Thanks for sharing that. It really shows your deepest understanding of what 'breaks' the audience that is interested in your title and then buying your book.

Not to hog the topic here, but someone told me that the Mayor of the small town I used to visit my mother in died a while ago. His sister in law died within this week. I used to babysit her daughter. The first thing that came to mind is how she used to set it up for the Mayor to visit with me when I sat for her child (he wasn't mayor at the time but his father was. He became the mayor when I turned 17-18). I was 14. He was 35. Since I was waaay more 'advanced' in my childhood, more than likely due to the encounters, I had a crush on this 35 year old man. He had an 'interest' in me. He'd come over at the 'beloved' sister-in-law's que that I was there, several times. We had sex (or was it just 'he'?). She called herself my mother's friend. I wonder if she profited???

Sometimes I sit and wonder why I DONT socialize very much. Lots of folk wonder that too probably. I guess I get the answers in increments in due time...gracefully so too, because to recall all of this at one time, I'd reeeaaally be a basket case.

Ironically, this mayor's 15 year old daughter was killed by her 26yr old lover last year. Hmmm.
...wonder what herstory was like???

There's no telling what else happened to that poor little blue eyed baby you probably should have stolen.

[ June 06, 2005, 11:20 PM: Message edited by: Sugaree ]

That goes to show how the eyes are indeed the windows of the soul. Sugar, I don't know if your question was rhetorical, but when I read your post, my initial reaction was that you were NOT over-reacting or biased by experience. I'm sorry to hear about the experiences with Mayor. No matter what, you were a child, and he was a ...pervert. He should never, ever have done that to you. She sounds like an accomplice. Love and Light, Lynn

To all,
Jeanne here.
Such heartbreaking stories. One wonders, did anyone experience the true innocence of childhood? I'm sure many did, but when I talk to people, to women, I find that all have experienced some sort of abuse. It seems to me that what varies are the levels. For some it may have been "inappropriate touching" by an uncle or a teacher. Certainly that cannot compare with what's been discussed here, but it still has an impact.
Which brings me back to the question we tried to get answered while writing the book...nature or nurture. Are anxiety disorders the result of childhood trauma, or the environment in which one is raised, or are anxiety disorders the result of a chemical imbalance within the brain? It turns out there is no definitive answer on this, although the general feeling in the medical/psychiatirc community today is that it is a combination, nature and nurture. I suppose this makes sense. That would explain why two people, who experience the same things as children may respond differently as adults. If one's brain chemistry is predisposed to anxiety disorders, thier response to abuse, or being raised by a paranoid or catastrophic- thinking parent, or so many other things, might differ from someone who's brain chemistry is different.
I think for me, that was the case. For years I was in therapy, and although it helped me, I still experienced my symptoms which greatly influenced every aspect of my life. Later I used medication, which did alleviate many of my symptoms, but I still struggled, I still couldn't do all of the things I wanted to do. I didn't really feel "well."
Still later, it was the combination of mediction, therapy, and a lot of reading, research and ultimatley an understanding of "me." An understanding of my disorder, an understanding of "why" certin things trigger panic for me, and then concentrating on the "why." I found that most often my fears revolved around a loss of control. For a long time I concentrted on why I was so terrified of loosing control. But figuring that out gave me no relief. So I realized I had to deal directley with everything that losing control meant. That's really when my recovery began.
Jeanne

This may be a good time to mention this.

I've never been crazy about bridges, but have bombed over them without too much anxiety. Never turned around, never found a different route, always went for it.

Now a friend enters the picture who hates driving over bridges. She does it, but can't stand the thought, worries for days prior, etc. I made the mistake of asking her how she felt when her car finally hit the bridge and she was air born. I never should have asked. I internalized her behavior.

Shortly after learning about my friend's fear and panic I was heading to Virginia Beach with my daughter, following another mom and daughter for a mother/daughter getaway. She told me the week prior that we would go via the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, Tunnel, Bridge, Tunnel, Bridge. There is such a thing. I began fretting, and when I fret I pray. So I prayed that I wouldn't panic. I told my husband my fear. I asked him to PLEASE pray for me. This was RIDICULOUS. I never had this problem before listening to my friend's story. Crazy thing, I've done the bridge, tunnel, bridge before and it was way cool.

