Foreword
Time has passed over the past year, and we have unconsciously given more and more control of life to the state of automatic navigation, including a lot of thought content. Habits can trigger ideas that in turn trigger other ideas and trigger a chain reaction that leads to more habitual ideas. Fragments of negative thoughts and emotions can form a fixed pattern that further magnifies your emotions. This is a vicious circle of anxiety and depression. Anxiety causes anxiety and physical symptoms and thoughts, and then further strengthens anxiety. This is an automatic change, which is a psychological model of anxiety and depression.
In the brain, there are many neural circuits, each of which controls different emotional and physiological responses, and the emotional and physiological responses in turn activate and strengthen the relative circuits. For anxiety patients, physiological aspects, after my own experience, feelings, learning, and thinking, I think that the physiological aspect of anxiety is caused by such a neural circuit abnormality. The cause of anxiety is a slow process and therefore difficult to detect. But please don't feel desperate. Because the cranial nerve circuit can be remodeled, you can do happy things through aerobic exercise, mindfulness meditation, and completely accept your own emotions and symptoms to be fundamentally improved. The formation of anxiety is a slow process, and recovery from anxiety is doomed to not be done overnight. We need to be patient and be kind to ourselves.
In addition, anxiety and depression have a very high correlation with a factor. This factor is too much thought, feeling that the thoughts in the brain come out one after another, and can not slow down their thinking. This actually has a lot to do with the lifestyle of modern society. If you are anxious, I suggest that you reduce your information intake in all aspects and refocus your attention on what is really useful to you, rather than being kidnapped by irrelevant information on the mobile TV Internet.
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Half a year ago, I was deeply immersed in anxiety disorders. People who have not experienced this disease can hardly understand this pain: it is a physical and psychological double suffering. Anxiety is an emotion, it is a fear of unknown fear, English called the
Fear of fear. Fear is something that is deeply valued in human genes. In ancient times, fear and anxiety helped us to face the dangers of the outside world, such as the attack of beasts, to quickly take the reaction of fighting or escaping, thus ensuring the extension of humanity. live. In modern society, the environment in which human beings have lived has undergone tremendous changes. What we are facing is no longer a beast attack, but a variety of stimuli and pressures in daily life. These external stimuli are not fatal, but when the resulting anxiety is not relieved for a long time, and because some people are born with genes that are more likely to feel anxious, this sensitive group may evolve into an anxiety situation. Anxiety disorder, English called anxiety
Disorder. People with anxiety disorders have changes in the brain, such as hyperactivity of the amygdala, and some changes in neurotransmitters, accompanied by a series of physiological reactions, such as inexplicable heartbeat, flustered, chest pain, extreme Fatigue, muscle tension can not relax, extreme sensitivity to external environment such as sound and light changes.
This answer records the self-help experience of my personal moderate anxiety disorder and mild depression. I know very well that for people with anxiety and depression, they are looking for solutions to their problems every day, but because of medical conditions, the incomprehension of public values, and the personality and lifestyle of each person. Many people with anxiety disorders and depression tend to isolate themselves from their surroundings, fall into the dead end of thinking and emotions, and seek hard solutions. I am personally fortunate that long-term learning and observation have cultivated my ability to learn independently and to think independently, so I was able to gradually reflect on the issues of anxiety and depression from the process of reading books and online materials, and How can one save himself? In addition to self-help, because of the relationship between studying abroad, I was able to accept the diagnosis and treatment of doctors in the best hospitals in the United States, and to understand the first-line treatment of anxiety disorders.
In the United States, anxiety disorders are the most common type of mental illness. Although anxiety and depression are not the same disease, they often occur in the same person at the same time. I know that in China, if you have moderate anxiety and depression, the conditions for patients to heal are more severe. As a beneficiary of the development of Chinese society, I have the responsibility and obligation to write out the experience of healing my anxiety disorder so that more people can understand the disease. In order to more clearly show what kind of disease is an anxiety disorder, I spent a considerable amount of time describing my personal experience of anxiety, and then summed up the treatment I received, and finally listed the scientifically confirmed and my own body. Experience a useful treatment.
