Posted 11/25/2007 2:09 PM (GMT 0)
As some of you may know, I was a wreck for quite some time and unable to come to terms with A/P until I started taking Klonopin back in March. Since then, I saw rapid improvement in my condition and chronicled it on a blog, which I felt was therapeutic for a long time.
However, after noticing that my recovery had plateaued late this summer, I began to re-evaluate and finally decided to terminate the blog in its current form. I started to consider that writing daily about the physical manifestations of the disorder and my normal day-to-day problems had be come an obstacle rather than a conduit for getting better. Simply put, I think I was unable to make further progress because I was immersing myself in my own symptomatology.
I wonder if anyone else has ever felt the same way? Crawling these message boards, blogging, journaling...is it really the right thing to do? I suppose it depends on where you're at in your own recovery, but I have a feeling that there comes a time when one must think about cutting themselves loose in order to try to live anxiety/panic free. It's hard to do that while mulling it over all the time.
I still see writing and the creative process as a catharsis. How I'm feeling comes out in my art, consciously and/or subconsciously. Most of my photography is on public display at my blog, and maybe my "non-anxiety" writing will be published some day. Whether it is or not, I still created it and that's what is important.
I did open a new blog over at wordpress. All the anxiety stuff from the old blog was moved over there, and I still make new entries but they're not very detailed. I thought there was writing of value in the archives so I couldn't bring myself to delete it, and the new entries are more for observational purposes than anything else. The new writing is brief and shallow...I'm not attached to it all and feel I can abandon it completely at anytime, which is a GOOD thing.
Anyway, I guess since I am still writing on the wordpress blog I cannot say that I've totally quit writing about anxiety, but I have cut back deeply. And since I've done that, I have noticed some definite improvements. Others have noticed a change, as well. I feel much more free. I don't celebrate the good days or analyze the rough moments. Instead I just live life. My social life has picked up and my creative life has become much more ambitious. My career seems to be going better as well.
I'm not suggesting that you guys stop coming here or stop writing journals; please don't misinterpret what I'm saying. I think the blog I wrote and the small community that developed around it was an essential part of my recovery. But at some point there may come a time when doing this sort of thing outlives its usefulness to the individual. We (and I definitely mean "we", as in 'I am included'), as anxiety sufferers, are a self-absorbed group almost by definition. Allowed to wallow in our disorder, we may do so indefinitely, and it's metaphorical quicksand. The more we struggle to get out, the more entrenched we become. Or at least that's what I think.
Now, God forbid, I may have a "breakdown" and come back here and eat a whole bunch of crow. It could be that I'm way off-base with all of this, and that my string of good days is spurious. That's not a thought I'm willing to entertain that much at this point, though, because doing so would obviously defeat the point.
Are there any "old-timers" who still lurk around now and then? If so, please come out and offer some guidance. Did you take a similar path and how did it work out for you? What do you feel finally pushed you over the hump? I've come a long way, but I want to go ALL the way or at least as far as I possibly can go.
Thanks.