NoPanic

Tag: perfectionism

  • Teach A Person To Fish

    After ignoring an increasing number of panic attacks for over a year, Leicestershire writer Stewart Bint suffered a major mental health breakdown in 1997 which led to him being hospitalised for ten weeks, and sectioned for 28 days.

    By Stewart Bint

    Please don’t make the same mistake I did. I thought I could fight panic attacks myself. After all, they were all in my mind, weren’t they? Couldn’t hurt me.  

    During those early days of my condition, I felt as if I were in an ocean.  Some days I was calm, serene, and floating. Other days I was panicking, anxious, and drowning.

    Looking back, I can see they were all the classic symptoms of anxiety and panic attacks,  but things were different in those days of more than quarter of a century ago.  Poor mental health was the skeleton in the cupboard back then, particularly for men. Taboo. Unmentionable. So I brushed it under the carpet. Again, and again, and again, where it festered. Until the bulge grew into depression and full-blown psychosis, and burst through the weakened fabric of my mind, and I was seriously torn and damaged. 

    My counsellor originally admitted me to a Priory psychiatric clinic as a voluntary patient for stress and depression brought on by a year of neglecting constant anxiety and regular panic attacks. 

    Initially, things got worse, and I was duly sectioned for 28 days.  But because of the severity of my condition and my increasingly bizarre behaviour I was also “specialed,” meaning a nurse was assigned to never be more than a few feet from me, around the clock.

    To this day I have no memory of those first 14 days or so of being sectioned. When the fog did start to lift I demanded to be taken home immediately. The doctors had to explain again about me being sectioned and what it meant, as I could not remember having been told.

    My family wondered if I’d ever leave hospital. But I managed to rebuild my life from those dark days, and today I’m a successful novelist and magazine columnist, and  retired a couple of years ago from my role as global Public Relations specialist for one of the world’s leading hi-tech industrial software developers.

    So, how did I come through it? How did a tiny spec of light gradually dispel the darkness?   

    Three aspects helped put it in the past. First: Acknowledging I had a problem, and seeking help. Second: Drawing up coping strategies. Third: There’s an old saying: “Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach a person how to fish and they feed themselves for life.” The same is true of constantly implementing these strategies until they become second nature. 

    Daily sessions were held with a senior psychiatrist, and gradually the anxiety and panic was held in check. I was developing the weapons to fight the anxiety, the depression, the psychosis, and overthrow the waves of bad, negative thoughts that had been invading my mind for so long.

    Before my diagnosis I’d been an overly ambitious perfectionist, keen to please everyone and get everything absolutely spot on, and I’d become increasingly anxious that my work wasn’t going to be perfect.

    But I started learning how to create effective coping strategies that actually changed my whole outlook on life. No longer did I wake up every morning and immediately curl up in a ball, cursing the fact that I was alive. I woke up looking forward to what the day would bring and taking another small, tottering step towards getting my life back.

    During my treatment it was found I had repressed bad memories from my childhood. It was also discovered I had an inferiority complex. All that had combined subconsciously to bring on anxiety and powerful panic attacks. With all that out in the open, I was on the way to recovery. And once I was discharged, my coping strategy became all about casting off the things I no longer needed in my life, including corporate success and the stress that comes with it. I returned to my first love of writing, and became a novelist and have my own column in a local monthly magazine.

    To me, coping strategies are highly personal, and you need one for every situation that can cause difficulty. For example, I realised that if I were to continue seeking perfection in my work and myself, I was destined to fail, and in all probability would face an even longer spell as a hospital in-patient.  So my coping strategy for that was to accept compromise, both from myself and other people.

    Whenever a deadline approaches I ask myself what is the worst that can happen if I don’t meet it? Occasionally I have needed to burn the midnight oil, but in the olden days it was a daily occurrence. Now when I miss deadlines no-one worries. Least of all me. No anxiety. No panic attacks. 

    In total, I was in the clinic for around ten weeks before being discharged into a care-in-the-community programme. Apart from one minor relapse, the coping strategies I learned during that time have been successful, and I’m grateful to have been able to rebuild my life with new, stronger, firmer foundations.

    I’ll end as I began – please don’t make the same mistake I did. Seek professional help to overcome anxiety and panic attacks. Control them. Don’t let them control you. 

