Panick attacks and anxiety

Hi,

So it's been a while since i last blogged, but i've decided to start blogging again to share my self-development journey with the world.


 "when love is absent, fear is the replacement, climb out of the darkness you've created and step intoo the light"

My story

Today i want to write about panick attacks and general anxiety. I experienced my first panick attack about 6 months ago, and it was horrifying. It's probably the worst thing i have ever experienced, i think it's something only those who have experienced a panick attack can really understand.

My first panick attack i thought i was loosing my mind, it felt like being on a bad drug trip ( not that i have eve been on one, but that's the only thing i can compare it to). After my first panick attack i was so scared and terrified to experience it again that i started having anxiety for the anxiety itself. This anixety was with me 24/7. From the time i woke up to the time i went to bed i was constantly obsessing, after a while it got so bad that i started getting afraid of even leaving my home ( because what IF i had a panick attack in public).

I tried about everything ( i went to the emergency room at the hospital more times then i can count), i tried hypnosis, healing, self-hypnosis, and counseling. When i got to the point that i started to be afraid of being alone, i realized that i needed to really make a change. At the time a friend told me about a audio tape program that helped him. The program is called "attacking anxiety and depression by Lucinda Basett.

Lucinda has been couching people suffering from anixety and panick attacks for 14 years. In the audio tapes she describes the personality traits of people suffering from anxiety and panick attacks and i could relate at once.


Here is the most common traits;

• Negative

• Afraid to say NO ( set bounderies )

• "What if" thinkers ( always thinks of a worst case scenario) 

• Intravert

• Low selfesteem

• Perfectionists

• Hard working ( always overworking or doing more then they really need to)

• Has too high expectations for themselfes

I could not believe how much i could relate to this. I realized that I was creating the anxiety and panick attack myself. It was not some force outside of myself that came to attack me. I was attacking myself. Realizing this i believe panick attacks and anxiety is the best thing that have ever happened to me because it made me realize that i was not happy with my life our myself at all.

Because i know how extremly hard and scary it can be to experience panick attacks and anixety i want to help you overcome this by telling you what i did;

1. I started tracking my negative thoughts ( everytime i had a negative thought i wrote it down, and replaced it with a positive thought ). Doing this made me realize how negative i was ( and i really thought i was a positive person. And i was...when it came to others, just not when it came to my life or myself.

2. Through my spiritual self-development journey i've been aware of the fact that i could'nt say NO, or set healthy bounderies for myself. I realized this a few years back and started working on putting my own needs before others. You are your own best friend, and if you don't take care of yourself, noeone else will!! If people ask you for a favour, and get mad because you say NO they are not a good friend at all. And they might just be asking you because they know you always say yes..

3. I started challening my WHAT IF thoughts. "What if i have a panick attack on the bus...the mall, at work.. ( the list is long). SO WHAT if i have a panick attack on the bus? Will it kill me? Will anyone even notice? So what if people think i'm crazy? I always pictured that i would go crazy and start to run around screaming.... but when i think about it i've never done that during a panick attack so why the heck would i be afraid of such a thing? It's just the fear talking. The worst thing that could actually happen if i had a panick attack on the bus is that i would have to get of the bus. OH NO, can you imagine such a catastrophy?!

4. I started really working on my inner perfectionist. I spent so much time making my home perfect, every day ( could not have a messy home...what would my man think of me? what if there were people coming over on short notice? I was so insecure about myself that i thought my home and my appareance was an indication to how much i was worth. I've always been a perfectionist when it comes to my looks as well. Could not leave my home without makeup or without fixing my hair.
I've slowly learned to let this go. If people judge me based on how i look i don't really want to have them in my life anyways.
My look or my home is not a reflection of my inner qualities as a human being. It says nothing about me as a person at all. YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH just as you are! You don't have to do anything to be accepted or to be loved, you are perfect just the way you are.


5. Instead of always cleaning and dusting and fixing non important stuff, start doing the stuff you actually LOVE. Go out an enjoy nature, dance, read, listen to music, work out, do whatever it is that makes you happy and puts a smile on your mouth. The past 6 months i did'nt do any of the things that made me happy, i did'nt even notice myself. I have a goal of doing something i love for at least 1 hour a day.

