April Newsletter
Anxiety Alliance Newsletter
Registered Charity Number 1115223 Date April 2007
FEEL THE FEAR…..AND BEYOND By Susan Jeffers.
This book is the sequel to Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway, a best seller for Susan Jeffers. She herself was once paralysed with fear, but now can live her life, despite any fear she may meet on the way. What are you afraid of? Everyone can suggest situations that make them afraid, the most important thing to remember is not to make that fear rule your life. Self-confidence is low mainly out of habit. We’re afraid of failure, but the only way in which to gain more confidence in ourselves is to try and do things, waiting until you are no longer afraid could mean you wait a very long time. As the author says “this book is a ‘discovery book’ with explanations and exercises that are insightful, comical, rewarding and ultimately, life changing. Every time you get involved and take part in the activities, you are moving further and further toward your goal of pushing through fear. While I give you suggestions about how to use each of the exercises, there are no rigid rules. In fact, if you can think how to alter them in any way more suited to your life-style that’s great. Be as creative as you want to be. What is not wise is to read this book then sit down for an afternoon and rattle through the exercises.
Constant repetition of desirable thoughts and behaviour is the key to changing undesirable thoughts and behaviours.
Most of these exercises can be used during the course of everyday activities… whilst dressing, driving, working, etc., in fact, spiritual exercises are best practised when facing the challenges of everyday living. Each new challenge offers us an opportunity to practice…practice…practice. Keeping your goal in mind will help keep you focussed and that goal of course, is to replace the voice of the ‘lower self’ with the voice of the ‘higher self’. Achieving this goal is an evolving process. For example, in the beginning you may repeat certain ‘higher self’ thoughts for twenty minutes a day. After a while an appropriate ‘higher self’ thought will automatically insert itself when you are in the middle of thinking ‘lower self’ thoughts. It is then that you know you are making progress.
For example, if your mind is driving you crazy with troubling thoughts about the outcome of an event, you may hear another voice telling you ‘it’s all happening perfectly. Not to worry!’ That voice of course is the voice of the confident and more powerful part of yourself – the ‘higher self’. As you continue to practise, slowly but surely, such healing thoughts will enter your consciousness more and more frequently. In this way you become powerful in the face of your fears. Again these tools are meant to be used for a lifetime.
Every day of our lives can bring us difficult, frustrating, hurtful and scary experiences that can put us in the realm of discomfort and fear. You can imagine the fear I felt when I was told that I had breast cancer many years ago, but, because I had my precious bag of spiritual tools, I was able to transform a potential tragedy into a triumph. Not matter what life hands us, these spiritual tools are there to remind us that ‘All is well’. Here I have chosen a number of my favourite tools for building a ‘fear-less’ life. Notice that I am careful not to say a ‘fearless’ life. Fear Truth 1 (The fear will never go away as long as you continue to grow) tells us that by virtue of the fact that we are human, fear will always be a part of our lives as we learn and grow and step into the unknown – but we can learn to fear things less. The object is not to resist the fear, but to do it anyway. These are all ‘do it anyway’ tools.
If, as you go through these exercises you forget why you are going them or you get lazy, go back to the reminders. They will help keep you on track. And, if you get lazy, ask yourself – Why would anyone choose to live in the land of the lower self when the land of the higher self is ours for the taking? Commitment is the hard part.
We somehow always start out with good intentions, but then we ‘forget’ our commitment as our negative mind gets in the way. Does that sound familiar? To help keep your commitment strong, you may want to explore the idea of finding a ‘buddy’ for mutual encouragement. Daily phone calls – or messages left on the answerphone – reminding each other to do the exercises and focus on the positive will certainly help. Forming a group with other like-minded people to work through the exercise together also works beautifully.
This book is highly recommended to all of us who have negative thoughts and actions that keep us ‘down’. Yes, we like to protect ourselves from the outside world, but do we like being the way we are? Surely life is for living and enjoying, after all we only get the one life and it is up to us to use it to the full, not stay in our own little world, always afraid, always envying others who are what we consider to be ‘normal’. We can be like that, we can do the things other people do, we don’t have to cocoon ourselves. Taking the first step is always the hardest, but the rewards at the end of our journey are well worth the effort!!
BRAIN LOCK – FREE YOURSELF FROM OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER – by Jeffrey M Schwartz MD
This book is one of the most useful books available on the subject of OCD. The way it is written makes it easy to understand, and the exercises given are straight forward. The following is taken from the book, with the permission of Jeffrey Schwartz.
