Stress Factor 1
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Stress Factor 1
You are going through your life as you normally do from day to day.
You have quite a lot on your mind at work and a few other things that are not going quite as well as you would have liked them to go.
You are having a lot of negative thoughts.
Your thoughts have become inhibited, your sleep is not what it should be, you have become irritable and you just can't concentrate.
You have started taking time off your work because you just don't feel quite as well as you should feel.
You go along to your doctor who asks you if you have a lot on your mind, he takes a few tests just to make sure it's nothing serious, then he hands you a sickness certificate to take a few weeks off work and he tells you to relax a bit more.
You leave his surgery and read what he's put on the sickness certificate, on it are the words anxiety.
You walk down the road wondering to yourself, what is anxiety?
You now begin a search to find out, what is this awful thing you are suffering from?
Is there a cure? Will it last long? Will I ever get better? Will I die? These are some of the questions people who suffer from anxiety ask themselves.
Before you realise it, your anxiety levels have risen a lot higher than what they should be, you are unaware that you have helped yourself to put them up, you have now become afraid of the symptoms and the feelings of your body that go with it, your nerves are on a sharp edge, a feeling that you do not like, one that you want to get rid of, but you just don't know how.
You go back down to your doctor hoping for an instant cure, but that is very remote, because you have now lost the art of relaxation and you were not aware of it.
Your doctor tells you that the tests he had taken were negative and it is what he is treating you for, anxiety.
He reassures you that you are not going mad, and that it's just a bad patch you are going through, he then writes out a prescription for a minor tranquilliser to help you relax.
You ask him how long you will need to be on them for and he tells you, "it may be about 3 months before you come off them, meanwhile, it might be to your advantage to see a psychologist".
You are again reassured that you are not going mad and it won't last forever, you leave your doctor's surgery even more confused.
Now it is not the doctor's fault you are confused, it might be your own, for letting yourself fall into the non-relax syndrome, you have now let yourself think it's worse than it is, and it's so easy to do that if you have never been ill before.
Your appointment for the psychologist comes and you go and see him, again hoping for an instant cure, or an answer to what is happening to you.
The psychologist asks you some questions and does an assessment of you, this is to make sure you are not a danger to yourself or anyone else. It is also to make sure you are not liable to do anything out of character or irrational.
In the end the psychologist tells you that there is nothing he can do for you at this moment in time, he tells you, "You will have to learn to relax".
You go away from the psychologist knowing that you're not mad, but you still do not understand what's wrong with you.
You start to wonder what it's all about and what was he talking about, by saying, learn to relax.
Your mind has now run amok, your routines are all upside-down and you are very sharp and abrupt with other people, you begin to wonder, has the doctor got it right? And will you ever be what you were before? Have other people gone through what you're going through? How did they sort it out? And how do you come to terms with it?
You now have an added problem, you have been paid off from you work, because of the time you've been absent trying to sort yourself out for the way you have been feeling just lately.
In fact it seems to be getting worse rather than better.
You now begin to fight back to restore your health to what it was before you took your mental breakdown.
Anxiety and depression is experienced by a staggering 25% of the population at some point in their lives, although, at the time you feel very isolated and on your own, it may be that you tend to look for answers that are very hard to find. But, it's only what the doctor told you in the first place.
You can go to your doctor and tell him that you would like to come off the medication that you have been on.
Now I would not advocate that everyone should come off their medication, that is something you must talk over with your doctor, and if he or she thinks the time is right, they will advise you how to go about it.
I was prepared to come off it myself, but that was my decision and I was quite aware that I would feel awful for awhile, until my body and nerves settled back down again.
So how do we go about curing ourselves? And is there such a thing as self cure?
The first thing we have to learn to do, is to relax, because we have forgotten how to do that, relaxing is a very important part of getting better and when we talk about relaxing, we are talking about relaxation of the head, to be able to switch off the brain for at least ten minutes every day.
Everybody has their own way of relaxing. Some listen to music or relaxation tapes, some meditate, but when you suffer from anxiety, it may be a good idea to go to a day centre where they will be able to help you get rid of the confusion that goes with anxiety or depression.
Relaxation is something you will have to practice for awhile, it's like having to retrain your brain and discipline yourself all over again.
Curing the mind is a long process and there is no quick cure, time is not the main factor, although, anyone suffering would like to be better, if not sooner than soon.
Unfortunately it does not work out that way, but it will happen.
One way to look at it is to say, "If I went into hospital for an operation, would I get up out of the bed right after the operation"? "Would I be healed"?
The answer to these questions must be no, it takes time to heal.
The mind is the same, it takes time to heal, but it will heal given that time.
Going out and mixing with other people and getting yourself back into a routine is a very important part of the healing process, that's so we can build up our confidence again and so we can get our body clocks back into time.
It may be that you feel bad for quite awhile and it must be said, that everybody goes through their own feelings (although it is the same illness).
Sometimes we all need a little bit of help, just to show us the right direction in which to go.
This is to help us get rid of the confusion that goes with the anxiety and depression.
The help is there if you really want it, but you will have to make the first move.
The cure, well that's in yourself, if you want to find it. It's just a case of taking those first steps.
As I said earlier, it would be a good thing to be able to go to a day centre, but again that is up to the individual.
I would recommend going to a day centre. Seeing the staff and having a talk with them would be a positive way forward and a way of getting yourself on the road to recovery.
It may be that we are all students of learning, and we sometime have to listen to the teachers of wisdom.
The main thing to remember is, it will get better as time goes forward, and you will be able to put the past behind you.
Anxiety and depression are not forever, although at the time, there seems to be no end to it.
Have faith and believe in yourself and you will get over it.
You will look back later in life and say "What was all that about". One thing is for sure, you will never want to go through what you went through again.
Stress Factor 1 written by Andrew Murphy 17 March 1993
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