  • Anxiety and I: Measuring Your Effort

    by Ellie Dixon, Mindless Mag

    My past

    Anxiety and I have been close friends since childhood. She was the type of friend who would always be there for me. She would constantly be squeezing my chest, buzzing in my ear, or laying in the pit of my stomach. As I said, she was always there. However, the older I got, the more I realised just how much of a hold anxiety had over me, and I started to question whether our relationship was as healthy as I always thought it was. 

    Growing up, the type of anxiety I experienced most often was social anxiety, often accompanied by her overachieving cousin, performance anxiety. I chalked this up as the reason for my lack of participation during my education. I was in constant anticipation of an unexpected call from the teacher, a nasty comment from the nearest bully, or the expectation to ‘do your best’ on the next piece of homework.

    I would always take the phrase ‘do your best’ very literally growing up. To the point where, if I had not tried my absolute hardest to achieve excellence, I would feel like I had failed. I carried this perfectionistic mindset into adulthood, and I struggle to let go of it even now.

    “My best was never achievable because I always felt like I could do better… If I missed a question on a test, well maybe I didn’t study hard enough. Maybe I did not truly do my best. I could have done better.”

    My present

    This mentality haunted me during my university years. The overwhelming feeling of guilt I would experience when I did not reach the grade I wanted, when a project did not turn out the way I had envisioned, or when I walked away from a new social situation I was determined to participate in. I would put in so much effort and energy, but if things did not turn out the best possible way, I would convince myself I had failed.

    It did not take long for this approach to burn me out. The crushing stress and anxiety it had given me, dissolved any passion I had left for my work.

    I remember my graduation day, walking across the stage and receiving my certificate. I remember returning to my seat, looking down at this piece of paper, and thinking, “is this it? All the effort, anxiety, and tears were for this £28,500 worth of paper?” At that moment, I genuinely could not understand why I had put myself through it, I could not see the worth of the experience, but I realise now, I was looking at it all wrong.

    I recently came across a self-help book entitled You Will Get Through This Night by Daniel Howell. The book is promoted as a practical mental health guide, focusing on the basic understanding of mental health. One quote in particular stood out to me as it changed my entire perspective of my university experience.

    “Measure yourself by your effort, not your achievements.”

    Upon reading this, I realised I had been comparing the effort I had put into obtaining my degree and the achievement of receiving the degree itself. I was expecting the two to feel like equals which is simply not the case.

    While everyone else was congratulating me on obtaining my degree, I felt as if it should have meant more to me than it did. Everyone else did not experience the years of struggle like I did, the sleepless nights, or the panic attack like I did. They only saw the achievement.

    There are many smaller achievements I would not have gained if I did not put such a significant amount of effort into my university experience. I would not have learnt vital digital skills which I can take into my future career, I would not have learnt to be comfortable in my own company, and I would not have learnt how to cook and develop healthy eating habits.

    Using this new mindset, I was able to flip my perspective of failure, and the anxiety I had about giving the perfect performance became a lot softer. I recognise now, even if I never reach the key achievement, I will still achieve something for my efforts, whether it be a new skill, a new friend, or a new mindset. The smaller achievements are still achievements. 

    My future

    Predicting the future of my mindset is not something I can realistically do. I still have so much to learn about myself and my mental health. After all, improvement does not happen overnight. Gaining a new and positive mindset can be enlightening, but you must be willing and able to work to maintain it. To do this, we must accept we often will not have the energy for this every day.

    “If we know what our best is, if we have a glimpse of what our best feels like and the effort that goes into that, and we are always trying to meet that, then that’s unrealistic because our best is different every single day. Our bodies and our minds are different every single day.” 

    If I want to nurture my mind and help it grow, I need to be able to set limits with anxiety so we can develop a healthier friendship. Even though anxiety has her faults, I know she can be a good friend. She helps keep me safe and alerts me of danger. I must learn to appreciate that about her.To me, it is not about getting rid of my anxieties altogether, but learning how I can exist with them by setting boundaries and acknowledging my negative outlooks, this is why I often personify anxiety. It helps me to distance myself and think critically about the way she makes me feel. This approach may not work for everyone, but it works for me. This is why finding a mindset that works for you is so important.