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Anyone else who can't function in their 40s? Why is it so much worse now and what to do?
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
Propranolol? It's definitely helped my anxiety. You might find some ease with some dbt skills, too. Whatever you focus on, is what you end up seeing the most of. Like when you buy a yellow car, all of a sudden you see yellow cars everywhere. They were always there. Not to in any way minimise what's happening. But you need to get through this, and the more solid you are, the more you will be able to actually choose to be part of building something better, when it comes to that. The more you focus on the scary stuff, the more your brain becomes practiced at spotting the scary, the mire you practice anything the more you perfect it. You don't need to perfect flooding your brain, perfecting noticing, everything is scary. You won't miss it. It's ok to put it down and notice all the other things happening, all the good, all the rising up, all the fighting back, just even all the adorable fluffy animals. For every one bad thing that floods your brain, go and find 3 things that counter balance. They're there, you just haven't been noticing them before. It's hard at first because you aren't practiced in finding the good, yet. But the more you do it, the more you train your brain to notice them, and soon that tide will flip.
Complete the stress cycle. Your brain is stuck in fight or flight because you haven't told it the dinosaur is gone. Move your body, do some breathing exercises. Mindfulness is about being in the moment, noticing what's around you, in such a way that it turns off your fight or flight and tells your brain it's safe to just be, right now.
Your brain has a whole part that's non verbal, just speaks to you in emotions, can't understand words, does understand actions. A lot of those breathing techniques just tell that part of your brain, it's safe right now. You don't breathe all relaxed if a dinosaur is about to bite you. And maybe there's some dinosaurs around, right now, but even if there are, your fight or flight brain shuts down your thinking brain, it pulls the plug. To get through things happening right now, you actually need your thinking brain active. So no matter what, you don't need to be setting off your fight or flight, right now. It's ok to turn it off.
Now let's talk about your thinking brain. It's job is to prattle on. It sees an emotion happening and guesses why, it's a very habitual creature, if you set it a task, it will keep doing that task, until you rewire it. Rewiring your thinking brain, seems hard at first, you just slowly remind it, where you want it to be, and it seems like it's not working, but you persist, and then one day, bam, rewired. Takes heaps of effort, because you have to literally build new neural pathways.
There are things you can do that send code to your physical body, it sends messages to your system to turn off the alarm systems.
EMDR therapy was discovered by a guy watching birds. He noticed that he felt calmer. He discovered looking from side to side at a certain pace, caused a physiological reaction, it caused calm. And you can do a mini version of that, by walking in nature. Your eyes will naturally do the looking side to side, at the right pace,and after you have been walking for a bit you might notice you sigh, or you just feel better.
The levels of stress you are feeling are a physiological response you have triggered, that is designed to help you survive a very threatening situation, happening to you, right now, like your house being entirely engulfed in flames, right now. But that's not what's happening right now.
Right now some cronies are trying to scare everyone, because they know people can't utilise their intelligence to resist, when their fight or flight is activated, they're trying to scare and stress you like this, on purpose. Don't give them that power. Notice all the things they don't want you to see, they aren't allowing in the media etc.
Find your centre. Don't worry about what you're able to do, or not do, just notice how you feel, physically where do those emotions sit. Don't put meaning to them, just notice, listen and thank them, for their message, and let them pass like a balloon floating past. Just feel them, just listen, then let them go. Nothing else exists. Just feel, listen, thank them, let them dissolve. That's what they want to do.
Feelings get really loud, if they think you aren't listening to them, but listening doesn't involve letting them take the wheel.
You are not your feelings, you are not your thoughts. You are the entity that observes them. You get to choose.