I've been reading the forums and working through the sessions for a while now, but this is my first post. It's a bit long, but getting it all out helps me feel better, so I hope you don't mind. This site has helped me so much, especially things like the breathing exercises and challenging your negative thoughts. Reading what other people are going through makes me feel like I'm not alone. My anxiety isn't linked to something specific. I've always had underlying anxiety that I try to manage, but then if something bad happens the anxiety suddenly becomes very difficult to live with until the problem is resolved. I find it hard to cope with uncertainty. Sometimes I get panic attacks but they are rare. I had one earlier this year when on the same day I found out my sister was moving away and I had termites in my house. I didn't much like being alone in my house for weeks afterwards but I had to because that's where I live - so I got over it eventually. And I had one this year in a meeting at work, for no real reason at all, and then suddenly I was scared of meetings.
I dealt with that one by doing breathing and positive self-talk and forcing myself to go to every meeting I could schedule. I started with short meetings, with people I knew and trusted, sitting near the door, and with the door of the room open, which worked pretty well. I was still anxious and wanted to escape the meeting, but I just sat there doing the breathing until the feeling went away or the meeting was over, whichever came first, and it worked. Now I don't even think about it.
As for the rest, I've had a lot of difficult things happen this year - money, health, family, job, house, car. There hasn't been a single part of my life where everything was OK. It's as if everything decided to go wrong everywhere all at once, and then it was one thing after another and just didn't stop. Most of the problems have been resolved but took a lot of energy and time and money. For a big finale, the whole year was topped off by this last week, which I spent trying not to worry about having cancer. It turned out to be a benign lesion which is a relief, but I still might need to get it removed, just to be sure. I'm seeing the specialist next week.
Anyway, the main problem I have now is that instead of anticipating good things, I wake up every day dreading what is going to happen next. I feel like I'm sleepwalking through life, just waiting for the next crisis to appear so I can deal with it. It's almost like dealing with crisis after crisis is my new purpose in life. I'd prefer something more positive. I tried to set goals and do pleasureable activities over the last year but got discouraged because something else bad always happened and I had to put my energy into that. I feel like if I have hopes and dreams, or if I pray and am grateful for the things I have, or I go out and do things to make myself happy, I'm tempting fate and something bad will happen to me - not straight away but in a couple of days or weeks. I'm really, really wary about letting myself feel happy. I know it's totally irrational but it seems I've made a link between my constant attempts to keep my spirits up, and a string of unhappy things that were happening around me. I was wondering if anybody had any suggestions on how to deal with anxiety about being happy? I know that's weird but I am stuck and confused about where to go from here.
