We got most every thing I needed done. It was and still is a big project. It is ready to use. I just can't wrap my mind around the fact that I have a month to make use of it. I just keep thinking, 'how am I going to do this." Part of the problem is that now I am so tired. If I just pick at it a little it will get done, so why the worry. Because I do worry. I am getting better at not worrying. Successful people do not worry, they just do it. Anyway this will pass in a few days when I am not so tired and sore.

      This is rebound and taken to extremes can interfere with getting better, but if you know it is there it has less power over you.

To get back to negative words. Is it wrong to use them if you are trying to express something negative. If you feel negative is it not better to express the negative thought than hold it in. I just do not know. I will have to think more on this in the morning when I am more clear.

Well it is definitely morning now. I think it is Ok to use negative words to express a point as long as you know you are doing it and it doesn't put undo load on the person you are expressing it to. How you use punctuation can also change a word from negative to positive.

Living a lie. How many of us are doing this? How many of us are trying to be someone or something we are not and putting undo strain on ourselves.

I'm not talking about doing something new I mean doing something over and over because it is expected rather than because you want to. And how do you stop it. This is not exposure, it is annoyance. Of course if you cannot find pleasure in any thing you do then you have a problem. 

Anxiety disorders and panic disorders make it hard to get any thing done. If you are still in school your grades will suffer. If you are in the work force it will be hard to go to work and hard to be productive. Lost time costs the economy millions if not more, maybe even billions. And being retired doesn't let you off the hook. In my case it is a double whammy because I have a disability. It is almost impossible to look in the mirror and not see someone who is of no value. Anxiety makes it worse. I am not depressed just sad. There is a difference. Long term depression causes chemical changes also. I certainly know my capabilities. I have one real bad fault. I bite off too much. I forget that I cannot do what I did twenty years ago. But I try anyway. Busy is a good way to stay positive. As long as I don't look at how little I get done. Then I can get negative. I cycle and I think I have spotted others doing it too. I will go along for days being constructive and happy, but I tire out and then along comes the sad. A few days later it is gone and I am back to productive and happy. The sad days are annoying because there seems to be little I can do about it other than to ride it out. Today is a sad day, who knows what tomorrow will bring. The important thing is that I recognize them and won't let them bother me.

It is midnight and I woke to a full blown panic attack 10 minutes ago. I have no Idea where this came from or why. I am trying to write this down as fast as I can before I lose it. Pulse has dropped already and I can type again. S--t I'm losing it and I haven't even drank my Lemon Balm tea. I wanted so bad to get down the effects while they were happening. I'm still cold and a bit shaky. But the confusion is gone. That was part of the problem I had to boot my computer and that took a couple of minutes and I had to go sit on the toilet. So I lost a few minutes. Then when I did get to writing I made so many mistakes and stopped to correct them. I should have left them and kept on typing. I bet you have never seen a person  want to hang onto a panic attack! I can't remember what woke me only that it was claustrophobic. I would be mad except mad is negative.

Any way the symptoms were there: 

Terror of something unknown.         Not the dream I was having

Loose bowels.                                  Not diarrhoea

Racing heart.                                    Around 120

Freezing.                                          Shivering

Shakes                                              Hands mostly

Uncoordinated.                                 Poor balance,  couldn't type. 

Any way it went. In the back ground is the thought that it might come back but I doubt it. If I didn't write this it would be forgotten by morning.

Ativan is a Benzodiazapine as is Xanax and Valium. They are all for short term use because of how they work. To know how they work you have to know how knowledge is gathered and passed to the brain where it is used or stored.

The synapses that pass information along look something like an open hand with a bunch of fingers gathering information and passing it along to a single point that feeds it into a finger on the next synapse where it is processed. Now obviously the billions of pieces of information from eyes, ears ,skin , etc., can't all go through or your brain would explode and some times when too much goes through it feels like it.

Now each one of these finger like collection points has a guard that decides if the information is worth passing on. Most of it isn't so in a normal day only what you need to know to survive goes through with the odd bit of random information thrown in so that we can continue to learn. Even most of that gets discarded down stream.

So now along comes a programming glitch and the guards aren't doing their job. In stead of listening to your body that is telling you that you need to rest the guards so they can do their job you take an Ativan. If it is the sublingual then it does its job instantly. AHHH. peace. What it has done is block all that extraneous information and make the guards unnecessary. So they go to sleep and rest till they are needed again. This is where the rebound comes in. Some times they are a little slow to get back on the job and the tendency is to take another Ativan. Ativan has a one hour half life. Xanax is twelve or twenty-four, I'm not sure any more. Any way so in one hour half the ativan has cleared and in another hour half that half is cleared till after four hours it is virtually out of your system. Every one knows that four times four does not make twenty-four! So there is a period when there is very little in your system. Ok this is fine for short term use to give the overworked guards a rest. (up to one month). When you pass this point the guards are no longer asleep, they have gone into a coma and will be hard to bring back out. Not impossible just time consuming. But the biggest problem with Ativan is that it has been controlling the information going through and it has been using the same path way. In effect building a pathway directly to your mind. Not good if there is no Ativan to control it. This is dependancy.  The easiest way to get off Ativan is to switch to Xanax with its longer half life and do withdrawal from it. This way the guards have more time to wake up and get back to work and the rebound isn't as bad. So to do the withdrawal instead of cutting down the dose which will just leave the guards in a half asleep state you want to take the regular dose but stretch it out as long as possible till you find all the guards are awake again and you don't need it. Simple?

