Hey Karla,

 

You are most welcome. And please keep coming to us for support. And thank you for sharing. When you share, you halp others feel less alone!

Hiya Karla,

 

Well I like Joe and you am stubborn! Once I turned that stubbornness towards getting better it sure helped me!

 

I was diagnosed in my early teens. I thought I was going mad. Was having trouble going to school. When at school I kept hiding to cry in the bathroom. I would have bad panic attacks and thought I would go crazy. It was so horrible. Then I was diagnosed and told I was not crazy, what a relief. But by then I was in my first depression (burn-out in this case) and I was agoraphobic. I managed to do school from home (yeah got lucky that my school was nice about that) so I did not flunk. I went back to school the year after and saw a therapist and it helped. Anyway, I ended up graduating. Then I had a relapse on my anxiety. I eneded up not going to college and ended up with my second depression. I spent a year at home. I tried working. Did not go so well. Mostly I hid in my bed all day. Pa after PA, anxiety upon anxiety. I figured life was not really worth it. Went for more therapy. Went to college. I did great in college. Had good grades. Handled my stress well too. But then I moved out of my mom's house. Moved in with my boyfirend (now my hubby). All went to heck. I managed to finish college with good grades but I relapsed. I ended up completely agoraphobic, incapable of leaving the house, with more PAs per day then I could count, on so many meds I could barely remember my name and had a profound depression. I worked on and off through those years but my preformances were less then perfect. A lot of the time I was unemployed and incapable of taking care of myself. I had over 10 PA a day most days and I was super drugged! I tried all sort of things to help. And then one day I went to couple's therapy (Of course by then my marriage was in shambles). The therapist did both couples and individual therapy. He was so Zen and nice. HE ended up saving my life. What did he do with me? CBT! exactly what this site teaches you. At first I was using my stubborness NOT to change. I was used to this. I wanted it gone but at least I knew this. So subconsciously I was being stubborn about not changing. And then one day, I realized this was scarier then changing. And then I turned my stubborness towards getting better. And I did through leaps and bounds. I took control. Became a warrior, my own knight in shining armor! I went back to university, to work. I got back to taking buses and walking and shopping and going out etc! Then during my bachelors, I had a particular stressful exam session and I relapsed. So I called my therapist and I found this site. My therapist looked at the program and liked it. So I used theprogram and it helped so much. I would see my therapist once a moth and we would review what I have done here and readjust if needed. The program here helped so much. I couldn't affort to see my therapist more then once a month. This program taught me so much! And when it was tough and I wanted to give up, I was just to stubborn to so I kept on going! Stubborn can be good!

 

Now I have graduated with honors, made the dean's list. I go out all the time by myself. I take buses. Recently I even went to the big city all by myself! I work also. I am so much better.

 

I must admit atm I am going through a rough patch. I have pushed myself to hard and burned myself out. I am now dealing with a new round of depression. This makes my anxiety much worse. But even with that I am better. I have high anxiety but I have had no actual full blown attacks in months! Plus I know if I have one I can handle it and it is no big deal! And yes I am depressed and get overwhelemed and discouraged easily but I am stubborn. I know deep down I can do this and beat this. I know deep down inside I will get better. And hey I am way to stubborn to give up! So yeah, I come on here and whine and vent. But then I pick myself up and work the programs (Panic Center and Depression Center) and I work on getting better. And you can too! We will beat this. We can do this! We are trong...and stubborn!

Oh man, I'm so sorry Karla!  I was speaking with someone named Karen...same # of letters in the name...yea, I goofed.

Point still stands though!  Just replace Karen with Karla in that sentence...

Exactly what you said, Karla, 1 day at a time.

 

The best analogy I can think of at the moment is that overcoming anxiety is like quitting cigarettes.  The first week (or month  even) will be the hardest, your mind will automatically want to go back to the anxiety because, quite simply, it's what the mind knows best.  The more you continue with it, exposure therapy, the program here, all that positivity your putting towards overcoming it, the better you will feel.  1 day at a time.

 

But like with cigarettes, you will have setbacks where your mind wants to go back to the way things were...again, because it's what the mind knows.  Just remember when you have no hope, no will to go forward, that you are in the eye of the hurricane.  You see all the chaos around you, but don't feel the winds of change doing anything for you.  These are the times you can only endure what you are going through.  Soon enough, you will get swooped back into those winds of change, and you can begin working towards whatever path life leads you on.

 

I believe you can do this, Karen.  I can see the strength in you.  

That's the key, the smaller things!  Once you find happiness in that, you'll realize how glad you were that you didn't give up when the world was against us.

 

We anxiety/phobia sufferers have been making the impossible possible since the dawn of time.  You may not realize it yet, but you're already a part of the winning team