6. I think this is the most important one; work on your selfesteem. I was scared to death everytime i experienced anxiety or panick attacks. I would always go to a friend, call my boyfriend, or run to the emergency room at the hospital. I did'nt realize why before i started listetning to Lucinda's audiotaped. I did not think i could cope, or get through it by myself. I thought someone or something outside of me had to save me. My self esteem was horrible! Or as i like to call it; my inner child. ( i will write more about inner child healing in another blogpost this week). Believe me; noeone can save you, you have to save yourself. This is the most important part of the recovery because you need to work on your self-esteem and show yourself that you can actually do it. You need to start believing in yourself. When you do you realize that you can do anything!

7. Dont fleed!
I was terrified of getting another panick attack, and if i did as i mentioned i always went somewhere, or i used distraction techniques like self hypnosis or breathing tecniques to cope. ( but i did'nt really cope, it was just as horrifying.
When you fleed, it will only get WORSE! It will offcourse pass, but you will constantly be scared to have another one. And the next time will be even worse. You have to meet your fear! Welcome the anxiety, and just allow yourself to be still and feel. And tell yourself that anxiety is just a feeling passing through, it does'nt last forever, it will pass. And really allow it to visit you, when you do i can assure you that it passes very soon. And you realize that is'nt not scary at all. Nothing happened at all....you did'nt die, or you didn't go crazy, and you were able to breathe. The more times you do this the better it gets. Stop looking for a safe place or a safe person, YOU are your safe person, and your safe place!


I hope my advice were helpful to someone out there going through this. I really recomend the Audio book my Lucinda Basett, and the one move technique;

Attacking-Anxiety-Depression-Program
Panick away book ( One move technique)



Much love,

A

Unwritten rules and social norms

I have decided to write about something that I've been thinking about allot lately. Have you ever questioned any of the unwritten rules and social norms in our society?

What I mean by unwritten rules are the social standards we follow that are not written in any place., but we’ve all learned them growing up. For example; "do not talk with food in the mouth", "respect those who are older than you" or "don’t paint your neighbor’s house just because you don’t like the colour".  I must say that I understand and agree with the last one.I wouldn’t like if someone just came and painted my house unnoticed.

 A few of these unwritten rules are created for a reason,  simply so we can all live together in a society, and that’s why they’ve become social norms.

These unwritten rules we’ve all learned, and they are created by ourselves. But, I must quite frankly say that many of these rules make me wonder, and I disagree very much with some of them. I think that many of these rules have created norms that do not do us much good.

It’s for example common to ask people how they are doing when you meet them. It seems like that is has become a "habit" to ask without remembering what these words really mean, and without really caring about this person at all. Another unwritten rule we have, especially here in Norway is that we're not outgoing when it comes to our feelings. So if anyone asks how we are doing, we respond "everything is great", although everything is everything else but great.

If anyone actually says that they’re not doing well, I've often seen that people are a little surprised, they know hardly what to say. It is expected that when you ask someone “how are you” they normally respond “I’m great” . Personally, I think this is weird, and I can't understand why we've created these norms like these.

Why can’t we be honest about feelings? I think that kids are so awesome. They cry when they are sad, they roar when they are angry, and they laugh and show joy when they are happy. Older people usually show emotions when they are happy, and have the habit of taking on a mask and keep it to themselves that they don't have it good. I do not judge all in the same way, many are good to show emotions and feel that it is natural, but I speak now on a general basis.

Another unwritten rule that I've never liked is that you should show older people respect. Why should we? Is it because the older you get the wiser you get so we have to respect those who are older? Age is just a number, I’ve seen many older people who behave as if they were significantly younger and vise versa. I do not think that all those who are older than you deserve your respect. My personal opinion is that all people should be treated equally, all deserve to be respected, both young as old. It seems that only the ones who are older than you should be respected.

I hope you don't misunderstand my message. It seems there are a lot of unwritten rules that are quite useful, but it seems too many can prevent us from being who we are or swallow things we don't want to swallow just because of that there’s an unwritten rule that exists in the community ,possibly created several centuries back. Society has changed since many of these rules were created, I think that we have to stop and change these rules from preventing us from being who we are.  And act in the way that feels natural for us, in sted of acting the way we are expected to act because of certain rules. When we keep on following the unwritten rues in certain situations that goes against what we really feel inside, we loose our personal strength and energy, because we are doing and act, something that is not real and goes against what we feel. Always act the way YOU feel. We are all different, so we should all act the way WE feel, instead of following norms and unwritten rules that are supposed to be followed by everyone in a society, even though we are all different. Certain rules does not fit with everyone, because we are not the same. Be who you truly are, not only will you feel better, but it will show, and that’s when people will truly admire you, because you speak your own thruth.

Were you provoked by this or do you perhaps agree? I am very curious about how YOU feel about this.