‘We all have our little quirks – habits and behaviours – that we know we’d be better off without. We all wish we had more self-control. But when thoughts spin out of control, becoming so intense and intrusive that they take over against our will, when habits turn into all-consuming rituals that are performed to rid us of overwhelming feelings of fear and dread, something more serious is happening. The victims of OCD engage in bizarre and self-destructive behaviours to avert some imagined catastrophe. But there is no realistic connection between the behaviours and the catastrophes they so fear.
For example, they may shower forty times a day to ‘ensure’ that there will not be a death in the family. Or they may go to great lengths to avoid certain numbers so as to ‘prevent’ a fatal airplane crash. Unlike compulsive shoppers or compulsive gamblers, people with OCD derive no pleasure from performing their rituals. They find them extremely painful.
Almost certainly OCD is related to a biochemical imbalance n the brain that we now know can be treated very effectively without drugs. We know too, that the Four-Step Self-Treatment Method you will learn in this book enables people with OCD to change their own brain chemistry. Furthermore this method can be applied effectively to take control over a wide variety of less serious but troublesome and annoying compulsive habits and behaviours.
Obsessions are intrusive, unwelcome, distressing thoughts and mental images. The word obsession comes from the Latin word meaning ‘to besiege’. And an obsessive thought is just that – a thought that besieges you and annoys the hell out of you. You pray for it to go away, but it wont, at least not for long or in any controllable way. These thoughts always create distress and anxiety. Unlike other unpleasant thoughts, they do not fade away, but keep intruding into your mind over and over, against your will. These thoughts are in fact, repugnant to you. Say that you’ve seen a beautiful woman and can’t get her out of your mind. That is not an obsession. That is a rumination, something not inappropriate, something quite normal and even pleasant. If Calvin Klein’s marketing department had really understood the word obsession properly, the perfume would have been called ‘Rumination’
Compulsions are the behaviours that people with OCD perform in a vain attempt to exercise the fears and anxieties caused by their obsessions. Although a person with OCD usually recognizes that the urge to wash, check or touch things or to repeat numbers is ridiculous and senseless, the feeling is so strong that the untrained mind becomes overwhelmed and the person with OCD gives in and performs the compulsive behaviour. Unfortunately, performing the absurd behaviour tends to set off a vicious cycle. It may bring momentary relief, but as more compulsive behaviours are performed the obsessive thoughts and feelings become stronger – more demanding and more tenacious.
The afflicted person ends up with both an obsession and an often embarrassing compulsive ritual to go with it. It is not surprising that many people with OCD come to see themselves as doomed and may even have suicidal thoughts by the time they seek professional help, in addition, years of traditional psychotherapy may have served only to confuse them further.
The brain is an incredibly complicated machine whose function is to generate feelings and sensation that help us communicate with the world. When it works correctly it’s easy to assume that ‘it is me’. But when the brain starts sending false messages that you cannot readily recognize as false, as happens with OCD, havoc can ensue. This is where mindful awareness, the ability to recognize these messages as false, can help. It’s like listening to a radio station that’s jammed with static. If you don’t listen closely, you may hear things that are misleading or make no sense. But if you make an effort to listen closely, you’ll hear things the casual listener misses entirely – especially if you’ve been trained to listen.
Properly instructed in what to do in the face of confusing messages, you can find reality in the midst of chaos. I like to say ‘It’s not how you feel, but what you do, that counts’ because when you do the right things, feelings tend to improve as a matter of course. But spend too much time being overly concerned about uncomfortable feelings and you may never get around to doing what it takes to actually improve. Focus your attention on the mental and physical actions that will improve your life – that’s the working philosophy of this book, and the path to overcoming Brain Lock.
The Four Steps are not a magic formula. By calling an urge what it is – by Relabeling it – you cannot immediately make it go away. Excessive wishful thinking about immediate recovery is one of the biggest causes of failure, especially at the start of treatment. The goal here is not to make obsession thoughts simply disappear – they wont, in the short run – but rather to be in control of your responses to them,
The behaviours therapy guidelines you will learn while doing the Four Steps will help you remember this crucial principle. You will gain control and change your brain mainly by using your new knowledge to mentally organise your behavioural responses and by learning to say ‘That’s not me – that’s my OCD’ The key to remember is this – Change the behaviour – change your brain!
The Key points to remember are:- OCD is a medical condition that is related to a biochemical imbalance in the brain. Obsessions are intrusive, unwanted thoughts and urges that don’t go away. Compulsions are the repetitive behaviours that people perform in a vain attempt to rid themselves of the very uncomfortable feelings that the obsessions cause. Doing compulsions tends to make the obsessions worse, especially over the long term,. The Four Steps teach a method of reorganizing your thinking in response to unwanted thoughts and urges. They help your to change your behaviour to something useful and constructive. Changing your behaviour changes your brain. When you change your behaviour in constructive ways, the uncomfortable feelings your brain is sending you begin to fade over time. This makes your responses easier to manage and control.
