Saturday, April 2, 2011

Nothing So Boring As Agoraphobia

Keeping track of my daily activities, I find that my live is really quite boring.  I read ALOT, watch very little T.V., I play with my dogs and take them outside to romp around the yard and I eat.  I spend the least amount of time eating and watching T.V. and most of the time reading and playing with my dogs. 
So, how to add alittle heart racing activity into my life?  NOOO!!!  Don't say it!!!!  I must... I should be challenging my "safe zone".  Get out and try facing my fear!  Practice my slow, controlled breathing.  That's what I should be doing and there is not one reason for not doing these things!!!  No excuse for not making it a daily practice to go out alittle further everyday.  Make the brain learn the difference between fake fear and the real thing.  It will only learn this through constant exposure to the fake fear.  No magic pill is going to make the brain learn this, only I can teach my brain to see the fears that are fake. 
Sure, there are drugs that can help calm the brain a bit during these lessons but ultimately the brain must experience the fear and recognize that it's nothing but an illusion, misinterpretation of reality.  Whether the fear was learned as a child or through some terrible experience, the brain must be made to realize that there is actually little to fear in the daily life of the average person.  Sure there are dangers in the world but those are probably not the dangers the brain is worried about with agoraphobics.
My biggest enemy is my "fight or flight response system".  It's my nemesis, it taunts me.  The fight or flight response which is there to protect me from danger has turned against me.  It perceives me as the danger, my mind, my thoughts are what is dangerous to me.  Sure my fight or flight response works when say I'm faced with perhaps a mean stray dog, turns on the adrenaline, but it's not the all out fight or flight response I get when simply trying to go to the store. 
People without a true phobia simply can not understand or appreciate the level of fear experienced by phobics or the difficulty in teaching the natural human response, the fight or flight system to work the way it should, for us not against us.  They can't appreciate something they can't see...it's not a heart or lung, an organ that can be held and dissected.  Yeah, you can dissect the brain but there won't be a fight or flight system they can grasp onto and see the abnormality.
Anyway, how do I fight against a natural human response that has developed throughout the history of human life?  How do I teach it to work for me instead of against me?  Guess it goes back to teaching the brain to recognize fake fears. 

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