Love,
Amanda

Affirmations

In this post i'm gonna write a little bit about affirmations. I'm going to explain what it means to affirmate, and how you can use affirmations in your daily life to improve your mental attitude and health. I've only had positive experiences since i first started using affirmations myself. I wrote a littlebit about affirmations in my last blog post, but i want to explain some more and go a little deeper.

Affirmations can be an important tool to change your thought patterns and your reality to manifest the change you want in your life. 

 Every thought you have is a confirmation, whether it's negative or positive. Imagine that you look yourself in the mirror. You can either affirmate "I look good," or you can affirmate "I look terrible", both are affirmations, the only difference is that the first is positive. What you affirmeate on a daily basis creates your reality, whether on a conscious or on a unconscious level. Affirmations can be a very powerful tool. Practised on a daily basis you can change your life and your own mental attitude and how you feel about yourself.

What i mean with saying that what you affirmate daily creates your reality, I mean that what you daily confirm to yourself becomes your reality. You confirm something and then make it a fact!

For example, if you have the habit of saying to yourself  "I' always have bad luck." What happens then is that you convience yourself that the reality is that you always have bad luck, because your subconscious mind has confirmed it by thinking it, and therefor created this reality. And It will not change unless you change the thought patterns that have created this reality.

Maybe after reading this you're questioning how i can speak about reality and you're sceptic about if i even know what i'm talking about. Let's just clear that up before we go further. What is reality?? Do we all have the same reality? No we don't, we all have our own reality and our own personal perception of the world. Offcourse there are some facts that we all can agree on, like forexample that the sky is blue or that a zebra is called a zebra. But we all live in different realities. Some people not just only believes in god, they know he exists, and other people know that he does not exist, so we do have different realities. And offcourse, there is nothing wrong with that. That what's so fantastic, we can all choose what reality we want to live in.

In this post i'm talking about affirmations and that your own thoughts can create your reality. How is that possible? How can you change your reality with thoughts? Think about it. If your reality is that you are ugly or that you are not good enough..is that the reality? Or could it be your thoughts? It's your perception and understanding of reality based on your thoughts. 

Speaking on a energy level.; your thoughts and emotions are energy which are a result of your beliefs and personal perceptions of your reality. They are broadcast and sendt outward into the infinite field of "wave" energy and vibrate on a certain level.

Just like a radio sends out radio waves. The radio converts these electromagnetic waves, called a signal, into sound. And your thoughts and feelings vibrates at a certain level that shapes your reality. You can tune your radio on a certain frequency to listen to the radio channel you want to, and you can tune your thoughts to experience the reality that you want to.

Even our brain operates at different energy frequencies;

I also want to mention psycosymatic pain.  A psycosymatic pain is where the physical and the mental meet. A  physical illness has underlying psychological roots. Certain thought patterns and emotions about life can manifest as pain in the body. There is many books on the market today to help you determine what thought pattern created the spesific pain. Forexample stomach pain is related to fears. I want to suggest a great book if you are interested in learning more, it's a great tool to get started on healping yourself. The book is written by Louise L. Hay and it's called "You can heal your life"

You can use affirmations in all areas of your life. Health, confidence, relationships, etc. There are no limitations:) You can create your own affirmations, or you can buy a book to help you get started. I want to quote some of my favorite affirmations.

1. " I am free to be myself, and I give others the freedom to be who they are ".- Louise Hay

2. " I love and accept myself" - Louise Hay

3. " Life is simple and easy." - Louise Hay

If you stumble upon your old thought patterns while trying to think positive, i would advice you to not push those thoughts away and continue with the positive thinking. But to accept the negative thought patterns as a part of the process. We always need to accept to be able to let go. If we deny ourselves ( both our emotions and thoughts)  it will only keep the ball roling and we will meet our problem again and again. 


Please feel free to leave a comment, post a question or ask me anything if you need help or if it's anything that's unclear.

 Much love,

Amanda

To LOVE yourself...

I want to write about my personal thoughts on what it is to really LOVE yourself. In my opinion, to love yourself is to.. ;

Knowing that you are unique
Instead of comparing yourself with others, but to truly know and understand that each and every one of us, including youreself, is UNIQUE.
No one is better than others. There is no point in comparing ourselves with others around us. Neither friends, family, colleagues, or random people. It's not about comparing ourselves, it's about realizing that we all are a part of a giant puzzle, none of the pieces in a puzzle are alike. They are all different, and they are all just as important to make the puzzle complete.

