Anxiety is out of control!

I'm really not coping at all today. My anxiety is the worst it has been for years and I have absolutely no reason why. It came on at 2am last night and I was in a state of panic until I finally managed to fall asleep at 8am. It feels horrendous and I don't know what to do to make it a bit more bearable! How the hell did I use to cope with this all the time?!

I can't stop thinking...panicking...shaking. I want to escape, but to where? I'm in my house, my safe place. I have nowhere to escape to except outside and I don't think that will help matters! I've done 2 relaxation CD's, which helped slightly but not anywhere near enough. I tried going for a bath (metaphorically wash away the anxiety?) but that didn't help...actually made things worse. I've since took a b vitamin complex, it's worth a try!

It's 2.30am and I haven't even lay down to attempt to go to sleep, in fact, i'm dreading that moment. I know my anxiety will be intensified, my own fault obviously!

I just want it to go away!

Rant

Lately I'm becoming more aware of how much my life revolves around anxiety, obviously I'm always aware of the anxiety but what I mean is that without I'm not sure what would happen if I didn't have it anymore? I basically live and breathe anxiety. It's always on my mind; it affects every decision I make; It affects how I interact with people; It affects how I feel about myself and I suppose it has become my 'main identity'. I can't help but feel that if it was no longer a part of me I'd feel just as lost as I did when I first started to suffer badly from it.

I'm also starting to question if, subconsciously, I'm holding on to anxiety as a safety net. If I continue to hide behind anxiety I'll never have to face life, I'll never have to do things that are difficult or that I don't want to do. I'll never have to fail at anything because I don't have to try... I'm agoraphobic... I can't do it! I can't come to any other conclusion as to why I can't beat this, half the time I don't even try hard enough to overcome it. If I really do want to overcome it then why am I not outside at least trying to walking up the street. Even If I only got 2 steps from my door on my own, It would be a start and more than yesterday. Why can't I stick to listening to the relaxation CD's everyday? It's not like I have anything else to fill my days with. Why haven't the hypnosis, NLP, Human givens, CBT, Exposure therapy etc... not been effective for me?

I know that this post seems to be really negative. That's not my intention and I'm not actually feeling down or in a negative frame of mind. I guess I'm just questioning my anxiety and coming to the realisation that I control my anxiety. I doesn't control me. I surrender to to my anxious thoughts and feeling without fighting. I'm not trying hard enough. I'm now at  the stage where I have nothing in my life except anxiety. I don't know how to function without it. I don't know how to have a pointless conversation with someone about say, the weather, yet due to years of therapy, I can talk about 'how I feel'...etc, without any trouble.

Do I work? - No, I'm agoraphobic

Do I have a boyfriend? No, I'm agoraphobic

Do I have kids? No, I'm agoraphobic

Do I go on holidays? No, I'm agoraphobic

Do I have friends? No, I'm agoraphobic

I'm allowing these thoughts and feelings to overtake all aspects of my life and unless I change it, it will be like this forever. 

Challenging Thoughts Or Behaviours

Describe Your Problem

Write down the nature of your problem and include your safety behaviours (things you do to try and prevent your feared catastrophe). Phrase the problem in your own words and make a note of how the problem negatively affects your life.

Formulate Your Problem

Decide on what you think will happen if you try out a new way of thinking or behaving in real life.

Execute An Experiment 

Think of a way of putting a new belief or behaviour to the test in a real life situation. Try to devise more than one way to test out your prediction.

Examine Results 

Look to see whether your prediction came true. If it didn't, check you've learned from the results of the experiment.

Rate Your Prediction from 0% - 100%

Identifying Thinking Errors

I was looking at an old anxiety workbook last night and came across a piece of paper which I had wrote a long list of questions down which you might ask yourself to identify thinking errors. I decided I'd type them up here, they might help you, they might not. So the questions were:

Am I jumping to the worst possible conclusion? (Catastrophising)


Am I thinking in extreme - all or nothing - terms? (Black and white thinking)


Am I using words like 'always' and 'never' to draw generalised conclusions from a specific event? (Overgeneralising)


Am I predicting the future instead of waiting to see what happens? (fortune-telling?)


Am I jumping to conclusions about what other people are thinking of me? (Mind-reading)


Am I focusing on the negative and overlooking the positive? (Mental Filtering)


Am I discounting positive information or twisting a positive into a negative? (Disqualifying the positive)


Am I globally putting myself down as a failure, useless or worthless? (labelling)


Am I listening too much to my negative gut feelings instead of looking at the objective facts? (Emotional Reasoning)


Am I taking an event or someone's behaviour too personally or blaming myself and overlooking other factors? (Personalising)


Am I using words like 'should', 'must', 'ought' and 'have' in order to make rigid rules about myself, the world or other  people? (Demanding)


Am I telling myself that something is too difficult or unbearable or that 'I can't stand it', when actually it's hard to bear but it is bearable and worth tolerating? (Low Frustration Tolerance)

I don't have a clue where I got these questions from, I wish I did because they're reaffirming that I am suffering from anxiety (not anything more sinister!). Out of the 12 questions, I am guilty of 10 of them...that's a lot and far too negative! The good thing is I'm now able to recognise this and work on addressing it.