Hi
First a word on pills. Anti depressants and tranquilizers are not the same. They work different. Anti depressant replace or control chemicals necessary for clear thought. Tranquilizers block thoughts.
CBT makes both unnecessary unless you are one of the few that can not produce enough. That is up to a doctor.
Okay, here we go:
The mind does not work as we think, it does not just do things, it needs direction and this direction it gets from memory of past experiences. These new experiences then go into memory for future reference, all happening at the speed of light.
On paper this process is drawn as a triangle with three corners and all connected because they work together.
The first corner is where a thought or action is planned such as moving a finger. This thought moves up the triangle to the second corner where previous memory picks out the most appropriate thought from a number of past experiences. This thought moves down the triangle to the third corner where it becomes more thought or action which ever is appropriate.
But it doesn't stop there. It goes back to memory as experience and to the first corner as stimulation for the next action or thought. All very fast and with a number of these happening at the same time.
What dictates the appropriate thought at the second corner is based on a number of things. Attitude, mood but mostly tendency. So if you have a negative tendency your thoughts will be negative and that is what you will cycle back to memory till you end up with triggers that cause panic. Nothing you can do about memory, you can not erase it. But you can change it by burying it. Panic is when a negative thought goes round and round the triangle without changing. This stimulates fight or flight with all the symptoms only exaggerated because since the message is not getting back to the first corner it can't change. This is where the confusion comes in which adds to the problem since your mind doesn't have a solution to use to move on. Fight or flight has a built in safety that limits it, usually fatigue which causes it to let go. So you sit there drained after an attack.
How CBT works is by changing thought patterns at the second corner which ultimately changes thoughts at the other two also since they are all connected. When you access memory at the second corner, if you have a negative thought you have to change it to a positive one before it gets to the third corner and ultimately to memory and the first corner for stimulation.
That simple in theory but not so simple in practice because you need to change a lot of things to actually do this, starting with a tendency you have slowly turned negative over years, same with an attitude you have built from previous experiences, all things in memory that dictate the appropriate thought, just not the right thought.
Posting so I don't lose it.
Davit
