CYEAT: Chapters 13 & 14

I finished the Cure Your Emetophobia and Thrive book. Chapter 14 is a short “that’s the book, thanks for reading, keep working, and tell your friends!” kind of chapter, so I decided to combine these last two into one post.

Chapter 13 is amazing, because it sums up everything the book has covered, it breaks it down into sections and easy to follow outlines, and it drives home the key points you want to remember. It’s almost like you could skip the rest, just read this chapter, and you’d still be getting most of what you need. I mean that in the best possible way and am not trying to belittle the rest of the book. I think it’s helpful with a book like this - to not have to reread the entire thing later on when you start to forget. To be able to go back to one chapter and have this great summary that allows you to quickly recall everything.

There were definitely things about this book that annoyed me - the way the writing style sounded like an infomercial at times, how some sections seemed to over-explain (like the chapter on the difference between stress and anxiety) while others didn’t get the attention I thought they needed (I would have liked to have seen much more on battling the social anxiety component of this phobia, but I suppose you can always supplement with a book specifically about social phobia), and the author’s overconfidence in the methods and emphasis on “cure.” I get the sense that you could never say ‘this program didn’t cure me’ without hearing in response that it was because you didn’t fully understand some part of it or didn’t work hard enough or didn’t do one of the exercises enough times. I guess that’s something that applies to most self-help books though. It’s not an attitude that appeals to me, but maybe other people feel differently and think the author lacks credibility if they don’t have that die-hard belief that their methods (and only their methods) will always work in the end (and if not, the fault lies with you).

I am not cured. Again, I am not convinced this phobia can be fully cured. On the other hand, I certainly haven’t put the effort into this program that the author recommends (which includes at least 6-8 weeks of continuing to follow the program once you have finished the book, and then starting all over if you still aren’t cured), so the author could still say I haven’t done enough, and there is no way for me to prove it will never cure me, just as there’s no way for him to prove it will.

But I’m going to stop being hung up on that word “cure” now, and putting that aside, the book contains a lot of incredibly helpful information. It’s certainly the best emetophobia-related book out there (we don’t have many options at this point in time, but still), and overall I would say it’s worth reading and having in your possession as a reference.

It has made me think a lot (most of those thoughts have been documented here) and given me ideas on what more I can do to make my life better. I’m sure I will keep going back to it, re-working exercises, trying to internalize the more rational thought processes I know I should have. Practice always helps. And revisiting always helps, because even if you have heard about or read the same ideas a hundred times (such as how important it is to counter negative thoughts with positive ones), there is something about encountering those ideas again that is inspiring and motivating. That reminds you, ‘oh yeah, I haven’t been using affirmations and I really wanted to try that’ or ‘I know working through an exposure hierarchy would help me so much; I should start again and not give up on it this time.’ It’s easy to lose sight of all the many options you have for improving or changing things when you’re busy living your day to day life and reacting to the world based on your current instincts or coping mechanisms.

improvement

The trip to Virginia was a complete success! I seriously can’t believe how well I handled it, especially with all the phobia “triggers” it included:

