One Approach to Beat All Anxiety Disorders

Nice article below from Craig April on acceptance.  Acceptance is achieved by repeatedly 'going into the out of' - exposure therapy.  The experience is drawn out and extremely painful but it's a bit like opening a zip-file on a computer; things reveal and change themselves purely because you keep going into the trapped experience.

Panic Attacks, Social Phobia, Obsessions Or General Anxiety - How to Beat Them With One Approach
By Dr. Craig April

"All you have to do to beat anxiety is to accept that which you feel is presently unacceptable."

Think about this for a moment. If you could truly accept whatever you fear, then why would your anxiety continue? It wouldn't and couldn't. And just to clarify, "acceptance" doesn't mean expecting or sensing that what you fear will happen. What I mean by "acceptance" is being okay with whatever you fear happening. Truly feeling that if what you fear happens, you'll accept it and live with it. "Fine, let it happen. Whatever will be will be".

Lets apply it to some examples of anxiety:

Example 1.) Panic attacks: If you could accept whatever panic attack symptoms you fear, such as fear of going crazy, losing control, not breathing, etc. then you wouldn't be concerned about it anymore and it would go away.

Example 2.) Social anxiety: If you truly accepted the possibility of being judged or criticized, then you wouldn't care about this anymore.

Example 3.) Obsessions: If you truly accepted whatever your unwanted thought is telling you to fear and acknowledged that you can't completely protect yourself against this source of anxiety, then you wouldn't fear it anymore.

Isn't this quote freeing? To know that all you have to do is just accept what you find unacceptable and then your anxiety will go away can be quite liberating.

Look, I know this is easier said then done. It takes thinking about your anxiety in a whole new way, but more importantly, it also requires new behaviors and approaches. That's why obtaining treatment proven to be effective is so vital. In fact, keeping this quote in mind while you learn strategies and techniques that are reducing your anxiety can get you there that much quicker.

This quote can give you proper motivation to start or continue to fight your battle against anxiety. Why? Because it is absolutely true.

Apply it to your own anxiety by asking yourself: "If I accept __________, then what would I still fear?"

Copyright 2009, Craig April, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved

Dr. Craig April is an anxiety management specialist and Director of The April Center For Anxiety Attack Management in Los Angeles. He and his staff treat all aspects of anxiety symptoms with proven cognitive-behavioral methods.

To visit us on the web and get your FREE anxiety quotient where you can score your symptoms, go to http://www.KickFear.com

P.S. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our FREE monthly newsletter.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr._Craig_April


http://EzineArticles.com/?Panic-Attacks,-Social-Phobia,-Obsessions-Or-General-Anxiety---How-to-Beat-Them-With-One-Approach&id=1999346

Remove the Social Acid Called Shame from Your Life

'Beware those big bouncing balls of blame
cuz if they hit you
you'll die of shame'

Found a good article below by Jane Straus about the difference between guilt and shame.  Guilt is useful, shame isn't.  Guilt is what we do to ourselves (quite rightly, sometimes) when we allow our impulsiveness get the better of us and need to adjust but shame is often what others do to us. 

Shame is about social rejection and isolation and it's an extremely painful experience.  Remain in a state of 'shame' long enough and you start to accept that you're 'not good enough' - and the whole world will agree with you because other people will do anything to avoid wearing the veil of shame themselves.

I've sat in many a meeting created to resolve a problem but which turned into a 'who's gonna take the blame and shame' party.  Who will play the scapegoat?  Who will feel bad so that others don't have to?

Shame is a strange social game that can have long-term and sometimes tragic consequences.  And it's very rarely based on morality.  An example I saw of this recently was in a supermarket where a teenage boy, part of a large family waiting at a checkout, was making a loud nuisance of himself and the boy's father told him to behave. Big mistake. The whole family, including the mother, erupted at the father and screamed at him for 'bullying' the boy.  You could see the shame on the father's face - he didn't know where to put it.

Single parents (mainly women) are very sensitive to comments about their single status because of the shame lying in wait for them from the narrow-minded (although that's not as heavy duty as it used to be).

Quite a lot of our national media is concerned with naming and shaming individuals for mass market approval - we are programmed to identify and throw to the lions anyone who fits the bill - as long as it's not us.

Like all emotional responses shame can be removed by going into the feelings attached to the response and challenging the negative thinking involved with a different viewpoint.  You may not be able to get others to 'forgive' you but you can certainly learn to forgive yourself (in most cases there's nothing to forgive - they're just passing the buck of responsibility to you because they can't bare to feel the guilt that's rightfully their's).

Regards - Carl

Guilt V. Shame

By Jane Straus

What is the difference between guilt and shame and why is the distinction crucial for our emotional and spiritual health? It’s invaluable to discern the difference between guilt and shame so that we can respond appropriately in situations and can ask others to respond to us appropriately and fairly also. It’s also vital that we know whether we are feeling bad because of something we have done or because we have simply gotten into the habit of feeling bad.

Guilt is something our conscience compels us to feel when we have acted in a way that is not in alignment with our own moral compass. If we believe in being honest and we lie, we will feel guilty (even if we justify it as a “white lie” to ourselves or others). If we believe in the Golden Rule, “Do unto others…,” we will feel guilty if we treat someone disrespectfully or unfairly. In guilt, we feel bad about what we have done, not who we are. We are able to distinguish between the goodness of who we fundamentally are and the mistake we have made that requires correction/amends/asking forgiveness.

Shame is a different experience. When we feel shame, it is not for what we have done, not for a particular behavior, but for who we are. When in shame, we want to hide; we feel that we don’t deserve love or respect. Shame is often a pervasive experience that we don’t recognize within ourselves. Shame can feel quite “normal.”

When we feel ashamed, we emit a certain aura/vibe/energy. Others who pick up on this energy may misinterpret it and assume that we have behaved badly, causing them to overreact or for us to believe we deserve excessive punishment. We may not recognize the ways we carry and show our shame and wonder why others are so hard on us. This is how others mirror our beliefs about ourselves and why it’s so important to heal our shame.

Shame can cause us to continue to act in ways that lead us to feeling guilty. So guilt and shame are part of a vicious cycle. How can we heal our shame?

1. The first step in breaking the cycle is learning to discern between guilt and shame. The following are the chief symptoms of shame. If you can identify with even one of these points, you are likely to be living in shame.

• Comparing ourselves to others and finding ourselves always falling short

• Embarrassment when we receive compliments

• A general sense of unworthiness

• Distrust that others truly like us or respect us—“waiting for the other shoe to drop” in every relationship

• Accepting excessive blame—more than a situation warrants

• Continually behaving in ways that go against our own standards of behavior

• Feeling bad about certain thoughts, even when we have no intention of acting on these thoughts

2. The second step is to look at your recent “wrongs” objectively. What triggered those behaviors? What did you do about rectifying your actions? Did you over-apologize? Did you allow someone to verbally or physically punish you for your behavior? If you overcompensated in any way, then you are carrying shame, not just guilt, and you are doing yourself harm.

3. The third step is to retrace your path to where the shame started. Often, shame starts in childhood when a trusted adult shames us for something outside of our control: our sexuality, our intelligence, the way we spoke or dressed, a behavior we didn’t know wasn’t okay. Children soak up shame easily.

4. See the past with your adult eyes. Would you want to shame a child for what you feel shameful about? Let the child within you know that it was not his/hers to carry and that you release him/her from the shame now.

For more understanding about guilt and shame and to discover how to thrive, order Jane Straus’s book, Enough Is Enough! Stop Enduring and Start Living Your Extraordinary Life, available at online bookstores. You can also log onto www.stopenduring.com to read more about Jane’s enlightening ideas, listen to interviews with her, preview one of her seminars, or sign up for personal coaching with Jane. To enjoy her frequent pearls of wisdom, register online for her free e-newsletter.

About the Author: Jane Straus is a life coach and author of Enough Is Enough! Stop Enduring and Start Living Your Extraordinary Life. Read more, listen to interviews, preview her seminar, or sign up for personal coaching at http://www.stopenduring.com. Sign up for her free enewsletter to enjoy her pearls of wisdom.

