Anonymous asked: I suffer from bad anxiety and only my close friends/family know how bad it can get. But when my friends talk about people having anxiety and how it's really not that bad and there's no need to telling everyone, I feel like they disregard how it affects me. Obviously they don't understand how it feels to have bad anxiety, but it doesn't make me feel any better. I was wondering what tips you have on dealing with my negative thoughts and telling my friends to be more respectful sometimes! Thanks xx
Response: Important thing to remember is that you don’t cause or make up the anxiety in your head. Anxiety is the physiological symptoms of the adrenal response or stress response when it happens at irrelevant moments or almost chronically. In layman terms it is a false alarm of the fight/flight response. The negative thoughts pop in to your head because your body is firing off alarm messages to the brain. Anxiety is like an oversensitive smoke alarm that goes off when you turn the toaster on, rather than when the toast is burning. The false alarm still makes you think there is something wrong, and the longer it goes on for the more frustrated we get and the more sure we are there “must be” something wrong. Maybe explain it to friends like that, your internal alarm system is hypersensitive and keeps sending off false alarms which are really hard to just ignore, because the physiological symptoms, like racing heart, are REAL. I will be thinking of you xx
Anonymous asked: Do you know any ways that can stop me from having irrational thoughts ? I have a wonderful boyfriend and loving friends but sometimes I get worried or upset and think about bad things that could happen... Things that I know are irrational
Response: Maybe try either or both of these strategies because just telling yourself to stop thinking irrational thoughts just doesn’t work, does it!
1. Allow yourself to have these irrational thoughts - but CONTROL when. What that means is you choose a time or place each day/week that schedule in “irrational thoughts”. It can be in the shower, the loo, on the bus, morning coffee, 2:30pm every Wednesday and Friday etc. Put alarms in your phone or put a sticky note up to remind you of time and place. Call the scheduled thinking time something, make up an acronym, or give it an appropriate name. I call it “SITT” (silly irrational thought time). Then, whenever you have an irrational thought, say to yourself something like “not now, I’ll think about that when i SITT”. The rule is however that at “SITT” time you MUST think irrationally ! At first you will ponder the irrational thoughts for a bit until your mind wanders to something more real. After a while you will find you can’t even think about anything irrational at the scheduled time and you will find that the spontaneous irrational thoughts will have all but disappeared too as you put them aside or discard them as irrational and unimportant as soon as they pop into your head, You’ll probably even laugh to yourself and say to yourself “can’t believe such SITT just pops in my head sometimes”. So by making yourself think irrationally and formalising/scheduling irrational thoughts will give you control and the thoughts will have so much less control over you.
2. Challenge and Plan: that is challenge the irrational thoughts immediately in your head “on a scale of 1-10 how rational/irrational is it (1 being totally irrational and 10 being importantly rational) ?” or “how likely is that to happen?” and then ” how much time and headspace is it worth me giving that thought ?” or “will worrying about it make a difference?”. If it’s irrational the answer will be NONE and NO. So move on and think about something worth thinking about. This is where for a while at least you will have to “plan” ie plan what you will think about or do instead.
Just something little that will break the habit/routine of the irrational thought taking over, something different like if you wear earrings, take them out and swap them into the other ear, tie your shoelaces, count (to yourself) how many buttons on your shirt, their shirt, in the room, pour a drink, wriggle in your seat, write a word on your leg (palm, arm etc) with your finger eg the day of the week backwards “YADRUTAS”.
Focus for a minute on your senses eg try to distinguish a smell, focus on the background sounds, notice all the blue things in the room, is the air warm or cool, is there a breeze, play with a ribbon or rock in your pocket.
Or Think differently - have a list of 3-5 things in your head that you have to think about instead. They need to be sort of like “topic changers” or conversation starters (with yourself or others). Did you see such and such tv show last night, when did I last laugh, what are we doing next weekend, shopping list, what is my work roster this week, favourite icecream flavour, what was I doing on this day 12 months ago ? Hope this helps xx
Anonymous asked: I'm in a tricky situation at the moment. I'm pretty certain that I have an anxiety disorder.. I know it's bad to self-diagnose but my symptoms are pretty obvious and it's common in my family. My mum won't get me medical help, so how can I deal with my anxieties and worries by myself? I want to self-heal like you did, I just don't know how?
