Cara
My therapist says that two things people have a very hard time accepting are that nothing ever leaves memory it just gets stored in layers like my onion analogy and there are lots of these stacks and that they interconnect like a spider web. Some times you have to go through more than one junction to get a solution.
The other thing people have a hard time accepting is how fast the brain works. Which in turn makes it hard to accept that nothing just happens, it goes through a process of thought before every action. Think of it as reaction time. Subconscious thought has a very short reaction time. because it doesn't have to do anything. Conscious thought is the culmination of many subconscious thoughts. For every conscious thought there were many choices from memory that could have been used. Panic is when the wrong subconscious thought is chosen to become the conscious one.
Stop right here if you can't accept this process because if you can't the rest won't make sense. Read it more than once or ask me to explain it better.
So do you understand how this works. all thoughts, random and intentional go through this process. So we have all these files in memory and every action or thought on that action, thought on the feeling or just contemplation becomes a new memory. And it is stored in the appropriate file. One on top of the other including duplications. It is known that the brain does this and it can be seem with equipment that shows the action but it is still not known how the brain stores this much information only that it does. All related thoughts are stored one on top of the other like the layers of an onion. With the latest thought on top. If you have just had a panicky thought it will be stored on top of the pile and ready for reuse with a trigger that sends your mind there. If your mind did not do a subconscious search through the stack before making the conscious decision we would only need one positive thought on the top of each stack. But it doesn't, it works very fast and even faster during panic. Survival, it wants the best answer.
If you accept my word that every thought recycles to memory for future reference and if you accept that your mind does this quick search then it stands to reason that although you are feeling fine a trigger can send the search far enough down the stack to find a negative thought. and since that thought will create the action that recycles back to memory it is now on the top of the stack. Bingo, reoccurring panic.
A little side trip here, survival skills are all negative so if something calls for one it is more likely to dig till it finds one. Positive thought do no good so are passed by in the search.
So if you are still following this and can accept it then we come to how to stop the panic.
Remember the spider web. All these memories are connected to other memories that are related. So even a positive pleasant memory can have a connection to a negative unpleasant one if they have something in common. An example would be rain during a wedding. And the opposite, pretty flowers on a pets grave. These are called associated memories.
CBT works by changing the thought patterns so we stack enough positives on every memory that the negatives in the stack are hard to find. It is a slow process because we have to do it with the associated stacks also to prevent going to them with the trigger.
So it works like this with every anxious moment we think a positive alternative or two or three and these will dictate the reaction that recycles back to memory and also dictates the next thought or action. It takes time to work because there are a lot of stacks. But positive breeds positive and a person starts to do it subconsciously because now it has subconscious positive choices to use to make the conscious one.
Or as the program says, challenge every thought and find a positive solution. Those positive solution will be on top of the stack and by challenging the thought it will also find a positive to put on the associated stacks. A slow process but one that grows faster as it has more positive choices till there are so few negative choices left that they don't matter.
This is Cognitive therapy and has to be used with Behavioural therapy to work. The two go together.
So it is rather simple every time you get anxious challenge it and find positives to think on. Use relaxation and coping skills to make it easier or even benzo's but never put a thought to bed so to speak with out thinking a positive alternative and you will soon have no reason to panic even with the usual triggers. One day the positives will catch up and you will wake up to a new you and a new world with out noticing it happened.
Davit.
Ps, if you can't understand how this works then just take my word for it and think positive all the time, it will take care of itself