Please read proceeding post first.
A note on this. Positive thought is short lived because it is not necessary for survival even though it is necessary for happiness. Negative thought stays around till it is not needed because all survival skills are negative. They normally work silently in the background protecting us even when we are feeling positive. They just aren't noticed. This is by choice and is learned as is panic. It works like this. Normal anxiety passes through memory where memory decides it is a concern but not necessary to act on so it picks a positive answer to form the action. Like this: crossing traffic your mind picks out all the possibilities and decides no action is necessary if none is. But if a car is coming it goes through all the possibilities and decides on an appropriate action. Now setting triggers aside for a moment. With an anxiety disorder a person looks at all the possibilities and picks out what your mind considers appropriate, based on core beliefs, attitude, personality or mood. These are all learned things installed in memory. Remember the triangle. All actions, reactions or thoughts cycle back to memory for future reference. So a trigger calls for a negative answer because they usually want a survival skill which your mind disregards if it isn't appropriate. There is that word again, appropriate, not necessarily right if you have learned it is appropriate, it can be wrong and still be appropriate. This is where core beliefs come in. Core beliefs dictate how you think based on past experience. Repetition keeps them the same in memory instead of updating them. And in this way you can continue to get the same reaction. In this case if a trigger causes panic it will because memory thinks that is what you want because you have not told it otherwise. It can only pick from what it has stored. Memory can't think, you have to tell it too. So CBT works by changing the commands so memory has a positive choice besides the negative one to choose from. Repetition reinforces the positive without you losing necessary survival skills. They will still override the positive in a life threatening situation just not in one that isn't such as normal anxiety that we all get. This is conditioning and has to be installed (learned and repeated so it has priority and become appropriate) Once learned it stays there and has priority unless you change it. Memory can't change it, you have to tell it to. It helps if you know what caused a thought (trigger) to call for a negative action. Problem is that if it is a big enough trauma you may block it for sanities sake and not be able to find it. (ptsd) The good news is that you don't need to know it to change how you react to triggers. They don't go away, how you react to them does. And this has to be learned and installed in memory.
Now the problem I have with exposure is that if it causes a negative thought each time it is done you will be installing a negative answer in memory, but if you can think positive while doing exposure you will install a positive. This is why you need self checks and to stop before the exposure has you thinking negative which can happen even before you start.
Don't do exposure unless you can do it in a positive manner. This is my thought and many experts think that if you do exposure enough you will come to disregard the negative reaction. The triangle says otherwise. It says you will install how you feel because that is it's only choice. You have to give it another choice. I did not do exposure till I could actually believe I had another choice other than fear. Then exposure reinforced the positive reaction by cycling it back to memory for future reference. With a good solid installation the negative is still a choice but is no longer the appropriate choice and in this case also the right one. Pretty simple right! Unfortunately we have a lot of things keeping us who we are so changing thought patterns is not as easy as we would like it to be. It takes time but once done they stay there unless we change back. These are set backs and are normal if they happen. All a set back tells us is that something still has to be changed.
Now relaxation and coping skills work faster but stay coping skills for ever, they just make it easier to change thought patterns so are still necessary. You just don't want to stop there because that is only half way. With a change of thought patterns they are not necessary even though you never lose them and will use them during periods of high stress or trauma, just not to the extent you did before changing thought patterns.
Davit
