| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| art |
Posted - 12/20/2005 : 18:41:11
I'm not even sure I'm spelling it right, but that doesn't mean I don't know how to do it with the best of them. I'd not heard this term until recently but it instantly rang a bell..
For example, my girlfriend and I are headed for a trip to Florida from New England with our two dogs. In my mind, we've already run into a paralyzing snow storm, had many flat tires, been unable to find a motel, and have had many other various and sundry disasters befall, both great and small..
I always do this, and it's a complete and utter waste of time. Plus, it's unhealthy..
I'd love to hear from those who are prone to this....What are some good techniques? The good news is I',m better with this stuff than I used to be..At least now I know what it is that I'm doing and can make some attempts to bring it under control, but I've a long way to go...
Any help would be sincerely appreciated.. |
| 20 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| art |
Posted - 12/24/2005 : 21:29:18
wrld,
Thanks for that. I love Russian literature...Crime and Punishment is for my money the best novel ever written...I have not read Turgenev though...
It's a beautifully written passage. I see just why it stuck in your mind.
Another Turgenev quote I found... "Death is like a fisherman, who, having caught a fish in his net, leaves it in the water for a time; the fish continues to swim about, but all the while the net is round it, and the fishermen will snatch it out in his own good time."
Chilling, eh?
|
| Curiosity18 |
Posted - 12/24/2005 : 20:38:33
I can definitely relate to catastrophizing. I have never worried about getting cancer or any terminal disease, however from the time I began having TMS symptoms in my early 20s (I was a physical therapist at that time), I worried about developing a chronic condition such as arthritis, MS or degenerative disc disease. Throughout my years of having back pain I just knew that my spine was disintegrating! Then five years ago during a doctors appointment for yet another TMS symptom (probably restless legs syndrome), a melanoma was discovered! The bizarre thing about this is that I never worried over it during treatment nor since that time. (Fortunately it was completely resolved). I still only worry about my TMS related symptoms, and not cancer. I suppose that I'm likely repressing fear about serious stuff, like dying and that as long as I can focus on TMS symptoms, I don't have to face it. Ironically, Sarno mentions in MBP that folks who get melanoma are typically extreme TMS personality types! Wow! I wonder if and when all my TMS symptoms finally go away, I'll start worrying about getting cancer!
Happy holidays
Curiosity
|
| wrldtrv |
Posted - 12/24/2005 : 17:11:32
I can sure relate to your paranoia, Art & Baseball, re: symptoms. I made a decision recently to restrain myself, stay the hell away from researching symptoms on the internet! It never served for anything but to freak me out.
That said, Baseball, acid reflux/heartburn is something to take seriously. My family has direct experience with the results of letting it go. I would take the nexium or prilosec--whatever, if it is called for.
Art, I found the Turgenev quotation (Fathers & Sons)I mentioned:
"While I think: here I lie under a haystack...the tiny bit of space I occupy is so minute in comparison with the rest of the universe where I am not and which is not concerned with me; and the period of time it is my lot to live is so infintesimal compared with the eternity in which I have not been and shall not be...and yet here, in this atom which is myself, in this mathematical point, blood circulates, the brain operates and aspires to something too..."
|
| art |
Posted - 12/24/2005 : 10:09:32
quote:
The internet can be a curse..
Oh yah. I've learned to simply not even go down that road. It's just not worth it as I will, like a moth to flame, home right in on the most dire possibility and perish there.
Last time I went cruising around in search of a diagnosis was after my feet swelled one day. So convinced that my kidneys were failing was I that I began to review my will..
|
| Baseball65 |
Posted - 12/24/2005 : 06:22:21
"I want to die Peacefully and quietly in my sleep like my Grandfather did...
...Not screaming and kicking and fighting it like all those other people in the car he was driving !"
But seriously folks..I don't remember which comedian said that...but it was really funny.
On topic...you'll love this...I haven't been able to swallow food for about a week without flushing it out with water. My ears were superclogged with stuff,so I cleaned them and took a couple of sudafeds to help it drain..about 2 days in I couldn't swallow food all of a sudden.I of course ,am certain I have inoperable cancer and will die in the next year or so...
The internet can be a curse..I read up on 'dysphagia' and it can be psychosomatic, due to aging (who...MOI ??) or a tumor.I was warned by an ENT a few years back that I was a prime candidate for this problem and was told to take those modern antacids to stop the acidic cycle...which I haven't
anyhow...I was at work yesterday thinking about it when all of a sudden I remembered Art's visualization (billion years)....sort of put it all in perspective. |
| art |
Posted - 12/24/2005 : 05:54:33
I've had discussions with friends who argue that being un-alive before conception, and being dead after dying, are not the same thing, but it seem unarguable that one state of non-being can't be qualitatively different from another state of non-being.
'course, that kinda side steps the little matter of actually dying  , but in the scheme of things it shouldn't be that big a deal..