Source: www.isnare.com

Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=107560&ca=Self+Help



Afflink.

A Bit More About Person-Centred Counselling and the Johari Window

One of the most difficult things for people in pain to do is to accept themselves, especially those parts of themselves causing the pain.  It's very easy to make the jump from feeling bad to thinking 'I am bad'.  Angry people, for example, are not 'bad' people.  They've usually got something to be angry about!

A key element of an effective Person-Centred Counselling relationship is Unconditional Positive Regard (UPR).  UPR creates a sense of external acceptance that gradually affects the unconscious of the client - 'well if they can accept me as I am then I guess I can'.  But it's more than a verbal sentence - it's an overall sensory experience.

UPR assumes all people are basically good and a Counsellor must hold their client in high regard if they hope to support them properly.  This doesn't mean every Person-Centred Counsellor can do this with every client.   During my Person-Centred Counsellor training we were asked to consider what kinds of clients we would not be able to offer UPR to.

I, and quite a few of the other trainees, immediately responded we could not work with people who had sexually abused children - we found the area far too emotive for us to guarantee UPR for a client of that nature.  However one trainee explained he found the way child abusers developed fascinating and was currently counselling an abuser and did not feel disturbed by the client at all.

I would have no problem working, for example, with gay or transsexual clients.

If your counsellor, for whatever reason, is unable to treat you with Unconditional Positive Regard they should refer you to another Person-Centred Counsellor who can.

We definitely see evidence of UPR as Carl Rogers continues to work with Gloria in the videos below - we also see another important principle at work - Client Autonomy.  Despite the fact Gloria keeps asking for 'advice' she eventually develops her own solutions.  This approach helps the client better understand the acceptance process while learning they can actually cope with and develop strategies of their own to manage it so improving their confidence levels.

CARL ROGERS AND GLORIA COUNSELLING - PT 3

CARL ROGERS AND GLORIA - COUNSELLING - PT 4

CARL ROGERS AND GLORIA - COUNSELLING - PT 5

Finally I thought I'd finish off by giving you a bonus video about the 'Johari Window'.  It's a useful model and something helpful to be aware of - there are always things about ourselves we do not know or have become blind to.  There's a link below the video to get more detailed information and some free downloads.

Johari Window @ Yahoo! Video

If you're interested in getting further free information on the Johari Window (including a pdf or word diagram) please click here: businessballs .

Regards - Carl

About Person-Centred Counselling - Meet Carl Rogers

Could you tell your mother you can't understand why she married Dave when it was obvious that Jack was the better man out of the two?  Can you tell her you have fantasies that Dave will fall under a bus some day and Jack will replace him?  Do you like yourself when you think this way?  Person-centred counsellors are trained to adopt a certain approach to their clients that helps them to accept and work with the unacceptable parts of themselves.

I've recommended Person-Centred counselling (aka Humanistic Counselling) to a few friends who have all benefited from the experience but there are usually some standard questions such as 'what do they make you do?' or 'will they give me the answers?'.

The videos below are of Carl Rogers - considered the 'father' of Person-Centred Counselling (these videos are still being used in the initial training of counsellors today).  I'm posting three videos today and three tomorrow - they show you what Person-Centred Counselling is like.

Carl Rogers

Here Carl Rogers meets Gloria - and we start to see how the client has control of the session. None of this is scripted; it's a genuine first session.

CARL ROGERS & GLORIA COUNSELLING - Part 1

CARL ROGERS AND GLORIA COUNSELLING PT 2

Ever had counselling or have questions about the process? Please leave a comment below.

Regards - Carl

Michael Neill on Pushing Birds Out of Nests

How wide have you spread your wings this week?  Prepare for flight.

Michael Neill On Catching Birds and Flying Free

Click the banner below to go to Michael's site.  Don't worry; I don't think he really pushes people off things - I think he shows you how to throw yourself off and scream 'wheee' at the same time.

Afflink

Found this interesting article about trauma and counselling below.  There's a mistake in our thinking when we think the problem with emotional disorders lies in our 'thinking' - emotional disorders such as trauma are caused by a blocked and frozen emotional response.

The solution lies in finding a way to get the emotional responses flowing and eventually released from the body.  In some cases healing a traumatised response may take as long as the original experience that caused it.

Trauma And Counselling

By Pedro Gondim

Trauma, stress and memory

The word 'trauma' originates from the Greek 'wound', and it refers to both psychological and physiological aspects. Trauma occurs as a result of a serious event and it has deep roots in various levels of the human mind and behaviour.

What causes trauma? Psychological trauma is a broad concept, and its origins are co-related with two well-known mechanisms of the human mind: stress and memory.

Albeit commonly associated with negativeness, stress is an evolutionary advantage. The stress triggering mechanism allows most people to react to dangerous situations prior to consciously detecting it - also known as 'fight or flight' response. The level of a stress response generally dictates the intensity of psychological trauma in an individual.

Memory and trauma are interrelated processes - without the memory of a traumatic event, psychological trauma is non-existent. In addition, memory also plays an active role in the incidence and intensity of stressful responses. Once stress is triggered by an event (a stressor), several processes instigate the assessment of the situation by higher functions of the mind (prefrontal cortex - responsible for decision-making).

If the situation does not constitute danger, the stressing mechanism will gradually shut down and the body will return to normal functioning. If the situation reflects danger, the individual will need to decide what to do - and in that process - the amygdala (a part of the limbic system which plays a key role in human emotions, particularly fear) directs the hippocampus (a central region of human memory) to imprint that information differently from other events. This long-term storage of the memory is explained by its emotionally-attached significance.

Such a mechanism is another 'smart' human feature. Next time the same stressor (or similar) is identified, that memory will be instantly retrieved in order to assist in the individual's reaction. At a subconscious level, there will be an overstressed response to the event. At a conscious level, comparison and previous experience will induce better decision making.

Trauma and Health

Trauma is inevitable in our lives. From the birth of a child, to all stages of its development - traumatic events are common and also part of the 'human experience'. However, the level of trauma caused by an event dictates the short and long-term effects of that occurrence.

For instance, trauma can be related to several mental illnesses. Conditions such as Schizophrenia, Depression, and Bipolar Disease can be triggered by traumatic events. One condition in particular, is directly related to trauma and very common in the counselling context: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PSTD).

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PSTD) occurs when an individual develops a set of behaviours and reactions based on a traumatic event. The traumatic experience interferes with normal functioning, causing the affected person to present avoidance behaviour.

This condition can occur at any age and traumatic stress can be cumulative over a lifetime. Responses to trauma include feelings of intense fear, helplessness, and/or horror. This condition has roots in the relationship between stress, trauma and memory.

It is perceived that PTSDs are originated from a 'defect' in the brain's memory processing functions. As previously described, emotionally attached events are stored differently (at a 'deeper' level). These memories include stressful and traumatic events, particularly those which resulted in some kind of harm and emotional distress to the person.

Upon the identification of the same stressor (or similar) that caused a reaction for the previous situation, the body would instantly trigger an overstressed response. However, in most cases, the new event will not constitute a threat. For instance, a noise could be a stressor from a situation in which a person ended up being assaulted. The same noise, or something similar, could occur in other situations which are harmless. Unless that stressor is reinforced (results in danger over time), your brain will adapt to the stimulus and gradually reduce the stressful response. This process is called 'extinction' (Pavlov's Theory).

If extinction fails to take place, the individual will continue to react (stressfully) to the original stimulus, or similar ones. This is the case for PTSD sufferers. Because the human body is not prepared to maintain stressful status continually, side effects will appear. These effects are both physiological (Coronary Heart Disease, ageing acceleration, etc) and psychological (fear, avoidance, etc).

This explains the occurrence of PTSD in war veterans who were exposed to stress over a long period of time and accident survivors who have been exposed to a highly stressful and traumatic situation.

