behavioural technique and feel that we have not come as far as we had hoped. Below is a check list of the major reasons why some people find cognitive techniques difficult. Is it because we are not understanding something about the Cognitive technique? Is it because we feel too embarrassed to ask our therapist the questions we need to ? Is it because we are trying to hard to be the good perfect patient? Are our fears too strong for us to make any headway in working with our thinking. If so, we need to speak with our therapist about this. Are we practising the techniques as much as we need to ? Are we doing the necessary exposure work ? Have we reached a plateau in where we feel a relative comfort and the idea of pushing past this, seems too hard or too frightening ? Understanding from an objective point of view, rather than a subjective 'beat ourselves up' point of view, why we have not recovered, is being compassionate to ourselves. It is learning self acceptance and all of the these means we taking responsibility for ourselves rather than getting caught up in feelings of confusion and helplessness about our overall situation. We can extend this further by looking at the various ways we may be thinking about ourselves and our ability to recover. Is the way we think about recovery holding us back, sabotaging us before we start? "I can't recover. I don't think I have the ability to recover. People that recover are different to me. I have had this for too long now, there is no way I can recover. " If we are thinking this way what can we do about this? What action do we need to take so that we can overcome this ? Skilful action We are not skilful in how we relate to ourselves. Nor are we compassionate towards ourselves despite the degree of suffering we experience through our disorder. We need to begin again and learn to be kind to ourselves and learn to treat ourselves with dignity and respect. We wouldn't constantly harass other people with an anxiety disorder about their supposed failures and weaknesses, their supposed stupidity and helplessness. Yet we do this to ourselves all of the time. Beginning again means we also begin to learn to treat ourselves with the kindness, dignity and respect that we give to other people. Beginning again means accepting ourselves as we are in this moment in time. When we can accept ourselves and our disorder we then have the ability to change direction and move fully into the recovery process. If we don't accept ourselves and/or our disorder, then all we are doing is setting up even more conflict within ourselves and round and round we go. Accepting ourselves, treating ourselves with kindness and respect is also being responsible for ourselves. And this is skilful compassion in action ! Stop and think for a moment, have you ever thought about being kind to yourself ? Have you ever thought about treating yourself with respect ? Many people with an anxiety disorder have never thought about themselves in these terms. As a little quiz, list the ways
Then list the ways in which you can practice being more respectful and caring of Self. |
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Last modified: June 12, 2007