If you're suffering from anxiety, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) really can help you. That's where I'd point first if I knew someone with mild to moderate anxiety who needed help.
From experience, anxiety fades as you choose to face the things that make you anxious, over and over and over again. Over time, you'll develop processes that will help you manage your anxiety. You'll become more resilient, more open to new experiences, and much happier.
I liken it to this quote of Marcus Aurelius:
"The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."
harder part of CBT is step one: identifying the bad behaviour.
usually doctors (or partners playing doctors as the case of the article) is too eager to move to action that they completely misses the point and the patient spend years just changing the background. for example, as listed in the article (not saying it was the case there), she wasted years retraining for a job change, when the trigger might have been the job putting her in a situation that triggered childhood trauma. nothing says that the new job won't put her in the same situation trigger but with different ambiance... the immediate improvement may just be the lack of 4 hour commute, which kills even non-anxiety sufferers.
not saying it is wrong or bad. but please, think trhu before any life change. while keeping in mind that at some point a significant life change will be necessary.
While generally I agree, I'd strongly suggest those who are, or suspect they are, on 'the spectrum' to do some research first. There's some evidence that 'classic' CBT can actually be counter-productive in that case (sorry I can't find the study/studies I read on this).
Personally, CBT was vaguely helpful when I underwent it under active supervision (weekly therapy sessions). But no more helpful than the regular meditation I'd managed off and on in the years before that.
But left to my own devices, I feel CBT only left me more anxious and confused than before, because while it makes the connection with my body and emotional state stronger, it leaves me all the more baffled about how to deal with it. Which increases my anxiety and leaves me worse off than before.
I'm not saying this is always the case, but I do urge those on the spectrum to make sure that their therapist is properly trained to deal with the sometimes subtle but significant differences between the 'average' client and the 'atypical' one. Mine wasn't, and it's left me feeling worse than before I went through the mental health wringer.
> We took control by joining a new doctors surgery — one that we’d researched and knew they had a good range of doctors who specialised in mental health in some form.
What does this sentence mean? Did she get surgery? As a non-native speaker, I find this hard to parse.
Also, it appears to me that the author is trying to guilt trip people into spending their life with somebody who is mentally ill. While I applaud him for his patience and support, I'd like to point out that from an utilitarist view, it is sometimes preferrable to be happy alone than to be miserable together.
In the UK at least a "doctors' surgery" is synonymous with a doctors' clinic, practice, or plain office - just a place where you'll find a concentration of general practitioners.
My wife has some crippling mental issues (severe PTSD, anxiety, depression, etc.). I've found supporting her through it has pushed me to be better at everything I do in life.
This sounds like my wife and I three months ago. I had never personally experienced extreme anxiety, and when it came on to her full force I felt so helpless. It was completely debilitating, she couldn't just be.
We came to the conclusion that the root of her anxiety was work related, even though she had a mostly stress free job that paid well. Her boss was also very understanding of her situation, allowing her extra sick time, work from home, etc. I was reluctant to agree to let her quit, but quitting was the best decision we made.
This experience really shed a light on how shitty mental health resources can be. We live in Austin, and I couldn't believe how difficult it was for her to get an appointment that wasn't a month out and took our insurance. When you are suffering the last thing you want to hear is denial over and over again when trying to see a doctor. Thankfully we found someone through a family friend. Her quitting coupled with therapy has helped tremendously, we are in a much better place now.
Pretty normal here. Getting an appointment for anything physical takes 1 day for the usual stuff, cardiologist between 1-3 months, psychologist 9 months to a year. So good luck with your mental health, your professional appointment is only a year away!
From the same boat, I concur with everything in TFA. Funny detail to me, I've been at this exactly twice as long as the author. Ten years together for my partner and I, now two married on top of that.
I'll add my experience in the hope it helps others. We should form a meet up, or at least a mailing list. I bet there are a lot of us here.
The Absolute Best Thing You Can Do in this situation: Learn to recognize and manipulate your own emotional states. Take control over what you bring into the room.
On the worst days, your partner will have little no of this ability themselves. Pick up that slack and things get better faster.