Get this- the morning of the adventure we show up at the other mom and daughter's home and she announces, "we're taking another route". No bridge-tunnel! God answers prayers.

But the crazy thing is that I was so worked up about it.

Why is that?

This is where the nature/nurture thing enters. I believe we can make worry warts out of our children. Do you? And does worry warting create panic attacks?

I believe YES, we can make worry-warts out of our children. As parents, we're teaching, always teaching. My father's catastophic thinking formed my thinking/decision making process. However, there are four children in our family, two of us struggled greatly with anxiety disorders. The other two have not. All four of us are "cautious" people, but the two who grew up with anxiety disorders go beyond cautious. So, perhaps the two children without the anxiety disorders did not have a brain chemistry predisposed to anxiety disorders.

Dotise, regarding your bridge experience. I have seen that go both ways also. Your friend could explain her panic response to many different people, who would have no reaction to it the next time they crossed a bridge. And others will have your reaction. I would be one of the others. I have always been very suggestive. It was one of the reasons I found it difficult to read books about panic attacks. Someone would describe a situation that brought on a panic attack and the time I was in a similiar situation I would experience panic.

We tried to be very aware of this struggle for many in the writing of the book. That was part of the reason for the humor. Sometimes the same information, conveyed with a lighter note will not have such a negative response.

Jeanne

Dotsie,
Isn't it "ironic" that the very Chesapeake Bay bridge/tunne/bridge/tunnel bridge is featured in one of the diary entries in our book? I mean, of all the bridges in the world (to quote loosely from "Casablanca"), you had to (almost)cross that one...

It is strange that an experience can be "way cool" at one time and then a source of fear and anxiety at another time. And there is a sense in which fear is contagious. As Jeanne mentioned, it was hard to get people to talk and hard to ge them to listen - sometimes even to just a brief description. I think it all just brings home the fact that there is so much about fear, and about the human spirit, that we don't at present understand. Your innocent statement to your friend - how she feels when she gets air borne - set into motion an internal trigger that touched an invisible tendril of a buried root of fear. Even though you'd had a "way cool" bridge/tunnel etc experience under your belt, the phrase you said out loud must have stirred that fear, then opened it up to air and then, as we all know, once there, it can just get bigger and bigger and bigger. But how providential that your concern was taken care of by the goodness of the universe. About the particular bridge in question, I'd like to say - and point out about fears in general - that the Chesepeake Bay Bridge is one of the few bridges I know that have a full-time staff of state employees whose sole purpose is to "drive" people over the bridge - people who "get stuck" and can't do it themselves. Now the reason for this is that (I don't know what the language rules are on this site) that bridge IS REALLY FRIGGIN' SCARY. It seemed to me to soar like 3 miles in an impossible arch over the blinding water. My point is that SOME THINGS ARE SCARY and SOME THINGS ARE FRIGHTENING and hey, if there's a bridge that's got state employees there to drive the undriveable, then don't sweat the fear. It's natural to be afraid of frightening things. And it's okay to be grateful that a potentially fearful event was cleared off the table by the grace of the universe. The thing that's important to track is when the fear starts taking over. Like with OCD - there's a funny (I think it's funny ) criteria which is meant to guide diagnosticians. The criteria is this: if you spend an hour or more "obsessing" per day, then you have a definite OCD porblem. The reason I think this is funny is that I know some OCD people who are "borderline" and if they knew of this criteria, they would probably keep a detailed log of minutes per day and try to keep it at 59 minutes or under (but of course, they'd always exceed this time limit because of the time and energy devoted to "obsessing about obsession."
I suppose it makes sense to have some quantifiable measurement to guage whether something's a problem or "just a concern" as they sometimes say. I just find a good chuckle in the "hour or more" idea.
Like any other condition, the question comes down to how deeply it impacts your life. If your fear keeps you indoors for the summer, or, like the story we tell in the book about a woman who was so terrified of spiders, she duct-taped all her windows closed and simply could not leave her room - if it controls your daily life, then you should seek help, because there is help! The spider women - she went on to star in a National Geographic Documentary on a technique called "virtual exposure therapy" and she told her story with a tarantula in her hand!
-julie

Jeanne & Julie:

I hope I'm not overstepping the boundaries here but I've been struggling with a variety of issues and really need a little help. In order to give you a clear picture, I guess I better give you my background:

I learned early that perfection drowned out the pain of my childhood – those voices that played relentlessly over and over and over in my head.