Oh but we have one problem your body is used to using the ativan road. Without very vigilant guards it will open up and a flood of information will race down it. Anxiety and if you can't close the gait then Panic which just props the gait open more.

Eventually bits and pieces of this road will crumble but for a while it will be there just waiting for you to give in and run back to the Ativan. Ativan's job is to block and it is not particular what it blocks. Pleasure, pain, taste, sound, memory , etc. After you quit it these blocked things get to compete for acceptance which is why a piece of music can be both beautiful and annoying at the same time. But for the most part things taste better and sound clearer , etc.

 

Now why did you have to take the Ativan in the first place? Information overload? Negative thoughts like worry for example tend to replay themselves over and over again. Positive thoughts like pleasure get accepted and stored right away where you can pull them back out at you leisure and enjoy them. For some reason they also fade faster than negative and have to be reinstalled again. Hence the search for pleasure. Not so with negative. You don't have to look for them. They are a hold over from the days when hyper vigilance was necessary for survival. Think about it all your negative thoughts are trying to protect you. When you have too many they get warped. You go into Fight or Flight mode and because it can't recognize the danger it won't shut down till it realizes there is no danger. In the mean time it has loaded you with adrenaline in preparation. SEE! So now if you can replace the negative thoughts with positive there will be less load and your body will have no need to go into fight or flight mode.

So what about the people that do this on purpose? They know how to shut it down when they want to. So you need to learn how to do this also, and you need to know how and when to relax. And you need to know that some things are going to interfere with you doing that. Stimulants, Medication and health problems. I didn't say the fight would be easy. I just said you can win.

As I look around my house and property I notice things that my brother brought or did and they make me both sad and angry. Whenever he did any thing for me and often it was his decision not mine, he would spend for ever reminding me how much he did for me and how I couldn't do it on my own. Even though I didn't want his help. Some times his interfering only made more work for me. And of course it had to be his way even if he was out of his field.

The same with things he gave to me. Some were things he had no way of disposing of otherwise and some were things he decided I needed even if I didn't. And of course he had to remind me over and over that I wouldn't have these things without him. (ad infinitum) Never did he take the time to do something the way I wanted it and when I wanted it. Always it had to be his way. And no compassion. If I said I was sick then he was too or he was sicker. And his friends that had to have a knee replacement or take some pills for staph. I was supposed to feel sorry for him because his friends were sick and he had to go to the hospital to visit them. Can you see the hatred building? He wanted me to be just like him because he is perfect. Perfectly round is the closest he will come to that. I had to stop this before it made me what I am not and yet it still colours my thoughts.

So I removed him. He lives in another province and I told him to stay there. 

My computer is a very personal possession all mine. Except for this post he will not be in it. I have cropped him out of all my pictures, and the ones I couldn't crop I deleted. Gone ! Fini !  I'm starting a new life with all the decisions mine or ours if I should get a wife again. One he can't interfere with. I feel free even though it feels like something is missing. I'll get over it and be even more free.

Update: Aug. 21 2010

At the time I wrote this I was having bad panic attacks and did not know about negative core beliefs. My brother was the trigger but the problem was a negative core belief and core beliefs are a part of me not the situation. I can change the core belief so that my brother can not trigger it anymore. It doesn't mean he will not annoy me it just means I will be able to speak out when necessary and I will be able to shrug it off before it becomes anxiety.

Well I need another operation, ho hum. This will be # 15 in 59 years. No big deal. I have to do what I have to do.

What is a big deal is that I have to take antibiotics till then and they are a chemical trigger for me. But I am far enough down the road to a cure that all they can do is annoy me. Oh. panic still tries to get in and I get some of the symptoms which is annoying but I don't panic and I doubt they will keep me from sleeping. This is a tough one because it is due to something chemical rather than mental. So I get to tell it to go away till the chemical effect wears off and then start all over again with the next dose. Eventually I just get too tired to bother. What the hell, it can't kill me. It will just mess up the next two weeks a bit. I thought I would use this opportunity to see if propranolol works. It seems to. It is a Beta blocker that is used to reduce anxiety and tremors besides blood pressure. I was using Atenolol which causes weird dreams.  Problem is propranolol has a short half life.

