Monday 20 November 2017

DSTSS - hold that thought!

92. Realise the power of your own thoughts

I remember way back when, when my life was engulfed with panic, agoraphobia and anxiety - yep, for those who don't know me, I could barely leave the house for fear of having panic attacks, so they happened in the house instead, day after day, month after month.

It was a very frightening chapter of my life and one that I knew could become my norm if i didn't take action.
Interestingly, depression was never a word that was used within my diagnosis of panic disorder.  Often this range of conditions are closely linked, but for me, they weren't.  I loved to go out, socialise, do stuff, but my stress levels were definitely off the chart...clearly.  So as i would go about my business, BOOM, out of the blue those all too familiar symptoms would arrive - racing heart, racing thoughts, racing breathing and what I perceived to be the race to stay alive, as the feeling of impending doom closed in on me.

Panic attacks were something that would just happen, any place, anytime and they usually came with a very subtle trigger and it was usually a physiological one.  My body would send a signal, not my mind, however, there was a million thoughts going on that I wasn't paying attention to which fed their existence.

How often do you pay attention to your thoughts? They come through our mind without even thinking. Just like how we breathe in and out and only notice when we bring our attention to it. Our rushed thoughts bring rushed feelings, our angry thoughts bring angry feelings, our happy thoughts bring happy feelings and our calm thoughts bring....... you guessed it, calm feelings. And yet we rarely stop and give them any thought.  We just accept them as the norm, especially the negative ones. My doctor once asked me to try and have a panic attack by thinking it and no amount of thinking or trying to make it happen, would make it happen.  They are some crazy shit and I guess that's probably because it is physical maybe?

As i went through my journey of overcoming panic disorder - which was 100% done by relaxation and retraining my brain - no medication whatsoever, it became so clear that the power of my thoughts were incredible in enabling me to learn how to manage them and eventually rid myself of them.  It took time, but it was worth the mental investment.

The two bodily functions that I had no control over, became one, and as I realised the power of my thoughts and the impact they were having consciously and subconsciously, the link between breath and thinking came together to change my life.  As i breathed in calm, I breathed out stress.  As i was thinking calm in, i was thinking stress out. It became a pattern that has stayed with me since that time and helped me to respond to many situations and ultimately bring peace and calm to my life.  A feeling that I just adore. 
The awareness and power of my thoughts changed how I was responding to life.  I made the choice as to how those thoughts played out. How cool is that, going from a life that was closing in around me to one where it became more open with the more attention I paid to what was happening in my head.  I guess with anything though, you need to be in a place where you want that change to actually happen and you realise that underneath the burden of the negative thinking that life is actually okay when you start to strip back the layers and discover a new way to live.

Note to self: Here's an ongoing prescription for Mindfulness 101. Keep it filled to ward of negative thinking so you can take charge of your own happiness. I've always maintained that you can't control what you think, but you can control what you say and that is still true, but you can control how the thoughts impact on your life if you tune into them.

1 comment:

  1. yeah, we never take this sensitive topic as serious as we should to be. and we all know stress is so dangereous. now i am going to contact a buy custom essays. Take care!

    ReplyDelete