Let me talk about my personal experience of anxiety. When I first went to graduate school in China, the incentive was to see a teacher stun in the elevator. Later, I learned from another teacher that the teacher died of a heart attack. When I heard this news, I suddenly felt a strong fear sweeping the whole body. I only felt that the brain was extremely hypoxic, and had strong headaches and dizziness. The heartbeat was also very fast. This is a kind of never before. The strong feeling of death is dying. It was not until four years later that I realized that this experience was called a panic attack and the English name was panic.
Attack, does not threaten the individual's life at all, and does not cause any sequelae to health. However, I didn't know this at the time, and I thought that my brain or heart had organic lesions. Like many people with anxiety and depression, I also started running hospitals in an endless way. CT, B-ultrasound, MRI, chest X-ray, cardiac ultrasound, electrocardiogram, blood test, all the tests, all the results were not detected, everything is normal.
Those who have experienced panic attacks will know that this is an unforgettable feeling. Just when I was a graduate student, I was away from my girlfriend at the time. There was no one around me who could understand each other. Coupled with the pressure of scientific research and the confusion about the future, I became very worried about my health. I started to get very worried, and I always had the idea that I might die. Because of this, I am more inclined to protect myself, and gradually become the most independent. In that year, after several episodes of panic attacks, I began to suspect that this episode may be related to psychological factors, because I realized my conditional reflexes for death and danger and uncertainty. Extreme fear. I went to the best hospital in the local hospital during the summer vacation. After listening to my own symptom description, the doctor asked me a few questions and diagnosed it as a phobia. I did not say why. I took the medicine and sent it away. For me in science and engineering, this kind of diagnosis makes me hard to be convinced, coupled with doubts about the level of doctors in the country, I did not believe the doctor's diagnosis at that time. I saw the psychotropic drugs on the packaging. I was influenced by social values when I was young and ignorant. I think people who take this medicine will be mentally ill. How can they become mentally ill at once? This idea made me unable to accept this fact, so the medicine could not be eaten for a few days.
Later, I never went to see the psychology department again. At that time, due to the long-term work with the computer, the work schedule was irregular, and there was a chest pain and back pain. I know that this is caused by long-term bad posture and lack of exercise. Therefore, the anxiety disorder was forgotten, and all the symptoms before me were only a manifestation of cervical spondylosis.
In the third year after coming to the United States, for a while, I was constantly thinking about how to make myself better every day. Every day I kept thinking about solving my current problems and reading many articles and truths. However, I have been unable to find a solution to the emotional problems of my life and work, and thus fell into a dead end of thinking. After going to the gym for a workout, due to some suffocation, coupled with the accumulation of long-term anxiety, this time it took more than 20 minutes of panic attacks. I couldn’t move on the floor, I had difficulty breathing, and then my arms and abdomen started. Intense convulsions. After self-regulation for 10 minutes, it was impossible to call the classmates next to the ambulance. It was really scary at the time, and this strong sense of sudden death occupied all of the brain. Now, I sincerely thank this painful experience. Because, after I was sent to the hospital of the school (and my school hospital is one of the best hospitals in the western United States), doctors and nurses told me that this is a panic attack, which is very common in ambulance first aid and advises me. Go to the school for psychological counseling for treatment. This finally pointed out the cause of my long-term unexplained extreme fatigue, headache, and muscle tension.
After going to the school psychological counseling diagnosis, I know that I am a moderate anxiety disorder with mild depression. The doctor then treated me in two ways. One is psychotherapy, the so-called psychotherapy, whose main purpose is to let patients know their own diseases. This part of the doctor will explain what is an anxiety disorder and what physiological and psychological clinical reactions it has. Anxiety disorders will gradually improve only after you have understood your illness. This is because anxiety disorders have a large part of psychological incentives compared with other simple physiological diseases. If you can't let the patient know his or her own situation, it is very difficult to recover from the outside medicine alone. In addition to psychotherapy, the doctor also performed cognitive behavioral therapy on me. English is cognitive-behavior.
Therapy, which is to achieve effective treatment of anxiety and depression by changing the automation of their own illnesses and emotions and the accompanying habitual bad behavior. In terms of cognition, the most important thing is to accept two words. Anxiety and depression are part of our people, and it is impossible to have no anxiety or depression at all. Only when accepted, truly accepting the anxiety and depression that would have existed as a person, they will naturally decrease bit by bit. In this regard, there is a good description in the book "Self-rescue of mental anxiety." In addition, I also recommend an audio program by Zhang Yizhen's psychologist, called how to quickly get rid of workplace stress. She talked about the causes of anxiety and how to deal with anxiety in daily life. I also benefited from it.
