I'm glad you got a vacation but it doesn't sound like much of a vacation. Having to work, being stressed and fights with your wife. Yes depression is anger turned inward. And also with anger is about the pain and fear underneath it. And the reality is if the pain were healed and you were able to completely in your body (more often than not as we are not perfect and it's about progress) you would not be reaching for external means to make you feel better. Ok so back to anger....anger=pain+fear...so the fear and pain generally underneath the anger rooted in the past and not necessarily about the present although triggered in the present, in general there are 7 categories of pain and 2 main fears.
Pain categories
Mental
Emotional
Physical
Social
Spiritual
Sexual
Fiscal
Just looking at these at face value does anything jump out as maybe an u healed area that lingers under the surface? And also there is current ongoing pain that you have in your life. You mentioned daily panic attacks triggered by all sorts of things. What are some of the kinds of triggers and what help you get through them? I'm also wondering what things you can begin to do today..,to incorporate From the you you see in the future and bring it more in the present?
Mental -- My panic attacks give me a great deal of mental pain
Emotional -- I went through a significant amount of physical, emotional and (limited) sexual abuse from my mother growing up. I thought I had dealt with it a long time ago. I have forgiven her and we now have a relationship again.
Physical -- I currently don’t suffer from physical pain
Social -- I have always been very socially awkward. I used to have very low self esteem and while that has improved, I am still fairly shy and unable to talk to strangers. I took the MBTI assessment today and was rated an Introvert
Spiritual -- I don’t have any spiritual pain. I’m on a spiritual journey to explore my beliefs
Sexual -- the sexual pain is that I don’t have sex and I want it.
Fiscal -- I don’t have too much fiscal pain
I’ve suffered from panic attacks all my life. For the past 10 years or so, I was able to control them with antidepressants. The attacks are triggered when I am in a mentally stressful situation. Ever since my son was born, I have not been able to control my attacks and have gotten them daily. Mostly, I worry about him and his future. I obsess over all the terrible fates some children have and end up scaring myself into an attack. My triggers could be anything from a word to something I see. I know from experience that balloons, playground swings and loud noises trigger my attacks. It could be loud music or if a child is crying loudly or a loud sound. Also, objects that are round or go around in circles trigger panic attacks such as Ferris wheels and merry go rounds. Sometimes watching my son spin around in a circle will trigger an attack.
You say you have suffered from panic attacks "all your life" how old were you when you have your first memory of panic attack and also what physically happens to you now when you get them...how do you experience them? Do you know the connection to the playground, loud noise, spinning things?
All my life I have been afflicted with obsessive thoughts. Lately it has surrounded the safety of my son, my health and my fear of not living long enough to see him grow up. My fear is that I will not be around to guide him throughout his years as a teenager and young adult.
The only learning disability I know of is that I read very slowly. I need to read every word on the page in order to grasp the meaning. In school, I would only complete a third of the reading assignment in a timed setting as anyone else. This caused me to stop reading all together. To this day I love listening to recorded books even though I am fully capable of reading a book (albeit very slowly). I suppose I didn’t realize it at the time but there was a lot of pain associated with that disability.
I know that generally speaking my panic attacks are triggered as a response to stress in my life. The attacks used to manifested themselves as physical symptoms however increasingly they have been more mental in nature. It is the classic overwhelming sense of doom and gloom that over takes my mind. I have uncontrollable mental images of my son driving off a cliff at the age of 16 or going higher and higher on a playground swing or some other unimagined tragedy that requires the police to come to the door to notify me of my son’s demise.
I feel like these panic attacks make me weak and that part of my personality frustrates me. I'm not sure I know how to change that. There is a course that's part of the military Special Forces training that is specifically designed to weed out people who don’t have the mental toughness required to do whatever it takes. Sometimes I think about that; how there are people who can function in very stressful environments for prolonged periods of time. They have a certain type of inner strength that lets them do their job effectively.
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