Okay so like

[kaberett]

I'm reading this self-help guide about panic attacks by the Clinical Centre for Interventions (.au) and it's just so... alien to so much of my experience?

For example: I'm not scared of panic attacks in the way they seem to be suggesting? They're inconvenient and they give me a hangover and I'd rather not have them, but I'm not afraid of them. And: monitoring my body constantly doesn't make them worse, it makes me better.

I'm also finding it difficult to sort out how much of the advice just doesn't apply to me because of interacting conditions. Like: yes, taking unfamiliar public transport is terrifying, but that's because of sensory overload and the microaggressions I get as a wheelchair user and fear of the time & energy it'll take to get myself unlost if I miss my stop? And the social energy it takes to fake being human while interacting with drivers etc, and the fact that it's not unlikely that a random stranger will start asking me personal and invasive questions about my medical situation and I won't know how to get them to stop without risking escalation, and so on and so forth.

However I do need to grumpily stare at the Core Beliefs module some more. I think I'm already doing most of the things they suggest - e.g. recognising that my desire to ask for reassurance all the damn time does not mean reassurance is actually helpful - but trying to think of ways to effectively challenge t'others of them as opposed to filing them under "belief not knowledge" and ignoring might be good for me?

Comments

[highlyeccentric]

huh those guys are really pretty decent, aren't they?

*glares at the list* FINE i'll do the procrastination modules FINE. I could even tell my shrink?

[kaberett]

steer clear of the depression one it's a bit awful (contains ED triggers and the OVERCOMING! DEPRESSION! WITHOUT MEDS!~ narrative, which I loathe and despise) but t'others I've poked at have been at least thought-provoking.

[highlyeccentric]

Huh, I looked through the first depression module and the list of the remaining modules and it looked like bog standard intro CBT to me. Which I've done. Thought diaries don't help me, I overthink them too much.

[littlebutfierce]

I haven't looked at their other stuff but I really like their distress tolerance workbooks -- I mean I haven't, uh, actually sat down & done the exercises, but I really need to -- even just skimming them I thought they made a lot of sense to my brain.

Oooh also the thing about asking for reassurance even when it's not helpful -- ooh I uh may do that quite a lot.

[sebastienne]

Hmm, some of that sounds like it's describing Panic Disorder, which IIRC isn't a diagnosis you have? (All that meta-stuff like "panicking about the possibility of having a panic attack" is a real vicious-circle of a state to be in, for sure, but it isn't the ONLY way to have panic attacks.)

So yes: take the stuff that's useful to you, and let the rest fall. <3

[kaberett]

lolololol steer clear of the one on depression it's terrible

(currently poking at distress intolerance)

[shanaqui]

e.g. recognising that my desire to ask for reassurance all the damn time does not mean reassurance is actually helpful

God, this one is so hard, isn't it?

[untonuggan]

I feel like panic attacks just annoy me? (Goddammit, this again??)

I am more scared of sitting in a restaurant in a middle table with my back exposed.

I am grateful to have read this, because I realized I ask for assurance *way less* than I used to. Um, not sure how that happened though.

[tree]

for a long time i wondered if what i was having were even panic attacks because i've never had the fear of having a panic attack, either. then i discovered that most people i know who have panic attacks don't experience it. so i've decided that one just doesn't count.