When I was teaching I did a lot of work with an education psychologist in using his new way of helping all students (and teachers) to overcome subconscious blockages to learning. Rather like the theory here behind retraining your brain via hypnosis, this relied on bringing subconscious, prior but incorrect learning, to the conscious level and then getting the students to consciously, cognitively learn the new and correct way.
OK - with me so far? Anyway, I asked him a long time ago, could I use this method to give up smoking and when he said yes, I said how would I start. He said "you first have to identify why smoking is good for you". And do you know, I have only just realised, at a deeper level, how important that is?
So for a while I have been trying the same thing with drinking. Why is drinking "good for me"?.. I had a list of - relieves my boredom/stress/anxieties - or takes them away out of my consciousness. To get rid of a hangover more lately. Allows me to be uninhibited enough to meet new people/dance whatever. All the lists you people could do too, right? But that list was missing something.
Anyway - about a month ago I wrote myself a short story which I called 'slow motion suicide' (though someone told me that name is already taken, drat). It was about a woman (me) who wanted to die or rather, didn't necessarily see why she should live, so she stopped taking care of herself. She drank excessively, continued to smoke, didn't exercise etc etc. She had no real reason to do this - a textbook perfect life, loving kids and husband, great friends, great opportunities. She just stopped or couldn't figure out why she needed to do these things. Not consciously - it was just there.
Yesterday when I posted about my fear of escalators and stairs, I started to think of the other things that used to trigger my panic paralysis. I realised all of them were to do with situations where I could die. Like falling down the escalator, like driving, like choking.
This seemed really irrational where on the one hand I am committing suicide and on the other get into a panic where it is possible I could die.
So here is the revelation: I am scared of living! It is not that I don't want to live, I am scared that the end result of living is death. So ... I try to obliterate it. The real reason drinking is "good for me" is to help me wipe out a good section of my life.
This fits in because I only started being a problem drinker about 7 years ago. What happened 7 years ago? I had three occasions where I was physically threatened by different parents of the students I was teaching and had time off work and counselling for that. Two of my nephews committed suicide, my mother started to show the signs of dementia, I seemed to be at the time in life where I attended funerals regularly. One best friend had her eventually fatal brain tumours reoccur. And ... my husband, the designated problem drinker in our family stopped drinking and smoking because his father, then mother died of complications brought about by both of these habits.
It was 5 years ago I started to show signs of the panic disorder, though it took a year of medical tests to eventually determine what they were ... meanwhile I had started self-medicating with wine of an evening now leading me to this place - all with the total consent of my weirdo brain.
I believe the reason I 'chose' alcohol rather than any other drug or method is due to the physiological predisposition towards it - which meant it worked for me. My dad and two siblings are problem drinkers too whereas my mum can't even stomach half a glass of sweet wine.
OK - now I have to decide what to do with this revelation. I am thinking I need to incorporate it somehow in the hypnosis. I haven't done the hypnotic tape yet so I don't know if that is possible. Any suggestions gratefully received.
OK - with me so far? Anyway, I asked him a long time ago, could I use this method to give up smoking and when he said yes, I said how would I start. He said "you first have to identify why smoking is good for you". And do you know, I have only just realised, at a deeper level, how important that is?
So for a while I have been trying the same thing with drinking. Why is drinking "good for me"?.. I had a list of - relieves my boredom/stress/anxieties - or takes them away out of my consciousness. To get rid of a hangover more lately. Allows me to be uninhibited enough to meet new people/dance whatever. All the lists you people could do too, right? But that list was missing something.
Anyway - about a month ago I wrote myself a short story which I called 'slow motion suicide' (though someone told me that name is already taken, drat). It was about a woman (me) who wanted to die or rather, didn't necessarily see why she should live, so she stopped taking care of herself. She drank excessively, continued to smoke, didn't exercise etc etc. She had no real reason to do this - a textbook perfect life, loving kids and husband, great friends, great opportunities. She just stopped or couldn't figure out why she needed to do these things. Not consciously - it was just there.
Yesterday when I posted about my fear of escalators and stairs, I started to think of the other things that used to trigger my panic paralysis. I realised all of them were to do with situations where I could die. Like falling down the escalator, like driving, like choking.
This seemed really irrational where on the one hand I am committing suicide and on the other get into a panic where it is possible I could die.
So here is the revelation: I am scared of living! It is not that I don't want to live, I am scared that the end result of living is death. So ... I try to obliterate it. The real reason drinking is "good for me" is to help me wipe out a good section of my life.
This fits in because I only started being a problem drinker about 7 years ago. What happened 7 years ago? I had three occasions where I was physically threatened by different parents of the students I was teaching and had time off work and counselling for that. Two of my nephews committed suicide, my mother started to show the signs of dementia, I seemed to be at the time in life where I attended funerals regularly. One best friend had her eventually fatal brain tumours reoccur. And ... my husband, the designated problem drinker in our family stopped drinking and smoking because his father, then mother died of complications brought about by both of these habits.
It was 5 years ago I started to show signs of the panic disorder, though it took a year of medical tests to eventually determine what they were ... meanwhile I had started self-medicating with wine of an evening now leading me to this place - all with the total consent of my weirdo brain.
I believe the reason I 'chose' alcohol rather than any other drug or method is due to the physiological predisposition towards it - which meant it worked for me. My dad and two siblings are problem drinkers too whereas my mum can't even stomach half a glass of sweet wine.
OK - now I have to decide what to do with this revelation. I am thinking I need to incorporate it somehow in the hypnosis. I haven't done the hypnotic tape yet so I don't know if that is possible. Any suggestions gratefully received.
because its stops the incessant chattering going on in my brain and the anxiety I feel when not drinking. I am doing COG therapy with my doctor along with campral. My first visit is in 1 hours time. I have also had panic attacks, 1 nasty one while driving on a freeway and I truly thought I was going to die! I found my panic attacks were worse when I drank wine and the spaced out & dizzy feeling the next day would lead me to the next attack. I know when I listened to the CD I balked at the stairs and visualised escalators instead because in my mind they are safer for me, needless to say I spent an aweful lot of time on escalators while listening to the CD:rollin
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