• Flying, which leads to worries about motion sickness (something I never have a problem with, but I always worry I will), other people getting motion sickness, and catching some illness from someone on the plane.
• Socializing frequently with people who may or may not be sick. I was only hanging out with my family, and they don’t know and/or understand and/or care about my phobia (we don’t really talk about anything emotional, so I am unsure who knows/understands what). So I could not rely on them to look out for me by warning me that they were sick or had been sick recently. It seemed like one of them might have a cold, so that was a little stressful, but nothing came of it. For all I know, it was allergies.
• Spending a lot of time in a hospital. I was mainly there to visit a relative who has cancer, so I was in the hospital with them for a few hours each day. I knew I couldn’t catch the diseases of the people around me, but I still felt “contaminated” by germs. Even hugging my sick relative felt unsafe, but I did it anyway. My parents tried to harass me into eating in the hospital cafeteria, but that was something I could not bring myself to do.
• Hanging out with my very young nephews, a one year old and a four year old. This probably stressed me out even more than the hospital. They were all over me, and the one year old even put his hand right on my lips as soon as I walked in the door. Plus they unpredictably cough on you, and every time they eat, I can’t stop thinking about how they don’t know the limits of what they can consume without being ill. On the other hand, they are so adorable and sweet, and I really had a great time with them. I hadn’t met the one year old yet, and I hadn’t seen the four year old since he was a baby, so he didn’t remember me and was excited to “meet” me and show me all his books.
• Spending long stretches of time away from my wife and my “safe space” (usually home, but in this case the hotel room). I would leave in the mornings and hang out with my family most of the day, not getting back to the hotel until the evening. I don’t spend that much time out in public by myself anymore (since I started working from home). Usually when I’m out somewhere for a whole day, my wife is with me.
• Eating while on vacation. This didn’t go quite as well as it did in New York City, because I avoided eating while around my family. But during the times it was just me and my wife, I was completely fine and able to eat normally. We bought a few safe snacks from a grocery store to keep in the hotel room just in case, but we didn’t even eat most of them. We mostly went out, and I got to have all the delicious food I have missed from my hometown that I hadn’t had in SIX YEARS, because when we went down there in 2011 I could barely eat anything.

I didn’t have any panic attacks or intense episodes of feeling “sick”. No feeling dizzy or crappy because I couldn’t eat. No having to cancel plans because of that. No inability to sleep. And not that much holding back from what I wanted/needed to do. I’m so glad that I went and was able to offer some support to my sick relative and the rest of my family.

Compare this to the way the trip went in 2011 (see post here), and I’m amazed at how much has changed in four years. And I wasn’t even aware of it! It’s so weird to have actual strong evidence that all the work I’ve put into getting better has actually gotten me somewhere. I have often felt like I’m not doing enough, but it has helped so much anyway. I think it helped just to make the commitment to learn to think a different way, because now, even when I lapse into old negative thought patterns, there is that sense that I am doing something wrong which leads to the motivation to get back on track.

It also helps that I take better care of myself physically now, specifically when it comes to eating habits. Trying to eat healthier, plus forcing myself as much as possible to eat regularly, on a normal schedule, has cut down on instances of feeling “sick” so much, and that of course means I don’t get anxious as frequently. Seriously. My stomach used to hurt all the time from going long periods of time without eating, and I just kept telling myself it was better and it was safer not to eat, that not eating had to lead to less stomach pain, or would ensure I was safe from getting sick even if I felt stomach pain. The reality is that it made me feel terrible, and then I wondered why I felt terrible all the time and experienced near constant anxiety because of it.

So I’m super pleased. If I can take trips without having some kind of meltdown, even when they are stressful or short or last-minute trips, that would be such an incredible improvement to my life. I want to be able to travel. My dream of eventually getting to Europe is seeming much more within my reach.

more traveling

The trip for work got pushed back again. Now they are saying maybe it will be a few weeks from now. It’s been at least a year since they first brought it up. The other day I was trying to say that this trip would be hanging over me the rest of my life, but I accidentally said “lives” instead. And you know, I think that’s more accurate. I’ll be reincarnated, some confused little kid thinking “I don’t even have a job! Why do I have to go on a business trip?”

But now another situation has come up where one of my family members is in very poor health, so I am having to go down to Virginia anyway, this weekend, to see them. I mean, I don’t have to in this case. It’s my choice. But it still doesn’t really feel like it is, because even though I want to see them, I don’t want to make this trip and am dreading it so much. I want to stay home and have things be normal.

I just have to keep reminding myself it’s important and I can’t be selfish all the time.

Plus there is another bright side to this. The trip is going to follow the exact route I’ll have to take when I go on the work trip (if that one ever actually happens), and since this one is a short trip over a weekend my wife can go with me. So it’ll be like a practice run, which I think will be really helpful.

All signs pointing to this being the right thing to do. And yet it still feels like a horrible decision made by someone who isn’t me, and I want to crawl into a cave where no one will ever expect or need me to do anything ever again.