In terms of behavior, the most important behavior caused by anxiety and depression is to escape from painful behavior. Fear of further harm, people began to evade pain and escape the problem. For example, if a panic attack occurs in a public place, people will avoid going to the public. If there is a bad feeling on the plane, they will avoid going to the plane. Over time, there will be more and more situations in life that need to be evaded, so that this person will continue to expand his fear object, and finally he has to stay in a small space that he considers to be safe, so that he has no chance to experience life. Wonderful, getting alienated from friends, trapping myself, trying to find a solution and not coming out of this dead end.
For moderate to severe anxiety, the physical symptoms are obvious. Although I was actively cooperating with the doctor's treatment, and I carefully read the books and materials that I could find anxiety disorders, I still felt a little uncomfortable most of the time. Sometimes I feel very bad, I feel very tired, I can't breathe when I do a little housework, my body may be back pain today, and tomorrow may be a headache. After this situation has been maintained for some time, I began to think that since anxiety is a common disease of both physical and psychological, it is impossible to rely on my psychological adjustment. I am afraid I still have to take physiological treatment. Just when I was working in the Bay Area, insurance allowed me to go to UCSF to see a doctor, and UCSF Medical School is one of the best hospitals in the world, where doctors have a wealth of experience in treating these diseases. After the doctor asked me about the detailed questions and the situation (about one hour for the whole process), I was diagnosed as generalized.
Anxiety disorder, Chinese is generalized anxiety disorder. After that, I opened two medicines, one is lorazepam and the Chinese is Lorazepam. By rapidly blocking the stress response receptors in the brain, this drug can quickly calm the patient and play a rapid role in the treatment of anxiety. The first time I took this medicine for fifteen minutes, I felt a big difference. The muscles of my whole body relaxed, and the whole person felt a lot easier. The second medicine prescribed by the doctor is SSRI, which is selective
Serotone receptor inhibitor, which is the first line of treatment for depression. Compared to Laura, SSRI drugs often take 4-6 weeks to start working. This is a very safe drug, and it will not cause dependence on drugs for long-term use.
With Laura, I started to relax more. For example, when a meeting is being reported, there is no longer any fear of talking about a panic attack or a panic attack at a high speed. Moreover, the relaxation brought by Laura allows me to concentrate on learning the treatment of anxiety disorders. More importantly, I have the energy to try these methods in my life. If it works for me, I will actually turn it into my life. habit. After that, I became more and more relaxed in the face of daily tasks in my life, and gradually re-established my confidence. Taking psychotropic drugs is actually no different from ordinary prescription drugs. These drugs are used after long-term clinical trials. The short-term use will have a positive effect on relieving the disease, as long as you are correct. Using them instead of relying on them from now on, their positive utility will outweigh the negative effects. This is like a drug for treating cancer. In addition to killing cancer cells, it also kills some normal cells, but overall the benefits are still greater than the disadvantages, so please do not want to affect the normal life. I refused to use the help of drugs.
It has been about four months since I started taking the medicine. Another very important treatment during this period is to adhere to aerobic exercise. I now have at least half an hour of aerobic exercise every day, starting with an elliptical machine and now swimming one day a day. At the beginning of the exercise, the 15-minute elliptical machine or the 5-minute running has made me feel very tired, and now half an hour of aerobic exercise is really comfortable to feel a sweat, I feel the energy of the past. Gradually came back a little bit. And this will greatly enhance your self-confidence and motivation, and be able to exercise better. When you are in good health, your mood will follow. Speak more about exercise. Must pay attention to the scientific exercise method, we must emphasize the gradual progress. At the beginning, I was too anxious to exercise. I ran for two kilometers at a time. After I finished running, I was tired and half dead. It is impossible to insist on exercise. The correct aerobic exercise method is that the exercise feels tired for a while, stop and rest for a while, and then repeat the process. For example, running, jogging for a minute, feeling tired, just stop and walk for a minute, feel good and then continue to jog to repeat the process. This makes it easy to reach half an hour of exercise time. Don't be taken away by sports stars and others who can run long, stick to your own rhythm, listen to your own body feelings, stop and rest when you are tired, and gradually your body will get better and better.
