Purposefully Making Myself Anxious.

[Emily The Strange]

Recently I've not been doing so well and every time I feel slightly happy I will do something to make myself anxious as a way of punishing myself.

I had a good day with my boyfriend on Sunday and since then I have repeatedly caused myself anxiety. I have listened to music that I know triggers negative emotions, I have watched programmes and films that contain distressing images to me and I have forced myself to think about my trauma but not in a constructive way.

I'm not entirely sure why I do this to be honest and I certainly don't know how to stop myself.

I wondered if anyone else has every done this to themselves or has any advice on how to stop myself.

I do want to get better and help myself but subconsciously I can't let myself be happy.

How do I fight myself?

 

[I Can Do This]

Yes - I know what this is.

Imagine that our nervous systems are vortices - there is a red one which is our fear and anxiety - and there is a blue one which is love, calm and peaceful. When we have PTSD we only seem to know what it is like to live in the red vortex. To constantly feel that discomfort and edginess - even if we don't like it, it is still what we know.

When you had your good weekend, you spent time in the blue vortex. You were flowing, you were grounded and feeling connected. But you are waiting for the shoe to drop ........and it it hasn't dropped yet, when is it going to drop? So you are doing things to put your nervous system back into the fear and anxiety vortex because then you know what to expect.

I think there is this underlying belief that if you feel good, then something has to go wrong so you can't enjoy it and allow it to stay. So if you feel bad already, you believe you will be saved from further pain. Wondering when it is going to hit is worse when you are feeling good, so you you do it to yourself so nothing worse can hurt you.

You don't fight yourself - you learn to nurture yourself, trust yourself and allow yourself to be in a good mood without sabatoging yourself. You stop the stories that tell you not to trust it, and you don't take part in behaviors that take you back into the red vortex. The red vortex is scary to us - I get that - but you can at least time yourself and say okay I spent 15 minutes being happy and tomorrow I will spend 20 minutes. It is a practice getting comfortable with the sensations of happiness when you have always braced yourself for trauma.

 

[Emily The Strange]

Thank you I Can DO This.

I will have to try and visualise the idea of living in two different vortexes. It does sound exactly right though.

The idea of allowing myself to be happy for 15minutes goes against everything I have taught myself in the last 18months but it is similar to something my therapist has asked me to try in the past. I was told to spend less time thinking about things that make me happy and then stopping myself from doing them and see it more as allowing myself time to be less miserable. This way I shouldn't feel as guilty or afraid of being happy and safe as all I was doing was reducing the intensity of misery. I didn't really give myself a chance to try this when it was first suggested but maybe now time has passed an I understand better I can give it a go.

I want to live my life in the blue vortex and be content there.

 

[I Can Do This]

Hi Emily! I'm so glad that made sense to you. What I was talking about is a new form of therapy called Somatic Experiencing. I just finished my beginning level training yesterday. I also know it works because it is the only form of therapy that has helped me with my trauma residual.

If you are interested in knowing more there are books written by Dr. Peter Levine - he developed this method - called Waking the Tiger, and other books.

You are so used to the red vortex that it is basically all your nervous system knows. Even though you don't like it, it is still familiar to your body. And now your brain has worn deep grooves with this pattern and it also wants to help you feel this state quickly. What SE will do is help you create new pathways to better emotional states - to be able to trust them - and by doing this you starve the other pathways of anxiety and have more pathways that are healthier. Alot of what we feel is the well worn pathways from prolonged emotional states. It is very much like addiction, this is how your body copes and it goes into it automatically. So changing our emotional states is the same sensation as breaking an addiction - it feels unfamiliar and therefore scary.

One of the hardest things I had to learn early on is that one vortex is not better than the other. We cannot have the goal of only living in the blue vortex. That will not make us whole again - and that is what we desperately need, to be whole and be able to face life and what it brings. If we can only handle the blue - then we are right back in the same problem when the red hits us. So begin to meditate on the fact that the red vortex is there to protect you from harm - and at some point you were not protected by those around you and this is why you are stuck there. You CAN heal and become whole - and you can get to a place where the blue is familiar and you can trust it - AND you can also manage the red when it comes.

I recommend finding someone in your area that is certified in SE - it works differently than traditional therapy. This method can heal you without talking about the story. In fact, talking about the story does not heal us or we would have been healed the first time we told it. This is why I feel traditional therapy is becoming more obsolete. It just doesn't move us forward in our lives - and not at as rapid a pace as newer methods.