I am auditing a class at a nearby college, and it starts tomorrow. It will be Monday and Thursday evenings. It's been a really long time, at least a year, since I have pushed myself so far out of my comfort zone.
So my main goal for this week is to go to both of these classes. I'm betting that I will "feel sick" in the first class and that this will make me want to give up on it. And since I'm only auditing, it will be too easy to drop it.
My other goal, of course, is to bring down my anxiety if/when it occurs during the class. I have a four-part affirmation I've been using during the past year in situations where I don't feel well:
1. This feeling is temporary.
2. This feeling is not dangerous.
3. Calming down will always help.
4. Calming down is the only thing within my control.
Using affirmations in general is a pretty new concept for me. I used to dismiss them whenever I heard them as too simplistic or "lame" or something similar to that. When I first started repeating them to myself, it just felt like a useless chore. I didn't really believe any of them and would frequently come up with arguments against them. I still have trouble with this (trying to debate the affirmations, although now I'm more hoping to prove to myself that they are true), so I also have an affirmation about my affirmations that I use now: "Affirmations are meant to be repeated, not debated." This is a reminder to myself to just stop arguing with them. It took many months, but eventually they began to sink in, and now I find that they can be really helpful.
But I do want to elaborate on numbers 3 and 4 of my list, because these are the ones I had (sometimes still have) the most trouble accepting, and remembering the logic behind them is helpful to me.
Emetophobics want to believe they are in complete control of their bodies, and I have always believed that if I remain alert (aka anxious), I am better prepared to fight the possible sickness. This is not true. First of all, if someone is legitimately sick, being in a calm/relaxed state will not cloud their vision/judgment about what is happening to them. Calm is not the same thing as being unaware of reality. I tend to think things like "if I am calm, I may not notice I am about to vomit" which is completely ridiculous. Being calm will not ever make things worse.
Secondly, being calm will make things better, even for a person who is sick. Having a sickness, even a stomach virus, does not guarantee a person will vomit. The illness could cause other symptoms instead (in the case of a stomach virus, probably diarrhea). Anxiety is an emotion that easily causes an upset stomach all on its own, so having an illness and then adding loads of anxiety to it can't help matters. Of course, if a person is emetophobic, they will not be able to feel anxiety-free during illness, but there are always things they can do to feel less anxiety. It will be an extremely stressful time, and it will be difficult for them to lower their anxiety, but it is possible, and it is something that should be attempted. As a person living with a phobia, lowering anxiety is something that should always be attempted, no matter what the circumstance.
And in closing, I became familiar with affirmations (along with a bunch of other incredibly helpful anxiety-reducing techniques) through The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook by Edmund J. Bourne. I actually have the fourth edition, but I'm betting it's not that different from the newest version. The book has several pages of affirmations, and I have spent a lot of time reading and writing them over and over. I usually have one written or typed out on a sheet of paper and taped up on the wall over my computer. The one I have hanging there right now is one of my favorites:
"I'm learning to let go of worrying. I can replace worrying with constructive action."
No comments:
Post a Comment