Yeah- I'm going through a massive change at the moment- I'm leaving school and going to college and it's scaring the hell out of me, even though I want the change. My biggest fear is if I end up messing up my studies.
I'm literally a wreck when change happens. For instance, when I was leaving primary school, I had developed an anxiety disorder that lasted a few years and was worsened by the absence of my father during my second year of secondary school. Actually, the anxiety got so bad that pretty much anything made me frightened and I was very physically sick and paranoid about fainting when anything was amiss. I had constant heart palpitations, my muscles were always stiff and I was usually on the edge pretty much on a daily basis. I took medication, but it quickly became less effective.
Interestingly, the thing that got rid of the panic attacks wasn't the counselling, but it was watching horror films, televised operations and violence on the 10 o'clock news. This was to compare the different kinds of gore and disensitise myself to them appropriotely (without treating real violence like entertainment or a surgery like torture or a horror flm like it's real). This was something I forced myself to do because I knew that I wouldn't be able to survive without excepting that real life isn't censored (and I wouldn't be able to do biology if I couldn't watch organs get cut up).
Over the past year, I wasn't feeling as anxious as much as I felt fed up and mentally lethargic, but usually if I get to the point where I feel REALLY bad (like, almost catatonic), I would have to be reminded of "the big picture".
Perhaps you just need to find a way to remind yourself, now and again, your goals and that big picture.
07 May 2009, 5:17 pm