As usually happens, my brain has already started assaulting me with extra irrational thoughts. “Your hands will only really be clean if you wash them in THIS sink. The other one’s no good.” “If you wear mismatching clothes to bed, you’ll get sick.” Things that make no sense, just little things that I guess make me feel like I am in control. Or could be in control, I should say, because I’m doing my best to ignore these thoughts. But it’s strange how they suddenly appear and feel absolutely true even though I can see how insane they are.

I’m hoping I’ll feel better once we leave and I have to start going through the motions of getting through this. The anticipation is always the worst part. I’m so used to my safe routine and it feels surreal to even imagine doing something else. But in reality, it probably won’t be that strange.

I mean, the NYC trip went so much better than I thought it would. Maybe this will be totally fine. Sometimes I think I am stuck in this mentality of thinking my anxiety is still as bad as it was a few years ago. That’s obviously not true. I think back to things I said or wrote during that time period and can barely remember what it was like to feel that way. I guess that’s part of the worry - that things got so terrible so fast, and it was so unexpected, and I am still not even sure why it happened. Part of me wonders if something will set it off again, as unlikely as that seems.

At least this trip will give me plenty more opportunities to try out the CYEAT book’s special technique for fighting negative thoughts.

CYEAT: Chapter 12

Throughout this book, the author keeps dropping hints of a special technique he developed that you’re going to learn later to help reduce anxiety and change your negative thoughts. Well, in this chapter, that special technique is finally revealed, and I’m not all that surprised it was a bit of a let-down.

It’s not even that it’s not a good technique. It is just very similar to the anxiety-reducing advice you would get anywhere else, kind of a melding together of a few different common techniques (noticing and countering negative thoughts, positive visualization, self-esteem building).

The technique, I’m sure, could be helpful. It’s the trademarking and the weirdly intense hype that lead me into the mindset of ‘that’s it?’ Before finally telling you the technique, the author builds it up for several pages. I honestly feel like I am watching an infomercial at times. This will make your life substantially easier! Quick and simple! Anyone can learn it! You don’t need to believe it, just do it! Stop living a life that isn’t really the life you want! This may seem like other techniques you have used, but it is actually very unique!

It is a pretty short chapter, especially if you disregard the lengthy sales pitch. The exercise at the end is to keep a log of every time you can use this technique to combat an anxious or negative thought over the next week. If I’m wrong about the amazingness of this technique and it works much better in practice than it sounds, I’ll report back here.

One part of the technique is focused on detailed visualization of a positive outcome, and that is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Because I am great at envisioning everything that could go wrong, but I don’t put nearly enough effort into imagining something could go well. Or even adequately. And it has usually been the case that things don’t go quite as badly as I thought they would.

trip postponed

My work trip got postponed again! I shouldn’t be surprised, because they have been talking about this trip for about a year and keep pushing it back, but I was fairly certain it would actually be happening this time because the flights had already been booked.

At first I was incredibly annoyed, because I had gotten attached to the dates and had been planning non-stop and resigning myself to the fact that I would be doing this soon. I already went shopping and bought new professional clothes. I got my hair cut. I told my family I was coming. And then all of a sudden it was being called off. Now they are saying the trip might be in early June, but those sound like tentative dates, so basically I am back to knowing nothing. Which is frustrating.

At the same time, I’m now feeling so relieved I won’t be getting on a plane in a couple days. I was starting to have moments where I would be lying in bed in the morning, thinking “am I really going to be on my way to the airport one week from now?” and it didn’t feel real at all.

Anyway, it sounds like I have at least another month to prepare. Not that I can have any expectations, because hey, it’s much more fun for them to be unpredictable and wreak havoc with my stress levels. Maybe by Monday morning they’ll have decided it’s going to be next week.

But if nothing else changes, I’m sure I’ll be getting back to the CYEAT book in the meantime.

recap of NYC trip

I am home again - for the next week or so. First trip of the month completed, and it went really well. It went so well it was shocking and a little disorienting. Because one of the many downfalls of anxiety for me is that when I expect to have horrible anxiety during something and I don’t, it makes me feel strangely lost. I started feeling like I didn’t know myself, and then I started thinking really irrational things like “wait, do I even have anxiety problems? have I been exaggerating all this time? were all those terrible things I went through over the past few years lies?” And of course they weren’t - how could they have been? That doesn’t make any sense. I wish my mind didn’t only think in extremes.

