Anxiety, anxiety, go away, come back again some other day....

My anxiety level peaked at 7 for about 6 hours today, and now it's down to level 6. I got it down by using one of my old defense mechanisms, which is distracting myself by daydreaming. It's not easy to do at first with all that anxiety, and the obsessive intruding thought patterns that I have, but with a lot of coaxing it can be done. Taking a double-dose of Lorazepam helps as well :) I've found daydreaming to be an effective method of dropping anxiety levels down from 1-2 levels. I prefer to think of day-dreaming as a "Band-Aid" type remedy, it's quick fix for a short term problem, but doesn't cure anything or get you to the cause of your problems. For more improvement, I need a combination of drugs (not the illegal kind) and therapy.

My psychiatrist is working with me to find the right drug or combinations of drugs that will help stabilize the chemicals in my brain. The hope is, that by re-balancing the chemicals in my brain, the majority of the anxiety will be gone as well as most of the obsessive thought patterns; and further, that with the chemicals balanced, I'll be able to actually feel good, or as psychologists call it, manic, in a healthy way.

Simultaneously, my therapist is working with me to uncover the underlying issues of my dysfunctional behaviors and low self-esteem, which, theoretically, can not be solved by medicine alone. Due to financial burdens, I can only see my therapist once every two weeks, which is not nearly enough to be productive, so thankfully he has agreed to allow me to engage in e-mail correspondence with him, which is a big help.

Lastly, and again simultaneously, I do some of my own therapy on myself in a variety of ways. For example, I am learning that I can express both my creativity and my "anxiety about my anxiety" through this web site. Another way is by going through the great workbook I introduced in my last post. The workbook is tough, and for serious people. I first read the book "Facing Codependence", and then went through the workbook. I'm still on the first chapter, where I am constructing a history of abusive (defined as less than nurturing) events at the hands of caretakers while I was in the ages from birth to 18. This involves a lot of introspection. I was very surprised to find that I have over 60 independent events, and I believe there are many more that I still have repressed. I then put this history into a table, and examine my emotions at the time of the event, and how I feel about that event now. This is a first step towards getting at what the author calls the "shame core" and finding out how I react to certain situations and how this led or leads to my codependent behaviors.