Maria,

You are such a lovely person. I am very thankful for the love and support I have received on the site so far, but you have been such a lovely gift to me. I have received tons of good and practical advice and feelings of comradery, but being able to connect to your posts has helped me more than you could know. You’ve vocalized so many of the things that I have been thinking but unable to put my finger on. “I will trust life again.”

I will check out all of the links that you sent me, but I am especially interested in the one that deals with neuroplasty, and of course the Habits of a Happy Brain. I do believe that we as humans can learn and unlearn anything, but without a mentor, a role model, a parental figure, without anyone to look up to in this regard it feels so much like stabbing in the dark. It’s been a long and lonely process for me. It would feel so much more manageable if I had someone other than my partner to support me. He’s great and supportive in so many ways, but he doesn’t understand anxiety fully, he’s no therapist by any means, and truthfully I don’t want my romantic partner to be involved in therapy sessions. They’re ugly, open and raw, and well, I must have landed a great one given that he’s still around, but it’s not healthy for him to be my partner, my lover, my family, my best friend, and my therapist.

I’ve tried 5-HTP, actually I used to take it everyday but just haven’t picked any up since I’ve been traveling…I took it for about a year? Maybe two…I haven’t taken any in about 4 or 5 months. What makes you say exercise caution with it? I usually take St. John’s Wort and have been out of that for several weeks, now. I could never really tell if it made a difference…but I’ve been feeling extra bummy going through this so perhaps I should pick up another bottle…

You are so on my brainwaves about the magnesium. I never knew that it could have such calming properties but I used to add raw 100% cacao to my protein smoothies when I was back home in the states. I never connected the two thoughts, but I always felt so mellow after drinking them. Just the day before you recommended upping my magnesium levels I bought a bag for this same purpose, and hell yeah it really does work! Plus who needs an excuse to eat chocolate? 😛

Your supplement recommendations are all spot on, really. I tested the waters of veganism for several months and I went down a dark and swollen, b-vitamin deficient path before I discovered chia seeds…vitamin deficiencies are a great way to add insult to injury.

“It can be battled. There will be bad days always, but they will become fewer and fewer. You will trust life again!”

^^ 🙂 🙂

Livelovelifeeleni,

Thank you for your kind words of support! They mean so much 🙂 🙂

Hey Anita,
Wow, 6 years, absolutely it sounds like that would take a while to sort through!

You asked about when I attended therapy, and I’ll say that it was really useful for digging things up and making me realize that there was a connection between my past and my current distress. This was the whole “blame mommy and daddy” phase that everyone goes through and yes, I did have quite a bit of anger there for a while.

Truthfully, it was here that I learned the techniques of mindfulness. When I first attended I didn’t know what it meant to “be in the moment” and it actually took weeks, if not months, of practicing this before I could grab a hold of the concept, if even for just a moment. My therapist taught me breathing exercises and really pushed the concept of yoga on me…one that I was strangely resistant to at first. Of course, yoga helped me connect to myself, my breath, my inner self more than I could have ever expected and through a several week series of heart-opener sequences I quite literally got so much off of my chest. I confronted past transgressions with my parents and afterward we had a strained relationship for months. During my childhood my grandparents and my father had the opportunity to confront my mother about her alcoholism and how it affected everyone. I was too young at the time and as I grew older I learned that her condition could have been so much worse and that I should be grateful that I didn’t grow up with a raging alcoholic. This enlightenment led to avoidance of ever confronting her on how it affected me. After the first few therapy sessions I realized that the childhood I had damaged me (but really, whose didn’t?) and I began dealing with it. I wrote a very long and probably hurtful letter to my mother about how selfish alcoholism is and for a very long time I truly in my heart believed that I must not be loved by my mother because she would continuously “choose” to drink when she knew how much it hurt me. Since then, I’ve learned a great deal about alcoholism, I’ve come to understand it has nothing to do with me and that she was doing the best she knew had with the tools that she had. In response, my mother has made a pact to no longer drink when I’m visiting. Remarkably, this promise has been 100% upheld. As I’ve been learning more about myself, diving deeper into anxiety and what it looks like I’m shocked to see just how terribly, terribly anxious my mom and her mom both are. For years we had a running family joke that my grandmother “was so silly” because “she always worries about worrying too much!” It was a slap in the face when I realized that that’s pretty much the textbook definition of Generalized Anxiety Disorder. By my mother not drinking to cover up her anxiety I realize that she’s an anxious wreck, that she always has been, and she drinks to avoid the pain. (Yes, trust me I know this makes it much worse in the long run. Treat anxiety with alcohol, feel better temporarily, wake up, feel even more anxious, drink earlier, rinse, repeat). My father tries his best and just loves us all so damn much, but he doesn’t have anxiety and doesn’t understand how to cope with it. He coddles her through it and I’m convinced that this “trying to help” has made it all much worse throughout the years. Again, he is just doing the best they know how, but the kicker is that they are resistant to change. My father may not have generalized anxiety, but I definitely recognize a fear of failure that he has and yes, you betcha, I picked up this habit like it was going out of style. My parents are both terrified that they’ll mess something up if they think for themselves, and therefore always await the “instruction manual” before doing anything. Even when they receive detailed instructions for some menial task, they blow it out of proportion until it’s a big, huge deal that they’re super anxious about “ruining.” I think if I pointed this out to my dad, he’d be in disbelief. This is also where I was taught “it’s better to be safe than sorry.” The whole situation is almost comical because my dad has said for years how hard he tried to not be overprotective of his only child, a daughter (and in a lot of ways he succeeded) but I definitely learned the notion that doom and gloom was around every corner. You must have constant vigilance or else die in a horrific car accident with a boy or you better take all the necessities at all times when you leave the house in case you’re stranded. …I’m from a large metropolitan city in the SE USA… This behavior all seems very strange coming from someone that has such a tremendously optimistic outlook on life. It’s hard to wrap my head around sometimes. Again, I think he was just trying his best to show me the dangers of the world without being overbearing? I’m not sure, but I do know it’s taking a long time to prove to myself that the world doesn’t have to be so dangerous. Death is not around every corner and that I can relax and breath without a strict itemized itinerary about, I don’t know, what’s going to happen from the time he walks downstairs to pass my mother the phone during a conversation.