Trauma and Counselling

The effects of trauma may vary greatly among people. The extent, frequency and intensity of each event are presented according to each person's mindset and previous experiences. And because traumatic events are cumulative over life, it can be quite difficult to provide a treatment that comprises all problems derived from separate traumas.

Most people adapt to trauma in their lives, and through the extinction process, do not experience much psychological harm derived from past events. However, for patients with PTSD, and other stress-triggered conditions, the situation requires further attention.

Currently, counsellors use three major treatments to combat PTSD. These treatments are largely based in psychotherapy, introspection and conditioning:

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) is a form of psychotherapy that focuses on modifying an individual's behaviour by changing their thinking. Therapists believe that by focusing in the individual's perspective, it is possible to bring about behaviour change, and therefore, cope with the trauma. This form of treatment is recommended by the World Health Organisation and it is widely used to combat PTSD symptoms.

Debriefing is single section-based treatment which occurs shortly after the traumatic event. The debriefing process evolves on the 'traumatised' individual's verbal expression of the event. It is suggested that by 'letting out' those memories and feelings, the person is more unlikely develop suppressed emotions, which reduces the effects of trauma. Debriefing is widely used for professionals that deal with traumatic events on a daily basis (e.g. paramedics).

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing is a technique based on a psychophysiological approach. According to the theory, the overload of emotions derived from traumatic events interferes with the individual's information processing episode. That interference, at a physiological level, produces 'flawed' pathways of memory retrieval, which in turn, results in the non-logical perception of the event. For instance, a victim of rape, albeit aware that the fault was of the perpetrator, continually invokes self-blame for the incident. The process of desensitisation and reprocessing would serve to reprogram those pathways, resulting in the extinction or partial extinction of negative symptoms.

About the Author: Pedro Gondim is a writer and publisher for the Australian Institute of Professional Counsellors. The Institute is Australia's largest counsellor training provider, offering the internationally renowned Diploma of Professional Counselling. For more information, visit http://www.aipc.net.au.

Source: www.isnare.com

Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=127882&ca=Self+Help

From tomorrow I'm gong to be doing a few posts on the father of Humanistic/Person-Centred Counsellling; Carl Rogers.

Regards - Carl

Seth does an exposure therapy session and talks about setbacks

Seth goes through his daily exposure therapy routine here (which involves challenging himself to drive further and further away from home).

There are several things to notice:

Acting Like an Expert

No-one is as expert in an anxiety disorder as the person who has it - if you have one you have to start to realise that.  Do you notice how Seth reports on his experience as though he's sitting on the outside of it rather than as a subjective victim?  This is the objective viewpoint at work and he is using his camera to enhance the affect.

If you want to achieve something in life you have to start acting and behaving as though you already have.  This perspective changes the way you function at an unconscious level.  Nothing improves the motivation to learn something better than wanting to teach it to help others; even if you haven't quite learned the lessons fully yourself yet.

Seth has a really good grasp of the process - he's just got to get through it is all.  With lot's of positive self-talk and fierce disciplined determination he will do.



Something else Seth spoke about was 'anticipatory anxiety'.  There are three main types of anxiety involved in this work:

• anticipatory


• actual response


• after-shocks (this stage of the response tends to be accompanied by a sense of helplessness and despondency).

There is a way of seeing all three of these as just one stream of energy which helps you stop thinking about 'which type of fear is it?'  Imagine you have a river of negative energy stored in your body related to the situation you fear; as you approach the situation to which the energy is connected you start opening up and allowing the river through; in direct exposure mode you're letting the full flowing river go by without trying to halt in; in after-shock there's still a period where the emotional energy dregs are still seeping through.  If you picture yourself as releasing a portion of the store of trapped energy every time you do this it helps to make it a more positive experience.

In the next video Seth talks about another experience that all recovering anxiety sufferers go through: setbacks

Dealing with and overcoming anxiety 53 - A setback

Please leave any thoughts, arguments or advice below.

Regards - Carl

Getting Ready for Growth? Prepare to Fail Forwards

Half way through writing this post I had to go to work and tripped, almost falling flat on my face in front of a bunch of strangers (I had already written the first few paragraphs as they appear here and thought it a bit ironic).  But if you want to get somewhere, you've got to take risks.

When babies learn to walk they start by learning to fall forward one step at a time.

With each brave step they risk face-planting into the floor and it's amazing to them when their legs keep appearing in front to stop them doing this.  'Eh, I can do it' they gurgle in baby talk.  Parents are impressed too - they know their child is going to do it eventually because all able-bodied babies do - but it's still a real achievement.  It's not just the walking forward that's the achievement - it's the willingness to bravely take risks in order to develop that says so much.

On the negative side for parents is the awareness their child has just become a hurtling mass of energy on rocket-powered legs and needs watching and chasing a lot more.  Now the parents have to lay down rules and fill the child's head with 'should's' and 'should not's' - and quite rightly too - but the need for safety can eventually get ingrained as an unconscious command that says taking more 'baby steps' in new situations is a dangerous thing to do.  It's good to be safe, but if you're too safe you're not learning; not growing.

Babies achieve this new skill partly because they're determined to copy what the giants around them are doing; partly because they want to 'grow up'; partly because it puts a smile on mum's face and gets lots of attention.  Mostly though they do it because that's the way nature designs human babies - to take carefully measured risks and fall forwards.

It's the same when we first learn to cycle; first go swimming (I had to be rescued by a lifeguard the first time we went to a public baths) and first start school.  We really have no idea if we're going to manage these things until we've been doing them for a while already and we realise 'eh, I'm doing this thing and therefore must be able to do it.  Cool'.

Doing new things and getting into the habit of going through the risky learning cycles involved expands the territories we travel in and the types of social influences we produce and receive.  As we get older the new learning cycles become more complex; we notice a shift in motivations and responses from others; but the growth cycle is still the same old 'baby takes first steps' cycle and there's no way of getting round it.

As we grow older, however, the stakes get higher and we develop a fear of failure - particularly when we start to associate the risk of failing with the harsh punishments and responses of others who, for a variety of reasons, think we should be doing things with a higher success rate attached (usually for them) or things that don't keep reminding them of how few new baby-steps they've been taking lately.

We can discover as adults that not taking new baby steps makes us feel safer - but the trouble with 'safe' is it also means no growth and it also means our learning pathways grow stale.  We feel stale.  Stay 'safe' long enough and you forget how the learning cycle works altogether.  I know highly qualified people who spend most of their time complaining about the lack of opportunities around yet moan about how less able people are getting the jobs they should have.

Do you have a degree?  Were you motivated to get your degree because you thought it would mean you could sit on your backside and the jobs would come bounding towards you or did you get the degree so that your leap would be stronger?

I know both types of people.  I know people who got degrees in order to achieve an 'oasis of safety' and use their intellectual achievements to develop clever strategies to keep themselves stuck right where they are.  They blame others; they resent going for interviews and argue that because they're so intelligent they shouldn't be doing their present job.  Sometimes they sabotage the progression of others out of spite.  They use their stronger legs for stamping purposes.

I also know people who acquire stronger legs and then start leaping; usually carrying others along with them.  Having 'stronger legs' doesn't mean you can stop falling forwards - it means you now get to fall forwards faster and with bigger leaps.

Let's not call it 'falling forwards' - let's call it failing forwards.  In a nutshell, if you're never failing, you're never succeeding.

Below are a collection of short videos  that go on to enforce this message (the longest is Honda's video).

Please check out the START-STOP-CONTINUE-WAIT exercise at the end of the post.

In this first video we look at moving out of our 'comfort-zone':

The Key to Personal Growth | author Dr. Brian Walsh

Sometimes we resent the growth cycle because we're not willing to invest in and develop a 'boring' habit ...

and here it is being said again ...

If you want to Succeed, first learn to fail! Kiran Mazumdar Shaw on Carving your Destiny!