I always liked Woody Allen on the subject...."I'm not afraid of dying, I just don't want to be there when it happens.. |
| wrldtrv |
Posted - 12/23/2005 : 20:19:30
Well put, Art. Your analogy to the billions of yrs we did not exist and the billions after compared to this speck of existence, really puts it into perspective. I remember reading something very similar in a novel by the Russian writer, Turgenev (Fathers and Sons). I remember I was so struck by it that I copied it down. |
| Allan |
Posted - 12/23/2005 : 19:24:02
Catastrophizing
Someone wrote a book years ago, “How to stop worrying and stop living.”
He contended that 90% of the things that we worry about never happen.
Allan.
|
| altherunner |
Posted - 12/23/2005 : 17:19:44
I found that reading "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle helped me.
I am a worrier, and always would think of 10 or more future outcomes, always negative. His other books are great, too. |
| art |
Posted - 12/23/2005 : 13:49:07
Hi Jilly,
It took me a week or so to get off it, two years to feel normal...
Heaven's a nice idea and I congratulate you on your ability to believe in it. I envy anyone who does as clearly it makes mortality easier to face. |
| jilly_girl |
Posted - 12/23/2005 : 13:20:10
hey art ....are you saying it took you two years AFTER you got off Xanax to feel normal or two years to get off it? I liked your post about how we will all eventually die, except for this part:
For sure we will all die and i liked your post on that subject. But i believe i'm going to a heaven thats beyond anything we have ever seen. "i can only imagine" .
Jill |
| art |
Posted - 12/23/2005 : 12:36:34
Just for a little added texture to the discussion, I was addicted to xanax and it took me the better part of two years, that's years, to even begin to feel normal again.
It was hell on wheels. |
| jilly_girl |
Posted - 12/23/2005 : 07:35:46
baseball said:
Yeah..@ Jilly do NOT just stop taking the xanax...it's worse than heroin to kick.It's not how MUCH but how much and how long you've been on it.
If you decide to quit altogether,there is a method called "The Ashton Protocol" which you can download for free online(searching always turns up 'pay' sites first...scroll further)...you switch to Valium which is not as strong and then decrease.Xanax ,klonopin etc. are some of the strongest benzo's made...don't let their 'mildness' catch you off guard.
Baseball LOL......Xanax isnt the monster you think it is. Its a good drug that helped me live a reasonably normal life for a while. I have been on and off it before. No complicated protocols required. Just cut down a bit each day. I've gone from 4 1 mg pills a day to 1/2 pill a day in a weeks time. There is a lot of weird misinformation and ideas about Xanax. Obviously there are some people addicted to huge doses who need help getting off it. Thanks for your concern
Jill |
| art |
Posted - 12/23/2005 : 05:17:32
Wrld,
Try this. Go ahead, take that harmless bump to melanoma and beyond. When you get to the image of yourself all layed out in your funeral suit, remind yourself that in fact we are all mortal and that sooner or later we all will get cancer, or if not cancer, then some fatal condition or other...The point is, fear doesn't help. It's no defense at all against the inevitable.
Something else that helps me is to remind myself that for most of the span of the universe I've been "dead" and will be dead, with the merest instant of life sandwiched in...It didn't bother me when I was not alive through all those billions of years before birth, and it's not going to bother me afterward....
Anyway, something that's worked for me...
|
| wrldtrv |
Posted - 12/22/2005 : 23:29:53
Good stuff, the input from everybody on this topic. I've never thought of myself as particularly prone to OCD, but after reading through these posts I realize I am. I too went through the childhood "going to Hell" "I'm a sinner" phase (Catholic). Nowadays, my obsession-compulsion seems to be health matters. I'm a hypochondriac. Every time I experience a symptom of any kind, my first thought is to catastrophize it. No, the sore throat is not simply a sore throat, it is cancer. No, the bump on my skin is not a harmless cyst, it is melanoma. And recently, the MS-like symptoms I have experienced, but after exhaustive tests assured all was well...well, there MUST be SOMETHING they are not seeing. Over time, I have become expert at experiencing symptoms for which no physical explanation is ever found. And since this stuff feeds upon itself, one experience making the next that much more likely, the frequency and intensity of various symptoms have increased. As soon as one fire is put out I have a few days or weeks of peace before the next one begins. I'm in the middle of another episode that began a few days ago. Chronic depression and anxiety don't help. I think I'm ready to try something new. What absolutely does not work is to be sucked into the old pattern of giving credence to the external, the physical symptom, instead of looking inward for the answer. |
| Baseball65 |
Posted - 12/22/2005 : 16:26:15
Yeah..@ Jilly do NOT just stop taking the xanax...it's worse than heroin to kick.It's not how MUCH but how much and how long you've been on it.
If you decide to quit altogether,there is a method called "The Ashton Protocol" which you can download for free online(searching always turns up 'pay' sites first...scroll further)...you switch to Valium which is not as strong and then decrease.Xanax ,klonopin etc. are some of the strongest benzo's made...don't let their 'mildness' catch you off guard.