In addition, it is very important that I gradually realize that the feeling of the body is actually in front of the thinking of the brain. If thinking is consciousness, then the body feeling is the subconscious. If the body does not exercise for a long time and is not taken care of as it should be, then the subconscious will begin to become vulnerable, and the ability to withstand stress will decrease, causing some people to be prone to anxiety symptoms or panic attacks. Starting to systematically exercise your body, have a good nutrition, and have plenty of rest, is the most important way to recover from anxiety. When your body is strong and you feel energized, it is difficult to get a panic attack. Therefore, what you need to do is to learn to listen to your own body feelings, regular exercise, to make your body comfortable and gradually strong, so that the anti-stress and anti-depression ability of consciousness will be greatly improved.
In addition to drugs and exercise, it is also crucial to focus your attention on what you really do, not on the emotions of fear and depression. The biggest symptom of anxiety disorder depression is the lack of energy and vitality. In addition to the lack of vitality, it is important that the mind has been thinking about anxiety and depression, unable to empty the brain and let the brain rest. I used to spend a lot of time every day, thinking about what happened to me in the end, thinking about what would be so in my life, such a big problem and no solution. Moreover, these long-term meditations can lead to a kind of emptiness, which is even more confused, anxious and depressed. The whole person's state will be that thinking often runs the train, often a person is in a daze, rather than doing what he should do on hand. When things are pushed a lot, or if you do something wrong yourself, you will blame yourself. Later, I realized my over-contemplation from my parents' behavior observations and began to learn to do one thing seriously, instead of thinking about one thing. In the process of doing a small thing, such as cleaning up the clothes at home, washing a bowl, and installing a piece of furniture. If you can focus on these small things, wash the dishes and watch the flow of water, your hands will clean up the dirty things on the bowl, and finally the dirty bowls will be washed clean and bright, and put together neatly. . A touch of happiness and a sense of accomplishment will rise from the bottom of my heart. This method, called Buddhism in Buddhism, is called mindfulness in English. It is a kind of mentality without judgment to understand every thing that is being done right now. Anxiety and depression are most afraid of doing nothing all day, falling into a dead end of thinking and emotions, and constantly turning around. To recover from anxiety and depression, you must constantly set yourself small goals, find things for yourself, and turn your attention from anxious thoughts to doing things that make you feel happy and have a sense of accomplishment. Above. After that, let yourself come out of an excessive self-protection to meet some small challenges. Gradually, there will be confidence and courage to get out of the comfort zone.
The above is a description of four medium- and long-term methods, and the quickest and less uncomfortable method for anxiety disorders is to adjust yourself to relax and relax. We have been educated too much knowledge and reason since we were young, but strangely, very few people teach us how to relax. And in my opinion, the state of relaxation is the best state of a person. All good play is achieved in a relaxed and focused state. Being able to self-regulate and relax in various environmental conditions, such as the extreme fear and discomfort of high-speed, elevator, airplane, and social common in generalized anxiety disorder, is not only the key to whether a person's mentality is strong, but also the anxiety The key method of the disease. After constantly observing my reaction to external pressure, I found that breathing is really the key to relaxation. When we are nervous and nervous, in the subconscious, the breathing is chaotic. Because of shortness of breath, resulting in hypoxia or excessive inhalation of oxygen, it will cause various subsequent physiological reactions, such as rapid heartbeat, chest pain, muscle tension and so on. What we need to do is to be aware that we are now anxious and physically nervous, and then by focusing our attention on the breathing, taking a few deep abdominal breathing, we can inhale from one to three, then keep two Three numbers, then exhale from one to four. In general, exhalation is slightly longer than inhalation. In the process of doing it, there will also be a bump in the abdomen. There is also a very effective method that is very simple. When you feel a panic attack, in addition to taking a deep breath, you can start counting immediately. Most of the time, from one to twenty, you can find that your heartbeat is much quieter. The rationale behind this is that our brain is made up of areas that are responsible for different functions. Panic attacks and anxiety are caused by excessive activation of the amygdala in the brain, and when we start counting, we actually force another part of our brain to work. The basic principle of the brain is that at the same time, the brain can only handle one thing. If you are actively relaxing at this time, or counting, your brain will be occupied by such things, and will not be occupied by panic. This kind of adjustment breathing constantly reminds me to relax, and the method of counting is almost the quickest way to deal with anxiety. After that, you can further learn and practice various stretching exercises. These slow stretches can very effectively alleviate the muscle stiffness and pain caused by excessive tension in the body, thus effectively reducing the pressure felt by the body, thereby reducing anxiety.
