Experiences of a life with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) & Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Here are the difficulties I face and my struggle to overcome them in order to live a full and happy life in spite of them.
Friday, 4 November 2011
Down and up
I have been feeling a bit down and self critical for a long while now. I decided to buy a book on Depression. It is by Robert. L. Leahy who's books on anxiety I have read and they were very helpful indeed. It is called "Beat the Blues Before They Beat You". There was a description of how someone with depression thinks, of their thought processes and it is pretty much how I have been thinking. In a nut shell, constantly feeling that I am not successful enough, things don't go right and generally being self-critical. Since beginning the book I am already feeling a bit better. Just learning about the thought processes of a depressed person helped to make me realise that it is not my life or me that is wrong but simply the way I think. I have started to be more aware of my thinking and am feeling I have made some progress. Long way to go though...Another thing has happened to help me progress with the depression is that I have re-discovered my old self! These problems change you. The anxiety makes you feel scared of everything to the point where all is dangerous and must be avoided. OCD also makes you fearful of what might (but probably will not) happen with a sense of responsibility for it all. Depression makes you low and hopeless. Believing that you cannot do anything and are not enough as a person and with no way out. It is all very wearing and your personality changes to reflect these negative feelings. Or at least this is my experience. I have recently, at the same time as discovering the above book, reminded myself of my old self. The person I was during the short periods when I was free from all of this particularly during my teenage years. I thought I used to be joyful and enthusiastic. Where has that gone? By remembering who I was I tried to reconnect with that person and am feeling like I used to. Not all of the time but a lot of the time. Using the CBT for OCD and GAD (anxiety) and the book on depression gives me the skills to get a grip on these debilitating problems and to get back to being me not the person they have made me become. I must remember who I was before. The fight goes on...
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I wrote a post on OCD self-help techniques based on the findings of Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz. His research and techniques insist that the OCD sufferer should learn as much about the condition as possible to fully understand that their behaviours/feelings are based upon a chemical imbalance in the brain. From what you say in your post, I think that could probably be applied to depression too - It sounds like the more you are understanding from reading the book, the better you are becoming at moving away from negative thought processes.
ReplyDeleteI see you are in the U.K. too - Can I recommend a pretty good website for depression and anxiety that the N.H.S. advise using (if you aren't already aware of it)?
www.llttf.com (Living Life to the Full)
I hope that it helps you!
Thanks so much for your helpful comments. I will def' check out the website.
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