Now among the one in four

The situation at work has not gotten much better, although I'm coping with it a bit more positively and help may be on the way.

As I've reflected on the last month, I think the only time in my life I remember feeling worse for this long was when my dad died. My response to the stress has totally shocked me. I have almost constant anxiety, and sometimes experience what I now think of as panic attacks. While not as severe as what happens to some people, I go through periods where my heart pounds strongly and I have a strong flight/fight/freeze urge.

This is surprising to me because when I think through the situation I do so logically and rationally and I always expect that my emotions will follow my logic to a certain extent. In the last month, it has felt like the logical part of my brain and the amydala (the primitive part of the brain where the flight/fight/freeze generates from) have no linkage whatsoever.

However, I became aware of a couple of books by David Burns (Feeling Good and When Panic Attacks) that address issues around depression and anxiety and have started reading them. At first I was skeptical, because he approaches the problem from a cognitive therapy perspective - that your feelings will follow your thoughts - and as I said, I thought I had my thinking all sorted out.

But the book addressed the idea of automatic thoughts - things that we think so quickly in response to something that we almost don't realize we're thinking them. As I started to think about my thinking, I thought about how some thoughts I was thinking were actually not that positive or logical and probably contributing to the anxiety and panic.

No easy solutions - it requires a bit of work and attention to learn to identify the thoughts. For me, they include giving people the benefit of the doubt to the point where I start to wonder if I deserve the treatment I received, and thinking that anything less than perfection will put me on the path to ruin. My logic was not hitting my own self at some levels. I had to call up the automatic thoughts and acknowledge them before I could address them.

In the middle of it all, though, there is the positive development. I feel closer to my family, less OCD about housework and I'm taking care of myself. Today I had a little sense of God saying to me that there is transformation in this process, and it is good.