It’s not how you feel, but what you do that counts. By learning the Four Steps you learn to relabel, reattribute, refocus and revalue your OCD, beginning the road to recovery.
This book is highly recommended for sufferers, their family and friends, as it gives a greater understanding of the problems of OCD than most books presently available.
SUICIDE JUNKIE by Stephen Westwood
I doubt if there are many of us who are completely satisfied with the way we look, and with all the articles and advertisements in the newspapers, magazines and television some people get an inferiority complex about how they appear to both themselves and other people. There are creams for this, liposuction, implants, hair straighteners, diet pills, face lifts, tummy tucks, in fact everything to enable us to change, if we want to, and more importantly if we can afford to! Most of us, however, put up with the way we are, although we promise ourselves to go on a diet every New Year, or in the summer so we can fit into our swimsuits. However, for some people their worries about how they look go a lot deeper. It changes their lives utterly and completely. This is called Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), and can affect both males and females alike. Suicide Junkie is all about the inner feelings of a BDD sufferer. At times it makes traumatic reading, that someone could feel so utterly and completely negative about things. However, he struggles with the problem and eventually marries, but at the back of his mind is the thought of suicide being the way out, but his love for his wife is strong, and that gets him through. The problem of BDD began in his third year at secondary school –
‘By the time I entered the third year I had become paranoid abut my looks and personality. When I get paranoid It is not just a simple delusion or persecution, it is an all-encompassing phobia. I began to get obsessed with my cheeks and nose that I was convinced were red. I was paranoid about spots, although I never had acne and never thought badly of anyone that did. I just couldn’t cope with my skin being anything but perfect. All those years of being a child with pure skin and now I was hitting adolescence and my face was changing. I wasn’t pure any more. I would spend all day at school afraid that someone would notice and pick fun at me. When they said I was ugly I wanted to crawl into a deep hole and hide away.
It’s true that even to this day I do not know if I had a real skin problem or not, all I know was that it was real to me and I couldn’t bear it. I wanted to hide. I didn’t want anyone to see me. I stared into the mirror and I cried, hitting my head against the glass. I wanted the pale perfect complexion of a vampire. I wanted to be beautiful and it seemed so unfair that I had to put up with my looks being so inferior….’
After a divorce, employment problems and relationships that didn’t work, Stephen eventually met Ashley.
‘…Even though each day I feel pain and apathy, and sometimes even less than that I have to go on. Ashley says that her one greatest fear is that one day she’ll will come home and find me dead – that is what I should try to avoid. Forever I said, but I always had a way out. I never said how lone forever would be. My forever might be shorter that everyone else’s forever. Mine might just be until that inevitable day that I end my life by my own hand and sometimes it really does seem to be inevitable….But I mustn’t spend all my time looking for a clause in the contract.
The world is not always against me despite that way it tests me on a daily basis. I have Ashley now and it’s you and I versus the world remember…. My wish to die might never leave.
The jealousy I feel each time I hear of someone’s death might always be there. The envy I have for those that successfully kill themselves might play on my mind unto the day of my own death.
Yet I still do this, I will chose life. …..Because I love Ashley, because we will always be together and always should have been. Because I have no real spark to ignite the time bond I carry around me,, and because for her sake, I hope there never will be, I live’
Despite the problems Stephen has, he is strong and determined, and this has seen him through traumatic times. The book ‘Suicide Junkie’ is the sort of book that once you start reading you can’t put down until you finish it. A real insight into the problems that many sufferers of BDD go through, and well worth reading. His website is www.swestwood.com where you can find links to BDD sites and a video.
Take Your Time
Take your time – or time takes you and drains your strength away
Take a minute, maybe two, throughout the busy day
For slowing down to meditate – from worldly things apart,In a quiet place to wait with a receptive heart,
Take your time to think about the greatest things of all,
Take your time to work it out, before the curtains fall
Why the worry? What’s the hurry? Take your time and stroll
Picking from life’s wayside hedges that which feeds the soul
Take your time and walk on grass, to look at flowers and trees
Wandering and pondering on wonders such as these
Slacken pace – to see the view
Take your time, or time takes you.
(Author unkown)
Finally, it is with great sadness that we report the sudden death of one of our founders, Audrey West. She worked hard for those worse off than herself. Being a former anxiety sufferer she new what it was like to feel afraid and helped many people to overcome their own problems. She will be greatly missed.
If you would like to see anything in particular in next quarters Newsletter, then please e-mail me at anxietyalliance@btinternet.com. The next Newsletter is due out in July/August 2007