Read Covey, Carneige, and Cialdini for starters. They will together persuade you that you're much more susceptible to the emotion of a moment than you thought you were. And, you'll learn to see how others have controlled the emotions you've felt in the past, to drive your behaviors. It feels like magic, like cheat codes, when it clicks. And that click is the beginning of a real empathy for what you're seeing in them.
You'll also learn how to get someone talking effectively about emotions in a way that loosens the hold, and gets the logical part of the brain re-engaged.
Reading and talking are great, but there's so much more. Find a hobby or group that forces your hand to work nonverbal communication skills. You need somewhere to practice reading others' cues and responding with your own.
Work that long enough, and you'll start to see impending anxiety before your partner experiences the brunt of it. You'll also see the anxiety states they weren't telling you about, some of which they didn't recognize as anxiety either.
At that point, you've leveled up your own emotional awareness you can start leading your partner (mostly nonverbally, sometimes in detailed conversation) to raise their own. That inspires confidence. Confidence is what you want, it's the long con (ha), and a few victories in a row will let the both of you reach for new goals: things that seemed impossible months or years ago just aren't anymore. IMHO, that's the best life.
Also look into meditation. Not to the degree that it causes anxiety, but just as something to play around with.
Despite recent posts to the contrary, there's decent evidence that it works, and the (real) risks of it causing further problems seem to only be an issue when you get serious about the whole thing (retreats, 1h+ sessions).
But even just the basic stuff like taking a walk for 30 mins and practicing the quieting of your mind, or even just five minutes of doing so, might help immensely and AFAIK carries no risks.
I can highly recommend the Headspace app, but really I'd say at least at first it's pretty simple: just go for a walk, or sit somewhere, and look around. Watch the clouds or any life around you. Or something like that. When your mind goes places far away from your direct environment, acknowledge that, acknowledge where it went and, if you want, mark it as something to think, analyze, and/or obsess over at a later time (why did I go there? does it matter? am I just being anxious? I should be less anxious. what can I do to be less anxious, etc.)
It's not solved my problems, in part because it's damn hard to even just do this. But it's achievable, and whenever I do I wonder why I didn't start earlier. Because even that tiny bit of time where I manage to 'just be', it's a reminder of how nice the company of my own mind can be, that it doesn't have to be a constant struggle, and that there's good stuff worth struggling for.
Did anyone else find the tone of this article just a touch self-congratulatory?
When I want to hear about mental disease, I want to hear about it from the actual sufferer.
Otherwise, even someone willing to try to do the work is somehow a hero because the ill person is a burden. Focusing on the supporter takes away from how mental health is harder for the sick person, not the person who supported them (until it wasn't for me!).
If I heard people talk about a partner with cancer or MS this way, I don't think this would be a nice article anymore.
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 61.4 ms ] threadFrom experience, anxiety fades as you choose to face the things that make you anxious, over and over and over again. Over time, you'll develop processes that will help you manage your anxiety. You'll become more resilient, more open to new experiences, and much happier.
I liken it to this quote of Marcus Aurelius:
"The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."
usually doctors (or partners playing doctors as the case of the article) is too eager to move to action that they completely misses the point and the patient spend years just changing the background. for example, as listed in the article (not saying it was the case there), she wasted years retraining for a job change, when the trigger might have been the job putting her in a situation that triggered childhood trauma. nothing says that the new job won't put her in the same situation trigger but with different ambiance... the immediate improvement may just be the lack of 4 hour commute, which kills even non-anxiety sufferers.
Personally, CBT was vaguely helpful when I underwent it under active supervision (weekly therapy sessions). But no more helpful than the regular meditation I'd managed off and on in the years before that.
But left to my own devices, I feel CBT only left me more anxious and confused than before, because while it makes the connection with my body and emotional state stronger, it leaves me all the more baffled about how to deal with it. Which increases my anxiety and leaves me worse off than before.
I'm not saying this is always the case, but I do urge those on the spectrum to make sure that their therapist is properly trained to deal with the sometimes subtle but significant differences between the 'average' client and the 'atypical' one. Mine wasn't, and it's left me feeling worse than before I went through the mental health wringer.
What does this sentence mean? Did she get surgery? As a non-native speaker, I find this hard to parse.