Ready to start failing forward?  This 'START-STOP-CONTINUE-WAIT' Exercise can help give an holistic structure to your actions if used on a weekly basis:


Take a sheet of A4 paper or larger and split it into 4 sections and write the following headings at the top of each section:

• top left section: START


• top right section: STOP


• bottom left section: CONTINUE & IMPROVE


• bottom right section: WAIT

Now write an action into each section that will involve a little bit of risk; eg:

START

• Do one thing a week that I've never done before in regard to something I think is important


• do one thing a week in some unfamiliar area that I think is not important but is 'different'


• Suggest to my fellow team members we hold a 'brainstorming' session once a week to talk about developing new things


• Ask the IT guys if I can spend a day doing work experience in their role (after clearing it with my boss)


• Read one book a week on self-development/taking risks.

STOP

• Procrastinating - break things down into little steps and get something done; stop letting a bit of discomfort hold me back


• telling my team mates how no-one wants to hear what I have to say (given that I expect everything I say to just be 'accepted') when I rarely say much and there's no point in applying for internal vacancies as 'management know who they want anyway' (this may be true but if you're letting it stop you from even trying you need to get this out of your thinking)


• criticising myself for feeling a bit awkward when I try new things - this is part of the cycle.

CONTINUE AND IMPROVE

• further develop the draft holiday management spreadsheet that Dave and I worked on - ask the opinions of others on the design (and take the risk they won't like it)


• get some new swimming goggles - the old ones are about to go; try a new swimming centre


• experiment with some on-line guitar courses in preparation for a 'real-life' course in September


• develop and maintain my CV in a variety of formats so it's quickly to hand if I need it for any job that comes up.

WAIT

• don't spend too much on the on-line guitar course as there's a class starting up at college in September I can go to


• for the woman I've asked for a date to get back to me rather than pressure her - take the risk of not seeming interested enough and risk losing the opportunity - there'll be others


• for the kind of job I actually want to do to come up rather than just applying for everything under the sun.

At the end of each week come back and review your actions and ask yourself if you took enough risks this week to actually make sure you 'grew' in some way.  Applying a little bit of risk rather than taking one huge leap in one particular area will ensure the growth remains steady and balanced.  Although sometimes you may want to deliberately 'go for it big time' in one particular area.

Do you have a particular way of dealing with the need to 'fail forward in order to progress'?  Please share it with others by leaving a comment.

Regards - Carl

Strategy for Healing Supermarket Phobia

Having been someone who used to suffer from many obsessions and phobias I think I tended to take the 'bull at the gate' approach to most of them and it worked for me - I think for folks with obsessions the obsessions pursue them whereas people with phobias go out to pursue the phobia.

In this video an expert who has overcome a social anxiety problem discusses the 'baby-step' strategy he used.  If you'd like to subscribe to his other videos just double click the video and it'll take you to his YouTube channel.



The need for control is very strong in people with anxiety disorders and this is generated by the 'way things should be' thinking in the left neo-cortex logical mind. Getting the desire to be in control of the emotional process out of the way so you can 'lower' yourself into the process, thereby learning to control it indirectly, is key to overcoming anxiety attacks. The idea is that you let the experience flow through you and eventually it evaporates of its own accord.

Was this video helpful in any way? Please leave a comment below.

Regards - Carl

Overcome the Naysayer's

'They'll never change' is one of the most untrue statements we can make about other people - the truth is 'they'll' change (and so will we) whether they want to or not because those who don't change under their own steam get changed by life events around them regardless.

People sometimes say this to others in a bid to keep them 'categorised and controlled'; at other times it's simply a cynic who sees a half-glass-empty world (cynics are not necessarily always a bad thing to have around, to be honest, I'll talk about why in a later post) - but more often than not it's because we don't want someone else to change because we don't want to be changed by them (or shown up to be the kind of person who doesn't cope well with change).

So when you start bouncing around with energy in regard to a new idea prepare to get negative feedback on that enthusiasm - and it'll be usually labelled as 'common sense'.

Here's a nice article about what to do when this starts from Jason and Rebecca Osborn:

Success - How To Overcome The Naysayer’s

By Jason Osborn

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said, “We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.”

Sometimes the closest people to you are the ones that stop you form achieving greatness in your life. You go to them, full of excitement, to tell them all the great things that you want to do in life. Instead of hearing the support and encouragement from your friends and family, you hear words of doubt and fear.

They may not be saying these things to purposely hurt or discourage you, but they don’t want you to fail or get hurt. So, to stop you from getting hurt down the road they try to stop you at the beginning.

Still, others may try to tell you why it can’t be done and how there are many obstacles in the way that can’t be moved. They look at who you are currently and don’t see the greatness that’s hidden on the inside.

Don’t let these people stop you from reaching your greatness. Here are 4 ways to overcome the naysayer’s.

1. Protect Your Dream.

Whenever you have a burning desire to do something great in life, it’s very hard to not tell everyone you know. You just assume that everyone will be just as excited about it as you are. Minimize the amount of naysayer’s in your life by not telling everyone. You will probably still have people who are negative, but a few naysayers’ are better than a ton of them.

2. Surround Yourself With Greatness.

If you want to do great things in life you need to be around others that have done great things. I’m sure you have heard the saying ‘Success breeds success’. If you are always around people who have never accomplished anything, and never want to accomplish anything great, it will be hard for you to do it yourself. Successful people will help you understand how to overcome the obstacles that you will face. Which leads me to the next point.

3. Get A Coach Or A Mentor.

If a professional sports team wants to be the best, they hire a coach to help get them there. If they don’t have a coach that can encourage them, train them, guide them, and give them a good kick in the backside when needed, they will never become a great team. Find someone that has done something similar to what you want to do and have them mentor you. Keep this in mind, they are probably very busy and may not have any interest in coaching or training anyone. Don’t let that stop you. If they can’t or won’t, keep looking until you find someone who will. Also, bring something to the table for them as well. You need to give to get.

4. Your Past Doesn’t Dictate Your Future.

You may not have a successful life but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a successful future. Naysayer’s will always try to remind you of your past failures or inadequacies. Keep improving yourself and keep growing. Learn from your past but don’t let it stop you from having a great future. If there is something that you need to change in your life in order to achieve success, then change it. You are the deciding factor on how great your life is going to be. DON’T let your past dictate your future.

If you want to do something great with your life, there will always be someone there to tell you that it can’t be done. Practice these four keys and you will be able to overcome the naysayer’s.

Source: www.isnare.com

Have you got a technique for dealing with the naysayers? Please leave a comment below for others to read.  Here's a link to one of my favourite books for folks who are 'stuck in place' by all that negativity glue around them:

Focusing On Building Self-Esteem

In my early thirties I spent two years of full-time training in a secretarial college and it was a really wonderful experience - having daily doses of positive talk from people who knew what they were talking about was an experience I'd never had before.  I find it hard to believe now, at 48 years' old, how negative the world is and how that negativity can gradually wear people down.

There was the odd little quip - for example one teacher told me she was amazed how good I was at typing; she'd had her doubts about me because I had fingers as thick as sausages.  But I was at the top of my class (of 40); mainly because I loved what I was doing.

There was the odd little glitch - another male in one group became jealous of my progress and invited me outside for a fight one day on the pretext I'd changed a printer switch over without his permission (he'd been upsetting everyone in the group for several months; he was a steroid using body-builder and had even threatened to hit one of the teachers over the head with a typewriter).  We had a bit of a confrontation and he left the next day.  I was determined I was going to complete that course.

Day after day for two years I made progress on the course but something else started to nag at me.  While the people at college gave me daily positive feedback, it highlighted for me there were people in my personal life who had been doing exactly the opposite for years - and they didn't like the fact I was getting positive feedback from the College.  It dawned on me that the other students at college were used to being treated this positive way and were being treated like that in their personal lives too, and that I'd got used to being treated like a second class person.  I started to focus on why I had come to accept this kind of treatment.

The Hawthorne Experiment

In the 1950's a series of experiments in an electrical component factory were carried out on workers to try and find out what motivated them to be more productive, known as the Hawthorne Effect, the test involved making working conditions much better and then much worse.  It was no surprise when productivity improved in line with improvements in working conditions - but it did come as a surprise when it continued to improve when the improved working conditions were removed.

