Well done Bramble
You must feel a real sense of empowerment. Well done. Positive stories like yours are so good to read.
My anxiety arrived out of the blue on the back of other peri menopausal symptoms like insomnia and low mood. The only other time in my life I have experienced like it was when I had PND. So I quickly guessed my hormones were to blame again.
My CBT counsellor actively advised against trying to 'fight' anxiety, or even trying to distract yourself from it. He said that by trying to fight it you were just raising your stress levels even more and further reinforcing it into your subconscious that the anxiety was something to be scared of.
Same with trying to distract yourself from anxiety. You're just showing your subconscious that the anxiety is a real threat to you and must be avoided, or run away from.
Apparently, it's better to just accept the anxiety and carry on anyway. Almost in defiance of it. My counsellor told me to talk to my anxiety, like it was a real person i.e. 'Oh, hello, so you're here again. Well, you're not going to stop me from going for this walk/making this phone call/going to the store. I know you're going to make my stomach churn and my brain race, but I'm still going ahead anyway okay. So you can stay with me if you want, but there's not much point'
I also used to imagine my anxiety as a real person. I gave it really stupid hair and unflattering clothes and horrible shoes, and in personalizing it into a figure of fun it seemed to diminish my anxiety and make it seem less frightening somehow. I imagined it doing stupid things like tripping up as it tried to walk along with me, or spilling stuff down itself as it sat next to me in a café, and generally just being clumsy and annoying.
I made fun of it in my head. Sounds crazy, but it worked.