It is 3:00 A.M. and the enemy has made a sneak attack. They have used the same strategy and though they caught me by surprise I was able to drive them back with only a minimum of damage and a bit of anxiety as I check to see if they are coming back. I will leave just a skeleton of guards to watch for them. I shall go back to sleep.

As you might have guessed this is no physical battle but I feel wrung out.

Panic is a battle between negative and positive.

I have one more day before my big exposure day. And the negative side is gathering there warriors. They have been doing it for about a week now. I want to pull a Dunkirk but I will only have to come back again. There is no cut and run this time. The battle has been postponed twice so now I am at an even more heightened alertness. I need to send some agents to the enemy's side to reduce the odds so they are in my favour. I can do this. I know how, and I have agents good at this. They have proved themselves in the past, they will not let me down. If, no, when I win this coming battle the rest of the war will be easy and I will be more secure. A few more times and I will be so strong no one will even think of picking a fight. I will have too many warriors on my side. I will be able to go about in peace with only the minimum of guards and I wont even notice they are there I will be so used to them. Well that is the plan, let us see if I can pull it off. I may have to add some mercenaries but I intend to win this thing. ( it has been a month since I have had a major attack and like that one I have been able to tell it to go away.)

I had far to much chocolate and sugar on top of one too many cups of tea. Now it didn't make a panic attack but it did leave me open to having one try. So I had to deal with the agitation which was bad enough to cause confusion.

None of the other panic symptoms were there just the restlesness and a mild sense of impending doom which I couldn't tell to go away this time. I think it was because it was still day time so I couldn't just go to sleep. Any way it only took two cups of lemon balm tea to stop it. So here we have one food that causes panic and one that stops it. Actually I don't think it causes it, I think it just leaves a person open to the panic that is always there.(fight or flight). I think that some people have a lower panic threshold, and I am one of them. Just another theory to work on.

I wonder where every one is. There weren't that many ready to leave the nest. I wonder if they gave up or if they think there good enough to go it on there own. Guess I'll never know, Guess it doesn't matter. If they are celebrating there success some where else it seems a little selfish to me since they didn't do it on there own. It would be nice to hear them say "I won". It would also be a big boost for those left behind still struggling. Oh well I quess that's just the times. I'm tempted to start a new topic just to see if there is any one out there.  Oh hell maybe I scared them away. I think I just want to know every one is alright since this is such a lousy condition to have.

Bordering on depression today. Over did it yesterday and I'm paying for it today. Medication will only cover so much pain. Well I do have morphine but wont use it. Withdrawal sucks. It really messes with my mind. So here I am in quite a bit of pain. This is depressing even though I know it will go. Not totally but it will go. It plays on my mind, I have this little devil that keeps saying to me " why go on ". And why? I guess because I still have a few projects to finish. It amazes me how much better my projects are off the Meds. (panic meds) Oh I still make the odd bit of crap. When the Staph was at it's peak I had pain so bad I thought I would pass out and I wanted to die but couldn't find the means or opportunity. I was in the hospital and watched pretty close. That was where I learned that if you really have nothing left to live for that all the SSRI's in the world wont work. You really have to want to live. Just the opposite of all the people thinking there going to die. I wanted to and couldn't. So now here I am quite crippled in pain having to have some one come into my house once a week and do the cleaning that I can't. Makes a person appreciate the good moments. Also frustrates the hell out of me when I see people not try. People with a lot more to live for than me just give up too easily. But it is there life and there decision. There is a lot to that saying "you don't know what you got till it's gone." So if I disappear for a while it's just cause I'm frustrated. Any way the project is roughed out and glued so I can sit and think about it. It's something new and it's not quite how I planned it, but it will be a learning experience. I might even make another without the mistakes. But maybe not. Some times you just have to move on.

I woke up at 5:30 with a bit of anxiety and decided that it was too early to get up so I just said I'm not doing this and went back to sleep. 6 months ago I would have gone into full panic. It must have been still bothering me because although I got another 3 hours sleep I woke up tired. It was quite a bit warmer so I got on the tractor and cleared the snow out of the driveway. Near froze my but off. The wind went right through me. The tractor is a noisy diesel but the noise didn't bother me. Spent some time in my shop after with some noisy tools. Again it didn't bother me. I think it's because I was doing things I enjoy. No sooner did I have the driveway clean when it started to snow again. That didn't bother me either. I looked through my journal and there hasn't been any panic in a while. I didn't have to read it because I type in panic or anxiety in colour depending how bad it was. Yellow, orange or red. No colour for a while. Not even when I was taking the celexa for those two days. Just nausea and a headache. I wish it was warmer so I could do more exposure work. I'm so close to having this gone but there are still things that bother me and I want to work on them. I'm still using the lamp, still taking Calcium and limiting the amount of black tea. And it's tough because I like Black tea. Still charting each day.