What the testers discovered was that because the workers were being focused on they felt 'special' and had gelled as a team.  They felt important.  When I was at college I felt special, when I was at home I didn't.  So I changed my personal life.

Later when I had started work I came to work with a very aggressive boss for a while who, even when we had hit all our targets, was so charged up would take me in a room and vent their frustrations at me.  They'd tell me how slow I was; tell me how incompetent I was.  I was none of these things - and do you know what I could hear whenever that manager was ranting  at me?  The voices of my secretarial tutors telling me how I was one of their best students ever.  The manager's ranting was like water off a duck's back.

A few months went by and the manager was terminated after another member of staff complained about their behaviour.

Sadly there are people in the world who will wear you down - maybe sometimes because they lack self-esteem and by putting you down they feel somehow lifted.  To defend against this we must focus on the way we think and as a result our thinking will become special and start to improve - just like those Hawthorne workers.

Regards - Carl

Building Self Esteem

By Anthony White

Self esteem is your own personal view of yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally. Everyone has a different view of themselves, but keeping a positive outlook will benefit you more than a negative one. Many individuals suffer from low self esteem for a variety of reasons and need to build their self esteem in order to succeed in life. Remember, the only one who can make you excel is you and no one else. The same goes for self esteem. The only person who can build up-or consequentially tear down-your self esteem is you. Although other individuals may aide the process, the end decision is yours.

People have low esteem for a variety of reasons. Some individuals suffer from poor body image and focus on all the negative traits of their physical appearance. Others have emotional issues that have caused their self esteem to drop or feel themselves unworthy of any praise. For whatever reasons your self esteem may falter, the key to building it up again is to find the root of the problem. Think of self esteem like a house, if you build a stunning house on a poor foundation, the entire structure will crumble. However, if you take steps to ensure the foundation is strong and capable of holding anything, the process may be slow, but your self esteem will be built soundly.

Many individuals look for help for their low self esteem in books or seminars. The number of available options on the market is phenomenal, and you are sure to find one on a topic that deals with your specific issues. Check out your local library or book store and explore their "self help" section for a book that you may find helpful. It is quite unlikely you will find the answers to all your problems in a book, but you may find it helpful to know others are in your same boat and you are certainly not alone. Additionally, you may wish to seek professional help in your quest to boost your self esteem. Often, speaking with a qualified individual can help you determine the root of your problem and the necessary path you should take for the rebuilding process. Perhaps your problems dates back to childhood, or maybe it has recently developed. Whatever the case, a professional will be able to best determine your next step.

A main factor in self esteem is negativity. Negative thoughts can erode your confidence and crumble your self esteem. If you find yourself surrounded by negative people or in a negative situation, try your best to remedy the problem. Often, individuals in an abusive relationship have their self esteem shattered when a supposed loved one constantly berates them and questions their worth. Similarly, a negative workplace environment can lower your self esteem with colleagues or bosses finding fault with your work. Maybe you have a friend who is consistently negative, always accompanied by clouds of doom and gloom. Whatever the source, distancing yourself from the negativity will help you regain your self esteem. Strive to surround yourself with positive people. If you are going through a rough time in your personal life, you may wish to join a support group. Similarly, there are support groups available for individuals with self image issues. These groups will allow you to meet other individuals like yourself and provide a forum for you to share your hopes and achievements.

However you choose to begin building your self esteem, do so today! Be thorough and consistent with the process and be aware it may take a while. You should not become impatient or despondent if you find your self esteem slipping. Remember, you are an important and worthy person and should treat yourself as such.

About the Author: Anthony White: I am always thirsty for knowledge & eager to share it. Please visit me at http://zenblanco.blogspot.com & http://atraffic.blogspot.com

Source: www.isnare.com

Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=26071&ca=Self+Help

Hope you enjoyed the article.  Here's my favourite self-esteem expert:


Afflink.

Seth tells Us How to Support Someone with an Anxiety Disorder

In these two videos Seth talks about the support an anxiety disorder sufferer benefits from but there are some caveats I'd add:

• while it's OK to ask for this kind of support from parents or siblings it's not OK to ask for it from children or those who have their own emotional difficulties - the last thing you want is everyone tippy-toeing around you - it just makes things more tense


• in some cases the reason for the anxiety disorder developing in the first place is because the family is seriously dysfunctional and may actually have been criticising the sufferer for years beforehand - this can lead to an unconscious self-critical inner voice - it's like an echo of that person's outer experience - in such cases the person needs to get external (professional) support


• there's a limit to what family and friend supporters can do - they've still got to be themselves. As Seth says though - people are only human.

Two other points I'd like to make here:

• I don't fully agree with the 'relaxation and peace and quiet at all times' approach - I believe exposure therapy needs to be achieved through cycling through both of these stages; in my experience it's experiencing intense emotions for long enough that clears them but you do need to have peaceful rest periods in between - I don't think Seth's suggesting 'no stress ever' but I wouldn't want people to think isolation and total peace are the answer either


• strangely enough depression is not an emotional response - it's a withdrawal response in which the cognitive function (our thoughts) pull back into the lower brain in an effort to avoid painful stimulation - the problem with this is that our thinking pulls back into our emotional brain and so ends up moving closer to the disturbing and ruminating thoughts.

I'll write about depression in more depth in future posts.

Regards - Carl

Seth is Overcoming His Anxiety Disorder

This fellow is a fellow to follow - meet Seth; he's provided a brilliant set of videos on YouTube relating his journey to overcome his anxiety disorders. I'm going to post them on here and write my take on his journey but if you want to subscribe to his videos directly just click twice on the video and it takes you to his series.

His work is helpful (I think, anyway) to both anxiety disorder sufferers and those supporting them.



In this next video Seth talks about losing a friend due to his anxiety disorder. If you do lose friends when you start to reveal your condition (or even a partner) you need to try and not figure out why if they won't tell you straight - just get back to the work of healing your problem and let them deal with their issues..

Sometimes you can lose a friend simply because they've got a similar emotional disorder they've never revealed to anyone and you talking about yours can have a triggering affect.

I used to have a married couple as friends. I revealed my obsessions to them after knowing them for a few years and they stopped all communications with me. Seeing them in a local park a few months later I said 'Hi' and they completely ignored me and walked by staring straight ahead. It didn't bother me - the true test of friendship is that folks be honest and fair with you and they weren't.

Hope you like the next video (and please read the rest of the post afterwards).

Dealing with and overcoming anxiety 49 - Your true friends

There's one more thing to be a bit wary of and that's making friends with people who are attracted to you because you have an anxiety disorder. I once had a friend who was my friend because he felt superior to me - when I become more successful he didn't want to know me - then when he heard I was down in the dumps again I got a call from him to get together and I declined.

There are some folks who regard people with emotional problems as easily manipulated and 'useful'. You sometimes have to be brutal with yourself and not allow people such as these into your life.

Regards - Carl

Your Systematic De-Sensitisation Plan Part Two

In yesterday's post I discussed how a 'systematic desensitisation/exposure therapy' plan is really a 'surrender plan' and went on to say when you first start it can come as such a shock to the system the idea of it being a 'plan' can seem ridiculous because of how overwhelming it is.

I also discussed the need to establish a support network (and you should see these people on a regular cyclical basis for their input and help to be effective).

In this post (and it's another biggie) I'm going to cover the following points:

1. Focus on How You Want to Feel


2. Practice Every Day


3. Study Your Emotional Responses and Develop a Subjective Viewpoint


4. Work Towards Linking Responses To Triggers


5. Establish a Weekly Cycle


6. Focus on One Reaction at a Time


7. Create Distraction and 'Switch-off' Points


8. Judge Progress by What You Can Do


9. Accept the Strangeness of Your Thoughts


10. Hunt All Negative Feelings Down Like the Dirty Dogs They Are.

1  Focus on How You Want to Feel

The first step of any successful system is the identification of a desirable outcome.  Imagine yourself free both of the emotional problem and of the restrictions it places on you - what would you do?  How would that freedom affect your relationships with others - and with yourself? Visualise a place where you want to be emotionally peaceful.  A state where you can be completely content; not be festering on 'how do I deal with my emotional problem?'  This kind of thing is achievable.

