Hi Etceteral. How are you doing today?

I'll share whatever I can in hopes some of it might help...

Let's see...

It's interesting, in thinking back to when I first realized I had significant issues and needed to do some kind of therapy, I couldn't name what was going on. It's been a number of years now, so it's taking a bit to recall. Anyway... things got to their worst when I realized I was starting to have trouble leaving home- agoraphobia. Up until that point I didn't correlate the feelings I was having to being panic attacks and level 10 anxiety. It was only after watching someone's YouTube videos about his experiences with panic attacks and agoraphobia, that I realized I WAS actually having panic attacks. It seems like that would be obvious, but it's apparently not. Up until doing CBT, I had always been a little bit of a high strung person. Anyhow, are you sure those super intense emotions that you can't name aren't panic attacks? Obviously I wouldn't know, but my experience is that you kind of blank out in a panic attack situation- you can't think. It's that fight or flight thing. Being able to name it as that for the first time was hard, but also gave a foundation.

I've recently started codependency work, realizing how much DH's undefined mental situation and behavior has affected me. I've had so many headaches and awful feelings. The first week I constantly felt like one of those fireworks that just spins around violently and shoots sparks in all directions. It was awful. In the moment it feels like it will never go away, but even then I sort of figured this was probably junk that's been repressed for the last few years. It seems to have burned itself out at this point. That doesn't mean it won't come back next week, but hey... But absolutely, I agree with that assessment of yours regarding the feelings we haven't been feeling.

I like your bottle imagery. That seems very much in the line of mindfulness to me. You are sort of putting them there and accepting those that are at a manageable level.

Now, for those more specific questions. I was basically waking up with severe anxiety/panic attacks every morning. I'd force through the day as best as I could, but not really moving forward as far as the anxiety was concerned. Then I came across one of Dr. Weekes books and read it voraciously. Then I started to apply her techniques- which is when I tried to give into it and float (i.e. lying on the floor).

Before that, usually when the feelings came up, instead of sitting with them, I was really good at distracting myself. So I'd go find some problem to work on, but the feeling wouldn't go away so much as I just compartmentalized it for later, and they would be back in full force the following morning.

The lying on the floor for 4 hours, accepting the feelings, felt like it lasted forever, but that part was really only about 2 weeks. After that, the time got shorter and shorter, though sometimes there would be a bad day and a setback.

As far as thoughts, YES, that was probably one of my biggest problems was having obsessive thoughts and fears that wouldn't go away. I was very keyed up- very hyper vigilant. Being new here, I don't know how the trigger thing works- not just the blanking out, but also when to use it, so I'll be a little more vague here, but like... we live on a wide street with trees in front of the house, so people will often pull over in front of our house to make phone calls. Any truck that was parked out there would spark that fear and paranoia and then it would be hard to me to calm it down the rest of the day. Just the scary thoughts of "who is that person? what are they doing out there?" Then it might go into me being fearful that they were reporting a property violation- which seems weird because I couldn't actually come up with anything that would be a violation- it was just an irrational fear. Sometimes I'd latch onto awful news story and just couldn't shake them from my head. Anyhow, that kind of stuff. And it calmed down with Dr. Weekes method, but again... time.

When it comes to facing and floating, I guess the way I sort of looked at it was to say "okay, this is just a feeling, but it's not going to kill me, so come beat me up." And the four hours of lying on the floor was just imagine myself relaxing as best as I could and taking the emotional hits from the intense feelings that came. Like maybe imagine being a rag doll and the intense feelings keep smacking you, but since you're a rag doll, you can just kind of flop around and not get hurt. It's kind of hard to explain- I think Dr. W. does a much better job.

My take on the 'listening in' part is where you are terrified of something, but then giving it your attention at the same time. So in that example of a worker stopping his truck in front of the house, first I am thinking "Oh no! Who is this and what do they want?" So I'm scared and trying to mentally hide from it, but then at the same time I'm coming up with all these horrible what-if scenarios about why the guy could be there- so I'm listening and feeding the fears. Does that make sense. Not sure if that's what she meant exactly, just my take.

Sorry this got really long and wordy/ I hope you made it through and maybe got something out of it.