Response: Well to do it all on your own isn’t easy, but I am proud and in awe of you for taking it on and wanting to get through this. The first thing to do with anxiety is get to know yourself and your own “system” really well. Anxiety is a bit like a hypersensitive smoke detector that sets off the alarm when the toaster is turned on, rather than when the toast is burning. What you feel as anxiety is that false alarm, and then you add in all the anxious and worrying thoughts to explain the alarm eg there must be something wrong etc.
Getting to know your system is about identifying what the anxiety “feels like” in your body - eg racing heart, shaky, nausea, difficulty breathing, lump in your throat, sweating, shivering etc. AND then JUST AS IMPORTANTLY, identify what your body feels like when the anxiety ISN’T there ie your comfortable calm system.
Maybe keep a log or journal and that way you can work out if there is any “triggers” for your anxiety - situations, people, places, sounds etc. Sometimes we can’t figure out the triggers - so don’t worry if you can’t. Then it is about working out what calming/soothing strategies work for you - these might be different ways of thinking, doing something else active, being quiet or mindful or it might be that sensory strategies help (eg smelling lavender or listening to music, or fidgeting with a rock or a ribbon in your pocket). The goal being to feel comfortable and calm more often, and then to challenge yourself in small ways and small steps to get a little bit anxious and calm yourself. Over time you will be able to tolerate more things and your “alarm system” won’t be giving off nearly as many false alarms. Or if it is, you will recognise them as false alarms and pay no attention to them. . Good Luck beautiful, stay strong xx
Asked: Hi Sjana, I'm so so scared. I had a huge panic attack the other night. It lasted about 20 minutes and I was crying so much. It terrified me. Then the other day I was doing a surf life saving bronze medallion course and to pass I had to get 20/20 and I got 19/20 so I freaked out. I was all sweaty and started panicking. I was so embarrassed. Turns out she marked it wrong and I passed! How can I deal with the panic attacks and all the hate I feel for myself? I'm so scared!
Response: it’s great that you recognise it as panic attacks - so much easier to manage something you understand. You can try managing it (stopping it) by changing something as soon as it starts coming on. (So first thing write down a list of what you think are the early warning signs). By “changing” something I mean your thoughts, your actions or your sensory awareness.
So Thoughts: rather than thinking “omg omg, I am going to fail” start challenging that thought with “how likely is that to happen ?” In any pass/fail situation objectively there is a 50/50 chance - ie either you will pass or fail. So then you ask yourself what could you/did you do to reduce the chance of failing. Did you answer all the questions ? yes - so chance of fail goes down. Did you study? - yes so chance of failing goes down and likelihood of passing goes up. Did you know the work - yes - o chance of failing goes down and likelihood of passing goes up even more. So what is it at now ? about a 90% chance of pass and a slight 10% of failing. Then ask yourself “What is the worst thing that can happen if I fail ? Will I die, will my family be mortally wounded ? or will I just have to do the test again ? Change your thoughts to feeling confident and acknowledging you did everything you could to maximise the likelihood of passing. And the last question “will worrying about change anything ? No - so don’t worry !
Actions: When you feel a panic attack coming on do something different. Eg if you wear earrings, take them out and swap them into the other ear, tie your shoelaces, count (to yourself) how many buttons on your shirt, their shirt, in the room, pour a drink, wriggle in your seat, write a word on your leg (palm, arm etc) with your finger eg “ok” or “it’s ok” or ”be curious”, “focus” “calm” or draw the chinese symbol for calm (google it).
Sense something: try to distinguish a smell, focus on the background sounds, notice all the blue things in the room, is the air warm or cool, is there a breeze, play with a ribbon or rock in your pocket, discretely run your hands through your hair, notice if it is smooth or due for a wash soon, or in your case, could you feel any salt or sand in your hair from being at the beach, cold you feel sand under your feet - just focus on sensations and/or your breathing till you calm a little.
As always, hope this helps in some way. Also congratulations on passing the bronze too ! Have faith in yourself. Sending you love and laughter xx
Anonymous asked: What do you do when you're alone, like at night, all by yourself, you can't sleep and negative thoughts just overtake you? No matter how hard you try for them not to? Like every single stupid thing you've done just pops into your head uncontrollably? Have you ever had that?