What if your desired outcome is not realistic? What if when you get 'there' it's not exactly how you envisioned it?  It does not matter.  When starting towards any goal in life, unless it's a very short-lived one such as 'putting the butter in the fridge' (and sometimes even that doesn't happen if you trip on the kitchen carpet)  we have to accept that final-destination type goals are variable - we never really achieve exactly what we envisioned.  What we do achieve, however, is the journey towards 'different' and 'better'.  As long as we stay on the journey we will keep re-visiting our desirable outcomes and things will gradually improve.

If you have multiple emotional problems you will eventually find yourself having a greater amount of 'emotional free time' to play with and it is realistic to set a goal of having a greater percentage of time free from emotional issues.  If you have a single emotional problem you could start your desensitisation plan on a Friday and be completely problem-free by Monday; but this is unusual - in most cases it will take several weeks and sometimes months.

Although you may not achieve an idealistic new 'you' all the time it will be a much happier you than who you are at the start of the process (instead of being happy 100% of the time you may have to settle for being happy 90% of the time; sigh).

2  Practice Every Day

You have to be careful when you practice, however.  'Opening up' an emotional response fully can leave you feeling exhausted and your focus of attention, especially if you're exposing yourself to an obsession, can be skewed for the rest of the day.  When is your best time of the week for spending 'intense' time?  Try to save the most intense work for those times.  Most days you need to be just 'skimming the edges' of the response.  This will teach your unconscious mind slowly that the response itself is not so dangerous - and it will prepare you to bring the intense work to easier fruition.

Additionally it is around the 'staying with the feeling but not fully going in' that you may get insights into what the response relates to.  If you have had a response for a long time it's easy for the information about the 'issue' to which the response relates to be lost.  For example, if you had a frightening experience in an enclosed space but forgotten the detail you may be confused when having a strong response to a new place that reminds you of it.  By skirting around and exploring the feeling at a lesser intensity you can raise the memory and this gives you a bigger picture to work with.  This helps.

By the time 'intense work time' arrives you will be itching to get in there and accept that the intense emotional response is linked to a viewpoint you accept. Let us say your reason for panicking in enclosed spaces is because you imagined suffocating in such a place but you've told yourself to stop being silly and refused to feel and release the panic.  Would it be silly to panic if you were suffocating and had a strong fear response - no, in fact it might save your life.  So we gradually figure out what the issue is (if we're not sure) and bring that and the response together.

Try not to work on your emotions when walking on busy streets or driving or operating machinery (if you can help it - sometimes the work just follows us around whether we want to switch it off or not).  Keep aware of any situation in which you could be injured or killed due to  not paying attention to the outside world.   I came close to being hit by cars twice because my attention just wasn't on what was going on around me.

Desensitisation work is very distracting.  It dominates your focus of attention and wipes your short-term memory.  You can end up doing such things as not paying for goods when leaving a shop because you can't remember if you paid at checkout or not (I didn't do this but I did upset a newsagent once when he wanted my money and I'd put it back in my pocket because I thought I'd paid him already).  These things happen.

So try and pick a safe place to practice and don't intend to 'open up' completely if you've got some other complex responsibility to meet.  If you've got the day to yourself though, go for it.

3  Study Your Emotional Responses and Develop an Objective Viewpoint

A subjective viewpoint is that of the person affected by the emotional response - this is the viewpoint of a person believing they are being 'done to' and, I hate to say it, it is the viewpoint of a 'victim'.

An objective viewpoint is that of the person sitting on the outside of the emotional response who is able to study it; test it; re-draw it and play with it and figure out how to bring the response under control and then stop it.  This is the viewpoint of a laboratory scientist who treats the subjective viewpoint as a test subject.

Transitioning from the subjective view to the objective view is very, very difficult and takes time.  A Counsellor can assist in making the transition as they sit on the outside of the experience and unconsciously coach you in how to sit in their place while they also sit in your's.  A Counsellor is very unlikely to tell you this is what's happening - it just happens.  You get used to the idea of 'sitting outside the experience and looking in'.

Why do you need to develop the objective viewpoint?  Because it's the decision-maker when it comes to the argument between two other viewpoints that are involved.  When you have an anxiety disorder of any kind and you decide to remove it you've got a war going on inside of you between these two additional viewpoints.

The third viewpoint we're dealing with is that of the trapped emotional response fighting for release - this is the emotional energy contained in the anxiety disorder. In a fictional story this viewpoint would be called the 'Protagonistic Viewpoint'

The fourth viewpoint is the resistance to the release - driven by the parts of you that don't want to go through the releasing experience.  When you want to keep the disorder trapped the disorder is the bad guy and the commitment to keeping the response trapped is the good guy - but when you start to desensitise the argument for and against release is reversed.  The anti-release viewpoint, in a fictional story, would be called the 'Antagonistic Viewpoint'.

The Objective Viewpoint, the part of you that sits outside the experience looking in, decides which of the two viewpoints wins the fight.

4  Work Towards Linking Responses To Triggers

During my healing I would constantly surprise myself as I came to realise the issues behind my responses.  At first all I could see were the emotions themselves and I was 'sailing blind'.  But as I repeatedly went into the emotional responses I started to see the 'issues' appear and I'd think 'well, I agree with me thinking that - I can understand it'.  Once I got to this point I was ready to 'unitise'.  It can be difficult to release an emotional response when you don't know what triggered it.

However, I've also released a trapped response without knowing the trigger, particularly when the response, such as panic attacks, was based around the fear of another response!  It's not so easy to remove these responses because you can't clearly see the cause - it's a bit like being afraid of murky fog - you can't clearly identify things.  Nevertheless, the trapped response will evaporate if you keep going.

5  Establish a Weekly Cycle

It's a good idea to build the healing cycle around your appointments with your counsellor - this way you work towards providing the counsellor/doctor/psychiatrist with a progress report.  You can see your counsellor once a week and then as your healing progresses move the appointments further apart.  Each week you should aim to move a little bit further forward - but remember that just being on the journey is enough most weeks.

6  Focus on One Response at a Time

Your intention should be to move towards the 'maximum intensity point' within the emotional response and regard yourself as working in small emotional release cycles.  What happens, whether you plan for it or not, is that by just moving repeatedly into the most intense part of the response you force the emotional release cycle to complete.

Trapped emotional responses form 'layers' in our bodies and when you complete an emotional cycle you remove the top layer and move onto the one below - until one day they're all gone!

I have been reading recently that you should create a scale where level 1 is the mildest fear response and level 10 is the most intense and you should try and keep yourself at 'level 3' or there's a risk of re-inforcing the emotional response .  This may work well with phobias - but it's not quite so simple with obsessions.  I have also recently seen a report by a respected doctor that states desensitisation does not work on obsessions. Sorry but this is utter rubbish.  Desensitisation and exposure therapy work on all emotional responses as long as you're willing to do the work necessary, it's that simple.

Personally when I wanted to heal from my obsessions I wanted to heal as quickly as possible - I just could not be bothered with all that scales malarkey.  I was a Level 8 no matter what and it was Level 12 that finally sorted it out for me.  But yes - focus on one emotional layer at a time.

7  Create Distraction and 'Switch-off' Points

I'm a bit of a workaholic - I like a list of 'things I did today' at the end of every day and one of my arguments against doing the emotional work was that it was not 'productive'.  By combining the emotional work with some tedious and mentally undemanding task such as wallpaper stripping or ironing (mind that hot iron - ooch) I could do both the 'self-indulgent' emotional work and also find myself with a stripped wall or the ironing done at the end of it.

I could not do complex intellectual work and the emotional work at the same time - I could not even write my experiences down during the emotional work because if you're doing the emotional work right the logical mind, the intellectual, judgemental and interfering left neo-cortex, is hijacked and shut down.