At the end of the day it’s a nice notion to say, “ok I get it. This is where my anxiety came from,” but I think it’s so important that we move past blaming the parents and take responsibility for our mental habits ourselves. This took me a long time to be able to accept.

30daysofkindness,

Thank you for the video! I love different suggestions for resources. There’s so much out there that it can be almost perversely difficult to find what you need!

Maria!

If I told your life story then you picked up exactly where I left off!

Thank you so much for sharing what you’ve learned. YES, I always had a reason to worry and struggle. YES, I’ve trained my brain to do this. You are so spot on here for me; in an effort to keep me safe as a child some of my family members absolutely had a “better safe than sorry” mentality. This was ingrained deep within me. The world is a dangerous place — worry and fear — these are good things, these will keep you safe. This mentality was supposed to be a good thing, and yes I get it there’s a time and place to be prepared, but I was taught to needlessly worry. I was taught to worry from my family and I later taught myself to worry. So much so that I’m realizing that I believed for a very long time that worrying prevented danger. How silly to see that spelled out. Of course worry is wasted energy, anyone can tell you that, but what about when worry masquerades as preparedness? Ahh, then you think this worrying is a justified use of energy and before long your brain has been 100% trained in the art of pointless worry and anxiety. And yes, this is the part where I blame “mommy and daddy.” I’ve been there, held anger for them, but thankfully as I’ve begun to forgive myself I’ve begun to forgive them as well. I can see that it’s not their fault, they were just doing what they thought was best and you can’t fault anyone for that.

I am so happy to see you point out that my trained brain is now just running on autopilot, because it is, it so is. I really feel like I am stabbing in the dark trying to handle all of this on my own and from what I can self-identify and then search on the internet. It’s been a slow process without a community to speak with and I’m grateful for this forum here. What a great group of supportive people. 🙂

From what I’ve found on the internet before this has been the letting go of anxiety must be a passive approach. They say you can’t do anything. That was the hardest part of all, hearing that I can’t do anything, that I just have to wait and let it flow through me. It’s good advice for when I’m in the throws of a panic attack, but truth be told panic attacks are very, very rare for me these days. More than anything I’m dealing with this trained autopilot way of thinking and I want to run to wherever you are and throw my arms around you! Thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing Maria.

Yoga is an amazing gift and with as much as it helps me I really should do it more often; I only do yoga about once a week, typically choosing intense fitness instead. I need to make more time for it. Have you been to doyogawithme.com? It is an amazing wealth of resources. And yes, I completely agree fitness is a must. It’s rare that I go more than two days in a row without exercising, and when I do my whole world lacks focus. It’s dramatic but true! you mention the serotonin that your body gets and yes endorphins are obviously huge, especially if you work out frequently you begin to get addicted (in a good way!) and your body misses those endorphins when you don’t workout, making you feel even more down. Chalene Johnson is an all-time favorite of mine and while she’s a fitness star her true passion is personal development so exercising with her videos is a great all-in-one. If you’re looking for something new search for TurboFire or PiYo by her…and if you’re looking for just a killer intense workout go to lesmillsondemand and try the Body Combat to feel seriously accomplished and proud of yourself! Lol but I digress…I could talk about fitness for hours 😉

You mention to give myself credit for the small things that I do properly and this is big one, I think. I just realized after starting this forum yesterday that I rarely give credit to myself for facing things that stress me out. In an effort to overcome some of my triggers I face them head on and when I get through it, all sweaty and fumbling and nervous, instead of being proud of myself I mentality say, “you shouldn’t get so worked up about something so trivial anyway. It’s nothing to be proud of” and then I compare myself to how I “should have been” instead. I hope that just by recognizing this pattern I can start to give myself pats on the back and train away this mental behavior.

I will look more into online courses for the cognitive therapy, I’m not in a place where I can visit a therapist so something online is exactly what I’m looking for. Do you have any favorites of your own?

Truly a tremendous help, Maria. Thank you kind soul! 🙂

Anita,

Thanks too for responding 🙂

I agree with you entirely!! I get so tired of pretending! I’ve done it in the past, thinking fake-it-til-ya-make-it but so far that hasn’t worked for me lol. It’s better than being a glum sourpuss, I guess, but with that comes this whole expectation that “I’m acting happy but I’m not happy but I should be happy, omg why I am not happy” dialogue; cue shame, guilt, and resentment.

Can you tell me more about what you refer to as your Healing Path? I’ve worked with a therapist in the past and dug a lot of things from the inner depths of my mind, learned what mindfulness meant and how to practice it daily, but I’m not in a place where I can visit a physical therapist. Any more resources would be greatly appreciated 🙂

Inky,

I am overwhelmed by the amount of kindness and support I have received here. Thank you so much for taking the time to respond. Knowing that I am not alone in this helps more than I would have believed. I have never heard of these other laws; I really appreciate you sharing them today.

I wholeheartedly agree with you on that I feel guilty when things are good. When things are bad I worry because well, of course, things are bad. When things are good I worry about how it’s all going to come crashing down because it can’t possibly be this good. I’ve mostly worked through this and let go of this mentality over the last year, but you’re so right. It the past every small thing was such a struggle!

Cheers,
Christy