Imagine if  "Lisa" compares herself with her friend in sports. What happens is that she'll might find out that her friend is better in synchronized swimming, and become depressed and feel bad and unsatisfied with herself. And then you have Lisa's friend again, who compares herself with Anne and  then she again finds out that Anne is better at tennis, and now she feels bad. Do you get  my point? We  may not be good in everything,
but we are all good at different things, each and every one of us has a talent and each and every one of us is unique.


Setting limits

Loving yourself is to set limits for yourself, and dare to say "No" every once in a while. This is what I call being a positive egoist. 

You have to help yourself first. How can you help others if you can not help yourself first?!

There are so many of us who have such difficulty when comes to helping ourselves first. A friend needs someone to talk to, a neighbor needs help, a family member needs help. Actually, you feel quite tired,
but again and again you put on your  big smile and play the role as the person that are always there to help. Again and again, and again.
And so on you continue until you literally have run over youself and YOUR needs. Now, perhaps
many people think that I encourage you to be selfish. But what is an egotist?
In everyday speech is often used as synonymous with selfishness, ruthless and irrational behavior, but in my opinion, to be a selfish person is someone who puts themself first, and someone who lives for themselves, instead of other. Thats why i use the term being a positive egoist. Offcourse i'm not saying you should not be polite or stand in the queue at the grocery store and wait for your turn just as everyone else. If you run to be the first one in the queue because you dont have much time, that's just being self-centered. Being celf-centered is a completely different thing if you ask me. By all means, i do not encourage you to stop helping someone in need or to stop being kind to other people,
there's a fine line betwen a pole and an ocen. But what i do encourage you to do is to know your own boundaries, and to say "No" when you honestly dont have the energy to help other. To dare to say no once in a while forces you to maintant your own personal well-being and energy, so you can help others wholeheartedly because you truly want to instead of being afraid of letting people or people's reactions. True friends do take no for an answer.



Do what you love 

Take the time to activities that gives the soul nourishment and pleasure, what these activities may be is very individualt.
For some it may be dancing, while for others it may be mounting climbing, fishing, sewing, etc. Find activities that gives you pleasure, that makes you forget  about the time, and take the time to enjoy your hobbies.
To Allow yourself to do something you enjoy doing instead of constantly thinking about what you "have to" and "should do" , which results in only living in the future instead of the present. Take time each day or once a week to do something you really want to.

Make your own choices

Make your own choises in life based on what YOU want,  do not make choices to please others because they want it or because it gives them the pleasure to see you go a spesific direction. Go your own way, listen to your own wishes. Sometimes it can be very hard to stand up for what you want to do, especially when it comes to our own family. I honestly think that some parents made mistake when they were young, and therefore they may be bitter and regret their bad choises, so they get pleasure in seeing their children do what they wanted to do. Thats understandable, but they may not understand that their children nay not be passionate about the same thing as they. We are all different. Offcourse you can live your life as your family or friends wants you to, but in the end i think you're gonna regret not staying true to your self and your wishes. Always follow your own dreams and do what you want to do.

Take responsibility for your own feelings

Taking responsibility for our own feelings and reactions, instead of blaming others. We all do it, we carry our feelings with us in a big old backpack. The longer you keep this backback on the heavier it gets. Often in life, we tend to blame everyone else around us and the world instead of taking responsibility for our own  feelings associated with different experiences. Sometimes a memory you carry on too is not negative itself, but it is the feeling associated with this memory you're holding on too that is negative. But offcourse, some of us do experience terrible and even traumatising events. You can not change what has happened in the past, but you can change your feelings related too it. 

Sometimes you may be struggeling with anger or getting easily irritated for reasons you dont know. Sometimes we know why we have negative emotions and we can relate them to past events, and sometimes we may not remember or know why we hold on to negative feelings. That's not of importance! The most important thing you can ever do when it comes to releasing negative feelings, wether it's related to other persons or not, is to ACCEPT them! Every time you feel jalousery, anger, sadness etc, always accept your own feelings. When you accept your feelings you're accepting yourself! Accepting our feelings is always the first step to release them. If you deny your feelings you're just gonna lock them up inside and carry them on with you. You have to accept them! When you've accepted them, you should allow yourself to feel, feel what you've been hiding fromyourself and been afraid to feel. If you feel like crying, cry. Dont hold the tears back. You've feel much lighter once you get it out.

You can do this on your own, you can combine it with meditation or you can see a proffesional to help you get started. There are many ways and a million of options. Do what feels best and natural too you.