Also, it appears to me that the author is trying to guilt trip people into spending their life with somebody who is mentally ill. While I applaud him for his patience and support, I'd like to point out that from an utilitarist view, it is sometimes preferrable to be happy alone than to be miserable together.
http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2011/09/if-a-british-d...
We came to the conclusion that the root of her anxiety was work related, even though she had a mostly stress free job that paid well. Her boss was also very understanding of her situation, allowing her extra sick time, work from home, etc. I was reluctant to agree to let her quit, but quitting was the best decision we made.
This experience really shed a light on how shitty mental health resources can be. We live in Austin, and I couldn't believe how difficult it was for her to get an appointment that wasn't a month out and took our insurance. When you are suffering the last thing you want to hear is denial over and over again when trying to see a doctor. Thankfully we found someone through a family friend. Her quitting coupled with therapy has helped tremendously, we are in a much better place now.
The previous discussion almost a year ago has a lot of great advice, including this (confirmed by several):
>physcab: [do] not take on the role of mental health professional in your relationship
>Broken_Hippo: I should have insisted on some therapy for myself as well
Mental health issues carry such a stigma even though there is usually some degree of a hardware/physical problem involved.
I'll add my experience in the hope it helps others. We should form a meet up, or at least a mailing list. I bet there are a lot of us here.
The Absolute Best Thing You Can Do in this situation: Learn to recognize and manipulate your own emotional states. Take control over what you bring into the room.
On the worst days, your partner will have little no of this ability themselves. Pick up that slack and things get better faster.
Read Covey, Carneige, and Cialdini for starters. They will together persuade you that you're much more susceptible to the emotion of a moment than you thought you were. And, you'll learn to see how others have controlled the emotions you've felt in the past, to drive your behaviors. It feels like magic, like cheat codes, when it clicks. And that click is the beginning of a real empathy for what you're seeing in them.
You'll also learn how to get someone talking effectively about emotions in a way that loosens the hold, and gets the logical part of the brain re-engaged.
Reading and talking are great, but there's so much more. Find a hobby or group that forces your hand to work nonverbal communication skills. You need somewhere to practice reading others' cues and responding with your own.
Work that long enough, and you'll start to see impending anxiety before your partner experiences the brunt of it. You'll also see the anxiety states they weren't telling you about, some of which they didn't recognize as anxiety either.
At that point, you've leveled up your own emotional awareness you can start leading your partner (mostly nonverbally, sometimes in detailed conversation) to raise their own. That inspires confidence. Confidence is what you want, it's the long con (ha), and a few victories in a row will let the both of you reach for new goals: things that seemed impossible months or years ago just aren't anymore. IMHO, that's the best life.
Despite recent posts to the contrary, there's decent evidence that it works, and the (real) risks of it causing further problems seem to only be an issue when you get serious about the whole thing (retreats, 1h+ sessions).
But even just the basic stuff like taking a walk for 30 mins and practicing the quieting of your mind, or even just five minutes of doing so, might help immensely and AFAIK carries no risks.
I can highly recommend the Headspace app, but really I'd say at least at first it's pretty simple: just go for a walk, or sit somewhere, and look around. Watch the clouds or any life around you. Or something like that. When your mind goes places far away from your direct environment, acknowledge that, acknowledge where it went and, if you want, mark it as something to think, analyze, and/or obsess over at a later time (why did I go there? does it matter? am I just being anxious? I should be less anxious. what can I do to be less anxious, etc.)
It's not solved my problems, in part because it's damn hard to even just do this. But it's achievable, and whenever I do I wonder why I didn't start earlier. Because even that tiny bit of time where I manage to 'just be', it's a reminder of how nice the company of my own mind can be, that it doesn't have to be a constant struggle, and that there's good stuff worth struggling for.
When I want to hear about mental disease, I want to hear about it from the actual sufferer.
Otherwise, even someone willing to try to do the work is somehow a hero because the ill person is a burden. Focusing on the supporter takes away from how mental health is harder for the sick person, not the person who supported them (until it wasn't for me!).
If I heard people talk about a partner with cancer or MS this way, I don't think this would be a nice article anymore.