See...their I go..catastrophizing (good word) again!!
...but seriously folks.
Yeah..I no longer look at OCD as an entity in itself...As the symptoms have been isolated,as per usual the pharmaceutical community has tried to 'chemical' it away.
Since I can't remember evr NOT having it,and there are soooo many people exactly like me,or who develop it later I can only conclude that it is a sort of TMS of the Mind muscle.
Here are some conclusions I've reached about it by self examination and talking to other OCDers.
First..you'll never ever make it go away by 'dealing' with the object of obsession.You can go and check the stove,make sure so and so isn't angry with you,quit masturbating,whatever...doing whatever(or Not doing) will not keep it away.It's exactly like the pain.If you pay any attention to it whatsoever,it's like putting logs on the fire...it'll only burn hotter and bigger.
They call it 'binding' the anxiety ,and it's just like the 'physicophobia' that Sarno speaks of....if you're fear of inducing an OCD incident is operable,it's just as good as the attack itself to fend off the emotions,because you are pre-occupied with external things.
Second..every single really bad episode has come at a period when I should have been feeling a lot of anxiety or emotion but did NOT...after my father died,after my son was born,after my Mom left,etc,etc.
DIG>>>DIG???????DIG DEEPER>>>>>>> Excavate the REAL reason.
...and one good tool I have found that works for breaking OCD as well as TMS 'outbreaks' is crying.All of us are conditioned like Lab rats.Their is a song,a book,an event in your life, a gravestone...something that can make you cry simply by being focused on it or seeing it.If I find myself involved with pain,ocd,whatever...I go get alone somewhere (which isn't always easy) and sink into that thing...I have a song.
It's sort of like a reconditioning...instead of falling for the 'trick',when I sense the early stages I just go 'there'.I have 15" arms,tatoos and look like a Biker.It's not always convenient....go to the bathroom,call in sick,whatever it takes....give it the time and you WILL beat it.
I did go through a phase after my Psych hooked me into what was really going on,where I went the other way...was almost negligent.I found it humorous that If I ignored the OCD my body would TRY something ridiculous...sneezing(I have no allergies) panic attack,pain in my pinky..whatever.
Just like TMS,when you begin to battle it,it will try to tell you you're wrong,and if you don't listen ,it will try to metamorphisize into another symptom
OCD is like a thief...it has already stolen away too much of my life.I'm really tired of it....'you're OUTTA' here'
,...and Stryder...that's FUNNY..I actually worked making the stupid shows I don't watch (TV) and the dumb movies I don't rent(films)..That anger/frustration is what ran me out of L.A. and into the 'country'...only problem is,they worship it MORE here than they did in L.A. !!!!!!
Non TV watchers are very few and far between.
-piggy
-
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up. |
| jilly_girl |
Posted - 12/22/2005 : 14:21:17
Hey Art...yes i've been on it a long time and am backing off slowly. I once found a site on OCD. I wish i could remember which one it was to give the proper credit, but one single sentence helped me tremendously. "Embrace the uncertainty". That was very freeing to me. "did i really check the stove? embrace the uncertainty. If the house burns, it burns"!!!!
Jill |
| art |
Posted - 12/22/2005 : 10:05:25
Jilly, just to check in with you, have you been on the xanax a long enough time to have become physically dependent on it? Even if you aren't sure, check with your doc as it's nothing to mess around with...
By the way, your post made me laugh beause I identified so strongly with it...I do the very same thing with doctor visits, employers...all very familiar...This stuff really is kind of comical it's so silly, and it's nice to be able to laugh at ourselves...
I got so tired of checking the burners on the stove, I've taken to just removing all the dials...That way I *know* nothings left on...(still have to check a couple of times though... |
| electraglideman |
Posted - 12/22/2005 : 08:40:14
CATASTROPHIZING!
I swear, I find out more crap thats been wrong with me every time I come to this forum. I never heard the word CATASTROPHIZING before but I've been through it.
This is the only place I know where I can go and get information like this.
Thanks to everyone,
Mike |
| jilly_girl |
Posted - 12/22/2005 : 06:29:34
Baseball, i also have had it my entire life. The "God is mad at me and i'm going to hell" was my worst symptom. I was also a checker. Of course back then they had no idea what this was. My OCD flares up occasionally but is manageable. (it will always show itself when i go to a doctor, (did he understand me, did he really say i was ok, was the test misread etc) so i rarely go to docs. It makes me sicker lol. However the OCD was replaced by a good case of panic disorder with agorophobia. I am about to experience what my panic disorder will do without Xanax, as i am almost out of it. I took more than ususual the past month due to my Moms lingering illness and death. I am ready to be off the stuff anyway. This just isnt a really good time to try it but i have no choice since i'm about out  My panic disorder improved when i simply accepted it. "Ok if i pass out in wal mart i pass out!" Feeling faint was my main symptom.
Jill |
|
|