Another distraction I combined with the intense emotional work was pleasant relaxing music; it took the edge off the pain -  my favourite was the Theta Meditation System music from Dr Jeffrey Thompson (there's a link below) - but I bought a whole stack of other relaxing music to use too.

You should reward yourself at regular intervals (especially after completing a period of desensitisation).  This all creates a more pleasant after- affect.  'Yeah, it was unpleasant, but look, I got the wall stripped'.

8  Judge Progress by What You Can Do

One of the problems with judging how well you're doing on the basis of how you feel when it comes to emotional desensitisation is it's all relative to how you feel right now.  You could have got rid of thirty unwanted emotional responses but if you're stuck in the middle of response thirty one and you look to how you feel as an indicator of how you're progressing you'll come up with 'I feel terrible!  It's not working!'.

This is yet another great role a counsellor can serve - acting as an external 'milestone marker' - someone who reminds you of your progress; of what you were struggling with when you first met and what you can do now as opposed to way back then when you first started.

Base progress on what you can do - on the places no longer off limits to you emotionally - rather than how you feel.

9  Accept the Strangeness of Your Thoughts

Trapped feelings look for, and produce, strange thought patterns in order to try and gain escape from the body.  Once those feelings have left the body through the correct thought pattern that created them in the first place (the 'triggering issue') all those strange thought patterns that kept catching your attention disappear.  This is how it works.  Accept the strange thoughts as a part of the healing process and don't give them too much time and weight.

10  Hunt All Negative Feelings Down Like the Dirty Dogs They Are

At some point your anxiety disorder will start to disappear.  Your panic attacks will stop; your phobias will be gone; your obsessions will be distant memories.  The question you have to ask now is: what caused them?  Anxiety disorders can be caused by sudden shocking events - but I suspect it's more usual for them to appear after an anxious foundation has first been laid down for quite some time.

To maintain emotional happiness you have to be watchful for any future negative emotional responses - and hunt them down; feel and release them; at the earliest opportunity.  If you don't do this you risk a relapse into your anxiety disorder.  I've written a previous post called, I think, 'Get the Vacuum Cleaner Out' - when you get a hint of a negative emotional response find it and go into it as soon as possible.  Having this approach will keep you free of further anxiety problems.

If you don't remove negative feelings in this way, as a habit, the dirty dogs will start nipping at your heels again and they don't go away.  But then you already knew that.

That's the end of this post.  Please note that because it's a generalised view of the desensitisation process there may be some parts of it that need to be adapted slightly for different conditions.

All comments; criticisms and discussion points are gratefully received and if you would like to put a post on the blog in response to this post please email me at carl@managemesystems.com and I'll gladly post it (as long as it's relevant and above board etc) with a link back to your site.

I'm thinking about taking the whole week's posts on desensitisation and producing a free pdf download and an mp3 too - would that be of any use?

Regards - Carl

Your Systematic De-Sensitisation Plan Part One

When I first started to write this post I did a '10 steps to desensitisation' type thing with carefully planned steps from easiest to hardest response and then I thought 'that's not really how it happens, is it? - not at first'.  You can't make a plan around something before you know what it is you're planning with, can you?  It's like planning to cook a meal in a stranger's kitchen when you've never seen the kitchen you'll be working in - it's not going to happen exactly the way you think.

I'm sure there are folks out there who have started such a plan themselves and then found all the planning they'd done with their logical minds is knocked for six by the reality of how hard desensitisation/exposure therapy hits when you first start.  It's a bit like putting the brakes on a juggernaut with a payload heavier than the juggernaut itself.  All those heavy duty emotional responses just carry right on through you regardless of you having a plan or not.

So I'm going to start off here with the blunt basic foundation of a plan today and I'm going to do the '10 steps' type thing tomorrow; which is perfectly possible once you've got through the shock period at the start of beginning 'the plan' (for me the shock period lasted three months before I was ready for a fully working 'plan' - I had one big payload to reverse into).  Here we go.

Firstly - It's YOUR plan

The first thing to know about your de-sensitisation plan is it's YOUR's.  It's not my plan or anyone else's. Although the overall pattern of recovery is the same for everyone who applies the approach of 'going towards' for long enough there is no 'right or wrong way'.  When you get into the day to day work involved your desensitisation plan has to fit in with your day to day needs, your personality type and your current and future belief systems.

Every single person is unique and so the path and the plan you develop and follow will be unique.  Having said that - it's a bit like travelling on a train - the train's the same train for everyone on it, but the experience of being on the train is an individual thing.

I've read the work of quite a few experts who have produced a lot of very good de-sensitisation plans, but the truth is that the path to de-sensitisation is a crazy paving path through thorny bushes, rather than a straight path that's easy to follow.  At first it can be really messy, depending on what your external life is like and the emotional complexity of your condition - people can have a single phobia or a whole collection of disorders going on (like I used to have).

Secondly - It's a 'Surrender Plan' rather than a 'Take Control Plan'


You're doing this plan because you've come to a realisation you don't directly control the process you're going through.  One of the most difficult periods is the time before you start the plan - and then it gets even worse when you begin!  Let's be honest here - we don't want to do an exposure therapy plan or a de-sensitisation plan (both the same thing) - if we did we wouldn't need a plan at all, would we?  We're doing it because we have to, we're desperate because nothing else has worked.

We wanted the 'quick fix' plan (such as seeing a hypnotherapist) - and even that was an inconvenience -  that didn't work.  So having done the 'Avoidance and Damage Limitation Plan' and having tried the ''Try Every Expensive Expert Other than the Exposure Therapy/De-sensitisation Plan' (and then maybe followed up with the 'I Mistrust Everybody and React Bitterly When Someone Reminds Me about the Exposure Therapy Plan') we finally find ourselves at the 'I Give Up' plan.

When you put it all together it's just a 'Surrender Plan', really, isn't it?

When I first developed the map for my personal exposure therapy journey there was only one sentence going on before it began: 'oh sh*t; that's it; I've had enough; I'm going in - even if it kills me'.  I always knew what I had to do, I just didn't want to do it. After downloading yet another 'international expert tells you in an e-book how to heal at a cost of £70' I read one sentence that stood out for me:  'if you have tried all the techniques I've offered here and they've been of no use to you then you could always try the exposure therapy approach - exposure therapy is 100% effective, but it hurts'.  I was hurting already - what did I have to lose?

So it's really only when you've started the plan that you start to understand just how unrealistic the first plan is and you start to draw up a real plan that's suited more to you.  Here are my recommendations once you're at this stage:

• Get Your Mindset Right


• Get Your Support Network in Place


• Get On With It


• Get Systematic.

Get Your Mindset Right

Here's the mindset I recommend as the 'plan' begins:

• Become More Selfish


• Prepare to Learn


• Release the Ego


• Go in; stay in; stay in some more; come out

Become More Selfish

Selfish people don't generally like the word 'selfish' because it implies ignoring the rights of others - but when I explain to them it means giving yourself time, taking your emotions seriously and doing what now suits you rather than everybody else they'll say 'oh yes, but doesn't everybody do that anyway?  That's not selfishness - that's just common sense'.

If you don't take proper care of yourself you can't take care of anyone else, period.  Give yourself time; make yourself 'worth it'; stop trying to please everybody else.  Make your healing a definite priority.  I remember the time when, in order to put my healing plan into effect, I deliberately started to think 'I need to be more selfish and say no more often otherwise I'll never heal'.  I'd always been about other people - and it had made me ill.

Before you put your healing plan into action you'll need to make sure you are at the centre of it if you want it to work.

Prepare to Learn

Your de-sensitisation plan is probably the most intensely stressful learning curve you will ever go through; so you may as well adopt the attitude of a learner.

Nature will become your teacher as you start opening up to the natural process of 'feeling'.  There's this horrible period when you start to learn you have no direct control over the process - it comes built into all living creatures.