To sum up, in addition to the passive help of doctors, temporary medications should be completely recovered from anxiety disorders, adhere to a good habit, such as daily aerobic exercise, regular work, good nutrition; feeling anxious and When you are nervous, remind yourself to relax, take a few deep breaths, or start counting immediately; instead of over-contemplation, transfer your attention to a small goal to do one thing; accept your own anxiety The various symptoms of the body's psychology constantly give courage and confidence, from the habit of the past to escape the pain to face the pain, and actively seek a little improvement every day.
In the five years of suffering from anxiety, I have been desperate for myself many times, full of fear and disappointment in life. I saw so many doctors, I did so many checks and treatments, I suffered so much pain, but I still didn’t heal, it seems that this kind of pain will always accompany myself, I will not want to go anywhere like a normal person. Where, there are many friends who can eat, drink, and play, and can pursue their own happiness. However, after half a year of recovery, I now find that cheerful and healthy self. During this period, although I was not feeling well and I was in a bad mood, I was not idle. I watched a lot of books on psychology and Buddhism in my spare time. Now in my opinion, the ultimate in psychology and religion is love. Most people with anxiety and depression are very strict with their own requirements. They have problems and habitually attributed themselves to themselves. They always think that they are not good enough. At the same time, we urgently want to control everything in life so that things can be developed according to their own expectations. But life is a sea, everyone is just a drop of water in the sea, it is impossible to do everything smoothly. For the fear of the unknown, let the anxiety patient fall into the negation of himself over and over again. The solution is actually to accept all the uncertainties in life that you can't grasp, and start to learn to love yourself. Each of us has an injured and willful child in our hearts. What we have to do is to take care of the child in the way of a mature adult, to care for him, to understand him, to reward him, to comfort him. Love is the driving force of mankind. One of the biggest problems of modern humans is that our material and social civilizations are highly developed, but every human being is still a "primitive person." Our minds are not fundamentally different from those of 20,000 years ago, but the environment we have dealt with has changed dramatically. The most fundamental of maturity is the ability to have love, and this ability can be burst out by brushing one or two blame, and it must be cultivated for a long time.
The five-year experience of anxiety has been painful, but it has also made me a lot of gains. I understand more about what I really want, what my values are, what I want to do, what is my most precious thing. The answer is that I think I have to write as a person who has recovered from long-term anxiety and depression. It is my responsibility. In China, the general public knows little about anxiety and depression, and society has no tolerance for these two conditions. The values of the public are those who believe that these two diseases are those with weak will or those with mental problems. Only those of us who have experienced it personally know that every day of life is more difficult and requires more courage and patience. In the United States, more than 3 million people suffer from anxiety and depression each year. This disease has been confirmed by scientific research to be genetic, that is, genes determine that some people are more likely to suffer from this. The disease. In the face of anxiety and depression, what we need is to learn to love ourselves, to cheer ourselves up, to be patient with ourselves, to take the initiative to learn relevant knowledge and seek medical help. When you feel tired and tired, remind yourself to relax and do it several times. Take a deep breath and turn your mind, behavior, mindfulness, acceptance, and behavior that you no longer evade into your own habits, and constantly remind yourself. In this way, anxiety disorders will gradually leave us. When you return to health, you will be pleasantly surprised to discover that you are already a brand new newcomer. His own mind is also more mature, and therefore full of awe and gratitude for everything in life.
Finally, I hope that you can see your anxiety disorder as an opportunity, a chance to change yourself, rather than blaming others for feeling that they have not saved, why I will become what it is now. From the comments of everyone, you can also see that many people have symptoms of anxiety disorders, and it is very likely that you suffer less pain and symptoms than others. Therefore, accepting the physical symptoms associated with anxiety disorders, it is part of itself, you can patiently coexist with it, and you can continue to have love and curiosity about the world. When you do this, the anxiety disorder will get farther and farther away from you. In the end, the method described in this article, if not practiced, has nothing to do with you, nor does it have a fundamental relief for your symptoms. Only by actually practicing these methods becomes part of your life. Constantly train yourself to cope with fear and depression, so that not only will your anxiety be better, but you will also grow up to be a person who makes you feel like you are.