For sixteen weeks now I have been on a new medication, as the one they changed me to from one that was working okay in my opinion, didn't work. This new one is working better and is about the same as the one I was first on, so I am not going to complain about it. The biggest benefit of the new one is that unlike that worked earlier that I had to take fortnightly, this one I only have to take every eight weeks. Today was my third treatment, my second one self-administered.
While I have been doing it by myself for several years already, a couple years back something changed in me and I would get intense anxiety about the injection. Even the lead-up into it before the shot I would stress and then before giving the shot, I would have to psych myself up, sweat on my brow, before after several false starts, finally plunging the tiny pen needle into my leg for a few seconds. It wasn't painful, but for whatever reason, it just broke me. Since then, I would have to get my wife to do it, holding a pillow and not looking.
I have blood tests regularly without an issue.
A couple months ago when I had the last treatment, my wife was away, so I had to do it myself and I found that the anxiety was almost completely gone. Tonight, my wife went to bed early and I had to give the injection to myself again, and there was no anxiety whatsoever. It was pretty strange how the anxiety came out of nowhere, and also how it disappeared into nowhere again.
But what it did give me some interesting insight into (My experience has given me a lot of "interesting" insight into broken brains), is how anxiety can heavily affect our lives. Of course, I was only experiencing it in a specific area, but I can imagine what it must be like for some people who have it more regularly or in very inconvenient situations, so that they can't do things like leave their home.
I guess for people who haven't experienced that kind of anxiety, it must seem quite strange and perhaps seem ridiculous that people can't overcome the feeling and just push on through, but I can imagine that it is very, very hard for many people. Having said that, I also think that these days, many might be experiencing low-level anxiety and amplifying it out to be more than it actually is. And like any barrier to entry, the more often the barrier is jumped, the lower it becomes. Repetition builds habit, and bad habits as well as our various feelings are built on habit too.
I don't know what changed in me for the anxiety around the injection to dissipate, but I suspect that having my wife do it for a while and then having to go into the hospital for several treatments before doing it at home, broke the practice cycle. And then when I picked it up again a couple months ago myself, the anxiety was barely there and I did it fine, which proved to my brain that I can do it again. So this time tonight, no issue.
I was disrupted.
This kind of disruption is healthy of course, and it is something that we should embrace, even though change is uncomfortable. Because without disruption, our defaults will just keep replaying all the same patterns we have always done, because that is the path of least resistance, even if it *isn't working in our favour. Our brains are lazy, so once they see a familiar pattern, like injection time, they will throw out a familiar reaction, which had turned into anxiety for me.
But disrupting ourselves is difficult, especially when there is fear involved, because we don't want to have to do what it takes - which is generally, facing our fears. Exposure therapy tends to work, but for many, it requires baby steps rather than straight in the deep end. However, I also think that if we were put in "deep end" situations, we would largely overcome ourselves in order to survive. No matter how high the anxiety I felt might have been, if my (or someone else's) life depended on putting the needle in my leg, I would have done it. The anxiety would still be there likely, but I would have more personal power to force the action.
Especially since the stroke, I have had my eyes further widened to the possible experiences of different kinds of people that I didn't have a good understanding of earlier. However, for the most part, I still think that a lot of what people say they can't do, is actually only because they have the choice not to do it. If that choice was taken off the table, I reckon many people would be pretty amazed at what they are capable of.
Wouldn't it be nice to be able to fulfil our potential by choice, without having to be forced?
Unfortunately, that is not how we are programmed.
Taraz
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