The trip wasn’t perfect. I did experience some anxiety, but mostly in the realm of mentally obsessing over germs/contamination, which I see as better than intense emotional anxiety or physical symptoms like nausea. I was very aware all the time of the dirty things I was coming in contact with - cabs, public restrooms, train stations, etc. I’m used to feeling like my environment is very sanitized and I had to lower my standards and just try to get over the fact that I was not going to feel like things were clean enough for a week.

I had some trouble sleeping (thanks in large part to the hotel bed being incredibly uncomfortable). And there was one morning where I did feel really nauseous for a few hours and started to freak out. But I managed to calm myself down and decided I would relax in the hotel that morning instead of going out like I had planned. By the afternoon I felt fine again and we resumed our wandering through the city.

Not bad at all, considering what happened last time. I did not spend a night in the bathtub. I did not ever feel like I was going to legitimately lose my sanity.

But the biggest accomplishment is that I ate a normal amount for practically the entire trip. I don’t know if I have ever managed to do that before on a long trip like this. And that may be the main reason why the trip went so well, because when I don’t eat, it makes me feel terrible, and that makes my anxiety worse. Once that cycle starts, it’s hard to stop it.

All of this should probably make me feel more optimistic about the Virginia trip, but it doesn’t really. My stomach still feels like it’s dropping into my feet every time I think about it. I try to tell myself that since I was able to eat well in NYC, I should be able to do the same in Virginia, but then I think I can’t really compare the two. Virginia is going to be a lot more fast-paced and will involve tons of situations outside my comfort zone, and lots of social interaction, and I won’t feel as in control of any of it. I can’t exactly decide to take a morning off in the middle to regain my composure.

I talked to my boss about the social events, and she was really nice about it and said I could skip them if I felt like I couldn’t handle them, but she wanted me to be open to attempting to go to them, because it would be such a good opportunity to interact with everyone. So I guess I am going to try, at least for the first “welcome” event. I’m starting to wonder if it would just call more attention to me to skip them anyway. I don’t know. What’s more embarrassing, being noticeably absent from every social event, or going to them and being super nervous and maybe not being able to eat and having to come up with some excuse for why you’re not eating? I really can’t decide.

traveling

I keep trying to motivate myself to blog about the next chapter, but I think I’m going to have to accept the fact that CYEAT posts are going to be on hold until early to mid May. Because I can’t think about anything but the two week-long trips I am taking this month. So I’m going to write about that instead.

I mentioned in here a while back that my bosses want me to travel to Virginia for a week of training. It was originally supposed to be sometime last fall or winter, but it kept getting delayed. Now it’s finally happening, during the last week of this month.

Which is about the worst timing ever, because my wife and I also planned a week-long trip to NYC that starts at the end of this week and goes into next week. That trip alone was already stressing me out, and that’s going to be the easier one. The one where my wife is with me and we go at a slow pace and she makes sure I don’t get too overwhelmed.

No matter how carefully we navigate it, I know I will experience a lot of anxiety and it will really wear me out. And now I’m going to get back from that trip, have about a week and a half to relax and get back to homeostasis, and then have to leave for the training trip, which will be a thousand times harder. And I’m pretty sure I’ll be spending most of that in-between time obsessing over the second trip rather than relaxing. I already can’t stop obsessing about the second trip even though right now I should be preparing for the first one.