Your only choice is whether or not you go through it, and allow the process to work through you.  Train yourself to observe what nature shows you.  You will learn, for example, how to switch off your judgemental logical mind in order to allow your emotional body and your pattern creating mind to meet each other with less interference so they can achieve the goal of emotional release.

Release the Ego

There's nothing wrong with the ego - it's the mechanism that protects our hard-earned thinking and intuitive processes - but in the case of an anxiety disorder it is currently defending beliefs that are hurting you in the long term while allegedly protecting you in the short term

The unconscious mind of a person suffering from an anxiety disorder, to be blunt, is full of crap.  Mine was - and to an extent still is, but I actively seek it out and destroy it.  We all have a little tub of belief-crap lurking inside of us but some have more than others and a lack of self-awareness is the cause of it - many people get so full of it they spew it out over other people without even realising they're doing it.  I try not to do this myself.

All the hidden belief-crap in our unconscious is emotionally supported - when you challenge these beliefs by 'going-into-to-come-out-of' they come up into conscious awareness and fight their corner.  These pain-laden beliefs will affect your body by mimicking a dangerous situation; for example they can alter your stomach acid balance; change your heart rate; cause nightmares; give you muscular aches and spasms and prevent sleep; threaten you with images of 'cancer' and raise your blood pressure - and your ego will for a time have trouble accepting this powerful fighting viewpoint is a pack of unconscious lies you somehow created and must now face and endure through the healing process.

You see, it's not just a matter of forming a new plan and being allowed to just get on with it - what you're doing initially is fighting several old plans that were working really hard for you until you turned up with your silly new plan and they want to show you just how wrong it is.

You will learn what blind faith really means at this point and it dawns that the grey blobby thing in your head isn't the most important part of the healing journey- your body is.

Go in; stay in; stay in some more; come out


No matter how complex or logical or carefully planned the plan is - if you're not approaching your trapped emotional responses the plan's lost before it begins.  By repeatedly approaching your unwanted responses and going into them for as long as you can you learn the full extent of the experience you are working with.

You experience your emotions at their most intense and you start to learn the limits of those responses - and you find you can endure that limit repeatedly for long periods of time - and still remain alive.  After a time the beliefs that said 'cancer' stop.  The beliefs that said 'it will kill me' are replaced by 'this is different from what I've done before and something's starting to happen'.

You learn about how your emotions affect your thinking (generally they close logical thinking down) and how your thinking affects your emotions - and how  different parts of your brain influence other parts.  But unless you approach and go into your emotions, unless you move towards the triggers that cause you to react, you will never learn these things and you won't change and remove your anxiety disorder.

No matter how higgledy-piggledy and detailed the logical plan is, the main plan of simply repeatedly going into your emotional responses is THE plan that underlies the more logical plan that you get to write down.  I often suspect quite a few of these 10-point-plans are written after the plan has already been carried out and our logical brains want to stamp a 'just look how clever I am with my plan' picture over it.  I'm being a bit harsh here maybe - but at first the plan is a brute force thing.

Get Your Support Network in Place

Oh dear, it's time to take a risk - the risk of telling people you see as 'professionals' - people you fear are going to lock you up and throw away the key or declare you mentally ill (all anxiety disorders are at times put under the heading of 'mental illness' but emotionally driven illness is very different to mental illness).  But don't worry, the professionals have seen an awful lot more of this kind of thing than you have.  The kind of people we're talking about here are:

• Doctors


• Counsellors/Therapists


• Psychiatrists


• Others

Doctors

In my experience there are some doctors who understand this stuff better than others - but there's no way of finding out which doctors are best for you until you start talking to them.  Go to your doctors and start talking.  Talk about your condition and your plan.  My doctors told me to take it easy and wanted me to start on Prozac and see a psychiatrist.    They helped me deal with the physical side affects of my exposure therapy plan; they reassured me when I started to worry about different things.  You need a doctor as part of your support network.

Counsellors/Therapists

Your doctor may refer you to a counsellor and a psychiatrist in addition to wanting to see you themselves.  Person-Centred Counsellors will not give you directive advice - they are trained to support clients in finding their own solutions through a process of exploration and reflection - but they will support you with your plan and may help put you in touch with a Cognitive Behavioural Therapist, if your doctor has not already done so (you will lose the Person-Centred Counsellor from your network at this point).  A Person Centred Counsellor will support you indirectly through your de-sensitisation process; a Cognitive Behavioural Therapist will set you homework to do and help you develop a joint plan.

Just as with the doctors you may need to spend time finding the right counsellor, of whatever type, for you.  I went through three counsellors - with several months in between each - before I found a counsellor I felt completely at home with.  It might not have been that the counsellors were not 'right' for me but rather I was not ready for counselling - now even though my anxiety disorders are healed I still see my counsellor, albeit months apart, to work through any new material and stay emotionally happy.  If you think seeing a counsellor is a bit strange just keep in mind that all counsellors are compelled to have systematic counselling themselves if they wish to work as counsellors.  There's a lot of it around.

Psychiatrists

The job of a psychiatrist is to prescribe medication for emotional and mental disorders.  When I first went to see my new psychiatrist for the first time I was expecting to receive a 'counselling' experience - it quickly became clear to me this isn't what psychiatrists do.  After spending time writing all the details of our conversation down and reading my doctor's notes my psychiatrist told me I had a 'complex form of OCD'.  He also told me I had severe depression - which came as a big surprise as I'm one of the most positive-minded thinkers I know (I realised later my being positive minded all the time was a form of denial).

He went on to describe a plan to gradually put me onto heavy doses of Prozac and then spoke about the time I would be weaned off the drug (or not) several years later.  I told him about my de-sensitisation plan and I wanted to keep the Prozac at a low level so I could heal myself rather than rely on drugs.

He agreed to support me with this and within a year I had stopped taking the Prozac altogether and I had removed my obsessions and panic attacks.

I know it's difficult at first but every time you discuss and share information with these trusted professionals you see that they accept your condition easier than you do - the recognition that you have a problem and these folks take it seriously reinforces your confidence and the sense that 'you're worth it'.

The truth is they've seen so much of this thing you previously thought unique to you they regard it as common as the common cold and that's pretty common.

Others

Others are a different story - if you have kept your condition to yourself and now find yourself talking it out with friends it is possible you will lose some of those friends (were they really friends?).  Additionally you may have lots of opinions thrown at you; most of them unhelpful - well meaning, but not in line with your plan.  Things such as 'you need to exercise more' or 'you need a holiday'.

As you start sharing your experience you will be surprised to find other people you regarded as being super-calm people with no problems start opening up about their anxiety disorders - don't be fooled into automatically thinking this means a bond of camaraderie  - you may find yourself being avoided by these people because your bravery may make them feel compelled to behave likewise and the discomfort this causes can lead to their avoiding you.

I'm not saying don't do this - I'm just saying be prepared to learn a whole lot about the human condition during this journey you're making.

It's not all doom and gloom though - you may find people who have been through the exposure therapy themselves and can identify and support you in person or on-line.  There are quite a few such people about now (a lot more than when I was healing five years' ago).

Get On With It

Now you've got a support network (and you will need them, believe me) you can begin.  You're going to get it wrong; you're going to get frustrated; you're going to feel incompetent but nevertheless you have to get on with it.

Give up on the idea of doing it alone; stop thinking you're unique and no-one else understands your predicament.  Get out there and get help; share; lose friends if you have to by making the mistake of telling them about your condition.  But get healed.

Get Systematic

Now you're talking my language.  Systems are cyclical journeys and you must become cyclical.  There's a lot of talk these days about 'straight lines being the shortest distance between two points' well, that works if you're lining up a lot of exposure therapy cycles - because you need sleep; you need food.  There will be days of the week when you make more progress than others and you can plan to do more work on these days.

You also need to plan for rest and having some fun during the healing process.  By getting systematic you:

• plan your environments


• manage your inputs


• go through the de-sensitisation process


• get feedback on the difference between before and after (counsellors are great for this)


• start all over again - working cyclically.

I'm going to post more about this tomorrow (along with the 10 point plan type thing).

Regards - Carl