•You’ll never amount to anything, •Why can’t you be like your sister or your brother? •Why don’t you think before you speak? •You never do anything right. •You’re lazy. •You could do better. •Are you stupid? •What’s wrong with you?
•I can’t stand to look at you. •You make me sick.
•I hate you.•You're fat, why don't you lose weight. •I wish you had never been born ... and so many more words that were wielded with the precision of an expert marksman.

Just reading them over brings a deep sadness within my heart. Even though I know they aren’t true, those words and others like them left their mark not only in my heart but also in my emotions and my mind.

As a child, I found the best escape was to just get away. Whether it was physically fleeing to the safety of the outdoors or a flight of fancy within my mind to a world of make-believe, I evaded these verbal weapons of abuse.

Even school offered no escape. Looking back, I wonder why I was the target of so many jokes. As I got older, the jokes turned into mean-spirited pranks that wounded my already damaged spirit. Was it because, like hunters sensing wounded and bleeding prey, they honed in on the kill? Was it because I never fought back? Was it because they somehow knew that I wouldn’t retaliate? I couldn’t. I’d been trained to believe I had no value or worth so I accepted their cruel words and pranks as what I deserved.

Somehow, I stumbled on a coping mechanism that would put an end to the abusive words and treatment. The more I achieved, the less criticism I received.

Perfection is the perfect antidote to feeling unloved and worthless. Once I started working, I became any employer’s dream. Whatever task I was given, I would give two hundred percent in completing it. And accomplish it in half the time it would take others.

Give me the impossible and I’d make it look easy.

Once I found a professional career track, I quickly moved up the ladder – promotion after promotion, award after award – and I loved every minute of it. I was building my own self-worth and making myself invaluable to those around me … be it my boss, my friends, my peers, subordinates, or superiors, and my family. I was the golden girl.

It got to the point that I never heard the voices of my past and I was more than content. I was living my dream. I was in a position where I could use my creativity in just about any direction I aimed. I was admired, an example of success, and totally in control.

The problem with using performance to quiet ghosts from the past is that if you stop performing, the ghost voices become louder and you begin to realize you don’t have much value if you can’t produce. And if you can’t produce, you lose control.

Unfortunately, I didn’t learn that lesson until I had a stroke and lost it all.

Not only did I lose my career, I lost my independence, I lost my mental acuity, I lost my memory … and the most devastating loss was my sense of worth and value.

I no longer had a stellar career, or the respect of my peers, subordinates, and superiors. Instead, I had their pity. I was no long self-sufficient. There were times when I was driving and I couldn’t remember where I was even though I was in a place I’d lived for 20 years. I no longer had emotional and mental stability. I began a monumental battle with severe depression and then tried juggling vicious anxiety attacks. Not even my faith could comfort me.

Ultimately, I believed I had nothing – worthless and completely unlovable.

I was a mess.

At 40, I’d been on top. At 50, I was sliding downward into a future that would soon rob me of my mother and (step)father. On top of that, after my mother's death, I guess my subconscious finally felt safe enough to allow me to remember ... and I discovered years of sexual abuse by my father and a few others. While I went through this discovery with the help of an awesome therapist, I was unable to really work through a lot of it since I decided to come to Germany to be with my husband. That wasn't my original idea but after he left I felt so abandoned, I HAD to come.

There are times I’m filled with an almost unbearable sorrow and sadness. Often I know what triggers it although it doesn’t make it any less painful. But it’s when I’m clueless as to the source of the anguish that I feel most helpless. Some days I go spiraling down into dark depressive thoughts. I hate it there. Then there are the panic and anxiety attacks that leave me gasping for air and running from anything that might somehow leave me trapped with no way out. I feel as terrified as a child caught in the most frightening of nightmares.

And I struggle with depression, anxiety and panic ... and take medication for those things.