There are, I guess, three major concerns I keep going over:

- The actual traveling part. I hate flying. I hate all public transportation. We’re taking a train to NYC and that’s a little easier for me, but taking a train to Virginia could potentially take a full day (or night) and I don’t want that. So I figure I will suck it up and do the plane. But I have only flown alone once before, and it was in 2007. Pre-breakdown. I honestly have no memory of how I managed it. Everything seems so much harder now. So I will have to fly and navigate an airport, because of course there will be a layover, possibly more than one. Then once I get there, my boss has arranged that the hotel shuttle will take me back and forth to the work building. Screw that. I will probably rent my own car so I can have control over my coming and going. Oh, and also, as of right now, I can’t find a good flight connection, which may mean I will have to fly into an airport in a city a couple hours away and then figure out how to get to my destination from there. And I am not comfortable driving on the interstate. The only solution I can come up with so far is that my mother picks me up (and drops me off again at the end of the trip) because she lives nearby. But I’m not loving that idea either.

- Eating, drinking, sleeping. Any time I get really stressed out, I start doing all of these things less. This always happens to me on trips. I don’t feel well, so I don’t eat or drink as much. I get super dehydrated. My blood sugar is low all the time. I feel weak and shaky and sick and weird. Everything around me feels kind of surreal. But if I try to force myself to eat and drink more, that makes me feel nauseous, especially if I am trying to eat around other people or if I attempt to eat anything that isn’t completely bland. And it starts to feel almost physically impossible, since I have no appetite. After a day or so of that, I’m exhausted and it feels like an ordeal even to get out of bed. But I’ll have to get out of bed, go to work, focus on training, and socially interact with people. I’m thinking I will probably plan out every single thing I’m going to eat in advance and try to stick to that meal plan as much as possible, but I’m not sure how successful I will be.

- The social interaction. I’m not around people much anymore, and it’s honestly a huge relief most of the time, because I have a very strong desire to appear perfect to everyone around me combined with an inability to stop being horribly awkward. Which I think usually comes across as me being rude rather than scared (ignoring people, nervously laughing at things I shouldn’t laugh at, blank stares, sarcasm, and general stoicism). My boss has planned five socializing meals for us to attend. They all sound terrifying. It sounds like a few will involve large groups of people, including many people I have communicated with for several years but who have never met me face to face, so they will probably want to meet me face to face, and it’s too much to even think about. It is my goal to get out of every single one of those. Especially because three of them are lunches on training days, and if I go to those and am not able to eat, I don’t know how I will make it through the afternoons.

Also, I have no way of knowing how many panic attacks I’m going to have while I’m around my coworkers. It’s funny, because I used to work in the building with them, so it’s not like I haven’t dealt with that before. I have had anxiety attacks during one-on-one face-to-face meetings with my boss and been able to hide it. So it’s likely I’ll still be able to hide it pretty well. But part of me worries. I’m out of practice. And then of course there’s the fact that I don’t want to have anxiety attacks, whether I can hide them well or not, because they are miserable and further contribute to me feeling completely exhausted and out of it. But I don’t think I’m going to be able to avoid that. I’m guessing I will have them during the training sessions, when I feel most obligated to be composed and focused, when I know it would be bad for me to leave the room because that is after all what I’m there for. To try to learn something in the midst of all this insanity.

I probably should have fought harder to get out of this trip. I did try to get out of it, but it was a pathetic attempt, because I get too embarrassed to lay out exactly how bad it’s going to be. And I get scared thinking “am I really going to bail on something else? am I seriously going to be this person all my life?” I want to be able to do things. This particular thing feels way out of my reach, but I don’t know. Maybe it won’t be as bad as I’m imagining. I just have to do it. I have to do it, because it’s even harder to handle the thought of saying ‘no, absolutely not, you have no idea what this is going to do to me.’ And part of me worries I would end up getting fired.

I have internalized so much mental health stigma and it makes me feel guilty to even be saying some of this, because I believe people should push back more in these situations and advocate for themselves. I just feel like I can’t do it anymore. I have done it so many times and gotten so many horrible reactions. I had teachers in high school who literally made me cry because they were so mean to me for refusing to give class presentations, even though I told them I didn’t mind taking a zero for the assignment. Wouldn’t it be nice if the automatic reaction was to say ‘that’s fine, there are of course perfectly valid alternatives to presentations (or intense week-long out of state training sessions) and this doesn’t make you a lesser person at all‘? I think society is heading more in that direction, but it’s taking a long time.