Affirmate

Saying affirmations to the mind and body. .
What is an affirmation? An affirmation is a tool we can use to turn our mental attitude.
Every thought you have is an affirmation that creates your reality. Let's say you're in the bathroom in the morning and the first thing you think when you look in the mirror is "I look awful." That's an example of an affirmation. Or you maybe say to yourself  "wow, i look fantastic today" that's also an affirmation. The difference is that the first one was negative.
Working with affirmations can really help changing your mental attitude and self-esteem. I'm going to write more about affirmations in my next blog post.


Accept yourself

If you truly love yourself you need to accept yourself, every single part of yourself. Even the sides of you that you don't like or try to hide from yourself. I do believe we all are perfect, but i also mean that in order to realize it ourself we need to start accepting ourself just as we are. It's common to judge, to judge ourself and to judge others. The reasons to why we do this may be discussed, but we need to let go of this fear of being judge, and we need to stop judging ourselves and realize that we ARE perfect. 

If you jugde yourself how can you expect others to accept you? You need to accept yourself. And i do believe that in order to accept other you also need to accept yourself. Just try to think and notice when you judge others.. what are you judging them for? When we judge others it's always a part of ourselfe we are judging. We are judging others based upon something inside of us that we have not yet accepted in ourself. 

Maybe i'm provoking someone by writing what i just did. We often judge using the terms "good" or "bad". Some may ask themselfes how i can honestly say that it's impossible to judge a thief. If you judge a thief you're really not judging the person, you're judging his actions, and that's a different thing. But then again even judging someone's actions is strange.. because how can we judge someones actions without having been in their shoes and gone through what they have gone through?  Don't missunderstand me, i'm just trying to prove a point.  

Surround yourself with positive people

Cut off people that are negative our make you exhausted. Some people are just negative and have no positive
impact on you, all they do is make you tired and pull you down. Love yourself, surround yourself with positive people, people who do not make you tired and exhausted. Offcourse someone can have a bad day and complain a littlebit, but i'm talking about those who constantly have a bad day EVERY day, and who constantly expects you to sit and listen to all their problems. Life is to short, to waist your time and energy one people that make you tired or exhausted is just not worth it.


Tribute to collective consciousness

The world is a reflection of our collective consciousness. We create our world. If we want too change the world, we must begin with changing ourselves and beeing the change we want to see. To explain this better I will illustrate with an example. The feelings and thoughts we have affect everything around us. we are energy, and what we think and feel has a specific energetic frequency that sends out vibes.

Just think about it.. if there is two rooms, and in the first room there is a really exited and happy person, and then in the next there is a extremly angry person. If you would go into the room with your eyes blinded, don't you think you would kind of feel in wich room the angry person is and in wich room the happy person is?  
If you have a bad and negative attitude you will attract negative people and situations. Try to remember the last time you had a bad day. For example, you loose your bus, and you think "typical, it's one of  "those Days" .. what happened next? The rest of the day was followed by such "typical" events where everything that can possibly go wrong goes wrong. Because your mind created the situation, you responded to the first happening by confirming that it was a bad day, and therefor you just continued your bad luck. What I am trying to say is  that you create your world, and together we create our world. 

 
That is why I believe that the importance of loving yourself and to be aware of your thoughts and feelings, not only helps you personally, but it tributes to the collective world and consiousness as well.

 
This insight came to me during a meditation, one of Ghandis quote came up in my head "If you want to see world peace, find peace in yourself first"
I've always liked this quote but kind of questioned it and never really understood it's meaning, until my meditation experience. It's hard to explain, but i heard the quote in my head and a big light just went up for me and i finally realized what he was saying. Offcourse he's talking about collective consuisness and that we are all one. Im gonna try to explain in real easily;
Imagine that one of the cells in your body thinks "My name is Jim, who in the heck are all those others cells around me"? Lisa does not understand that all the other cells, including himself are a part of and forms a body. We humans are just as this cell in my example. We see our selves as individuals, but we may not have fully understood that we are also a part of  and forms ONE world, with ONE consciousness. Just like all our cells in our body forms one body.
The key here to truly BE what we want too see in the world is to stop complaining on the world and start working with ourselfes and our attitude., start by saying affirmations to yourself every day, create a routine and make it the first thing you do when you get up or before going to bed.
Every time you think a negative thought, think of five positive. Take one day at a time. If you forget one day, start again tomorrow.

If you find it difficult just ask the universal power / God / angels or whatever feels natural to you for help.

This is my perception on what it is to love yourself, i'm offcourse open to comment's.

Love and Light,

Amanda