Response: And the more you try to stop thinking the harder it gets to stop the stupid negative thoughts intruding. It doesn’t seem like all that thinking is helping you actually “solve” any problems just cause lots of stress and distress as you ruminate (that means have the same thoughts go round and around). Well 2 strategies to try:- the first is slow breathing using an App. (Breathe2Relax). Hope you have an iphone, ipod or ipad you can download it to. it’s free and it’s a tiny bit scientifically nerdy but it has an ok visual to help you slow down your breathing and think about that (rather than everything going on in your head. It’s so much easier to stop our thoughts wandering when we have something to look at ! Read all the information on the App and the explanation and instructions and it’s pretty simple really.
Secondly, try directing your giftedness for thinking lots, into thinking about something relaxing calming and soothing. (Remember it is pointless to tell yourself NOT to think about the bad stuff, tell yourself what good thing to think about instead) Pick any place you want, it just needs to be one where you can imagine it, look at it and be aware of every little specific detail in it. An Example would be a bubble bath - you can notice the water, think about how hot or warm you like it, how deep, how many bubbles there are, and how each bubble is different in someway but is connected to all the others, imagine blowing bubbles, how big, the colours in the bubbles, can you imagine candles, the smell of candles or bath oil , the sounds in the background. watch how the bubbles move when you move in the water underneath, notice the lighting, notice the towel that is waiting for you and the bath mat on which you will stand, think about the part of the experience you like the most, and why you don’t want it to end, add some more hot water to warm it up a bit again and keep thinking and being aware of all the little details.
Neither of these will help deal with the issues stuck in your head, but they may wind down your system enough to relax and sleep to take over. Good Luck. Sleep Tight xx
Anonymous asked: Do you know any ways that can stop me from having irrational thoughts ? I have a wonderful boyfriend and loving friends but sometimes I get worried or upset and think about bad things that could happen... Things that I know are irrational
Response: Maybe try either or both of these strategies because just telling yourself to stop thinking irrational thoughts just doesn’t work, does it !
1. Allow yourself to have these irrational thoughts - but CONTROL when. What that means is you choose a time or place each day/week that schedule in “irrational thoughts”. It can be in the shower, the loo, on the bus, morning coffee, 2:30pm every Wednesday and Friday etc. Put alarms in your phone or put a sticky note up to remind you of time and place. Call the scheduled thinking time something, make up an acronym, or give it an appropriate name. I call it “SITT” (silly irrational thought time). Then, whenever you have an irrational thought, say to yourself something like “not now, I’ll think about that when i SITT”. The rule is however that at “SITT” time you MUST think irrationally ! At first you will ponder the irrational thoughts for a bit until your mind wanders to something more real. After a while you will find you can’t even think about anything irrational at the scheduled time and you will find that the spontaneous irrational thoughts will have all but disappeared too as you put them aside or discard them as irrational and unimportant as soon as they pop into your head, You’ll probably even laugh to yourself and say to yourself “can’t believe such SITT just pops in my head sometimes”. So by making yourself think irrationally and formalising/scheduling irrational thoughts will give you control and the thoughts will have so much less control over you.
2. Challenge and Plan: that is challenge the irrational thoughts immediately in your head “on a scale of 1-10 how rational/irrational is it (1 being totally irrational and 10 being importantly rational) ?” or “how likely is that to happen?” and then ” how much time and headspace is it worth me giving that thought ?” or “will worrying about it make a difference?”. If it’s irrational the answer will be NONE and NO. So move on and think about something worth thinking about. This is where for a while at least you will have to “plan” ie plan what you will think about or do instead.
Just something little that will break the habit/routine of the irrational thought taking over, something different like if you wear earrings, take them out and swap them into the other ear, tie your shoelaces, count (to yourself) how many buttons on your shirt, their shirt, in the room, pour a drink, wriggle in your seat, write a word on your leg (palm, arm etc) with your finger eg the day of the week backwards “YADRUTAS”.
Focus for a minute on your senses eg try to distinguish a smell, focus on the background sounds, notice all the blue things in the room, is the air warm or cool, is there a breeze, play with a ribbon or rock in your pocket.
Or Think differently - have a list of 3-5 things in your head that you have to think about instead. They need to be sort of like “topic changers” or conversation starters (with yourself or others). Did you see such and such tv show last night, when did I last laugh, what are we doing next weekend, shopping list, what is my work roster this week, favourite icecream flavour, what was I doing on this day 12 months ago ?
Hope this helps!
Love and light,
Sjana x