Feeling overwhelmed? Distance yourself

[Guest guest]

Hi Kim,

You reminded me of a technique from Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. I learned

DBT in my third hospital and I want to share a technique that helped me years

ago.

For feeling overwhelmed:

Close your eyes and imagine you are in a movie theater. You sit in the front row

and watch your overwhelmed self on the screen. After a bit of this, get up and

move back a couple of rows. Now watch yourself watching your overwhelmed self on

the screen. Now get up and move back a few rows again and watch yourself

watching

yourself watching yourself watching your overwhelmed self on the screen. Repeat

as many times as you need to even if you have to repeat until you are sitting in

the back row of a stadium seating theater. Give yourself time to 'see' your own

silhouette as you sit in front of yourself before getting up and moving back.

I do have a good tool box for times such as now. I just have trouble

remembering

what is in it when I feel awful.

I feel lucky that the parnate has caused few if any 'physical' or hallucinatory

withdrawal reactions. Withdrawal consists mostly of a depressive backlash that

is

bad enough not to need anything else. The memory problem has me forgetting to

take my supplements. I get too down to remember to eat or to want to get up and

fix a healthy meal, to go to bed at a reasonable time. In other words, I have

trouble taking care of myself so that I won't feel even worse.

The excruciating pinched nerve pain started at the same time that I did my first

withdrawal. I read somewhere (again I forget where) that anti-d withdrawal can

cause peripheral neuropathic pain. A few weeks ago I went to a lecture by Donny

Epstein, the developer of Network Spinal Analysis. A research project gathered

the neck and spine films from people ages 20 - 60 and showed them to

neurosurgeons. There was no consensus on the diagnosis from the xray and MRI

films. For some, surgeons said the subject needed immediate surgical

intervention. More often than not, the person had no painful symptoms at all.

All

the films showed normal degenerative processes.

And you thought psychiatry was the only field of medicine without scientific

basis! The first neurosurgeon I saw wanted to operate immediately. Fortunately I

was able to ask, in spite of intolerable pain, " What are my other options? " He

answered " I am here to do surgery not to discuss options. " THIS WAS AN OFFICE

VISIT!!!! I gathered up my xray and MRI films and left.

Sorry I forgot where I was heading and I lost my train of thought so I'll stop

rambling now.

-

wrote:

> ***That's a good approach. All this stuff IS kinda freaky, make no mistake.

> It's pretty upsetting to get all these bizarre symptoms and still try to go

> ahead and function. You're doing great. Try to remain a neutral observer

> of your symptoms, as if from a distance. See yourself as a scientific

> expert on the phenomena of withdrawal. It tends to make the process a bit

> less freaky.