My question (finally), can anxiety and panic attacks be so severe that they bring on thoughts of suicide? I want to make it clear I don't believe I'm suicidal ... but lately it seems that when I experience these problems, I just want to give up ... kind of tired of working on the issues and always being "someone elses'" savior (sound familiar to anyone ?

I'd just like to find out if these reactions are normal. And I understand if you are unable to answer ... I'm just hoping maybe someone else has experienced what I'm going through.

Sorry for the length of the post but this is the only place I knew to come for some answers.

Thanks and blessings, Francine

Francine,

I'm so sorry for your struggle. I will try to answer your question as best I can.

It is rare for people with anxiety disorders to commit suicide, however it is more common in those struggling with depression, and often the two go hand-in-hand.

You mentioned you left a therapist who was helping you when you went to Germany. Are you seeing a therapist in Germany?

You also mentioned you are taking medication for depression and panic attacks. There are many different types of medication, and if one is not working for you, I would urge you to talk to your doctor about trying another.

Fear is a tough nut to crack. The "normal" response to fear is to get away. But the fear related to panic is different. My experience has been that the more you run from it the harder it chases you. I found that changing my response to the panic fear (not an easy task) diffused it. Sort of like the analogy we use in the book, "Panic is like a haunted house, the only way out is through it." It's not an overnight cure. You have to unlearn behavior that's been automatic for most of your life, but it can be done. Better yet, it gives you a tool for when panic hits. Rather than just waiting for the panic attack to end.

I hope this has been some help to you. Please, hang in there.

Jeanne

Francine, I haven't been participating in this thread until now because I've been either out of town or very hectic. But your post really touched my spirit and heart. This could have been me writing this only a few months ago. I've struggled with very poor self-esteem all my life and became an expert "chameleon", changing myself in whatever way necessary to fit in and belong anywhere. Perfectionism became one of my defense mechanisms too. So much so, that it almost killed me when chronic fatigue and depression began to make it impossible for me to function at all, much less perform perfectly.

It's been a long, hard struggle, and yes, I've battled with suicide thoughts in the past, feeling so overwhelmed with hopelessness and despair that it was never going to get better. My journey out of there has been long and difficult, but well worth the agony and hard work. Jeanne's analogy of the haunted house is right on...the best and only real way out is through the pain and darkness. Yes it's scary, yes it's painful, but the "real you", the core self that you finally meet and evolve into along the way is priceless.

I continually have to "rewire my attic", replacing all those persistent and deafening negative voices and messages with new positive and compassionate ones. It's so hard at times, and seems futile and unproductive at times, but don't give up. Take a break now and then from that interior dialoguing, but don't give up. And above all, be compassionate with yourself...be tender with your woundedness, lovingly embrace that sad child deep within you, rock Francine gently back to life.

You are NOT ever expected to be able to do it all by yourself. Therapy, medication, friends, family, your Boomer sisters right here, and God if you believe in Him (and if you do, the first thing that might be helpful is to dare/choose to believe that He truly is on your side and loves you UNCONDITIONALLY...and HE HAS NOT ABANDONED YOU!!! It's hard to believe when we feel like we're drowning in quicksand, but that's when it comes down to blind faith...saying it's true even when we can't feel it).

Francine, we're all here for you. Come here as much as you can. Let us hold your hand in that darkness and sit with you there in that confusing maelstrom of mangled thoughts. We'll help you through. And if it would help at all, feel free to email me anytime (eagleborntofly@magma.ca).

[ June 08, 2005, 11:32 AM: Message edited by: Eagle Heart ]

Jeanne, thanks for answering. I think the hardest thing for me is not knowing why. The only therapy available is with German doctors and I'm not comfortable with that. I currently take welbutrin, buspirone and clonazepam but it was only with the help of my therapist in AZ that we came up with that combination that worked ... at least at the time, so maybe the meds need changing. I guess I keep thinking I can hold on until I return to Arizona permanently in February.

Eagle Heart ... your words truly touched me deeply. Thank you. Another hard issue is that I consider myself a strong Christian with a solid belief in God's unconditional love for me -- and so to be in the shape I'm in (mentally/ emotionally) leads me to question my faith. I know God hasn't abandoned me because He is the reason I keep hanging on. Your post helped and I appreciate your concern.

Thank you for caring.