hi guys
after the episodes of suicidal thoughts
i started taking antidepressants
i am not depressed now
but i study medicine so i am in really stressful conditions
i had 2 panic attacks which is not that bad i know that
but i am sooooo stressed and i dont know how to stop it
i cant even hear anyone or anything because my brain cant take it anymore
i know i am so much better
but deep deep inside i know that i am not normal and i will never be normal and i will always have panic attacks and this is hearbreaking
2 comments
some just not like to change the melodrama to must undergo changes.
According to metacognitive therapy (MCT), the reason for your panic attacks is faulty metacognitive beliefs. Maybe you hold some positive metacognitive beliefs: e.g. “worrying helps me”. And maybe you hold some negative metacognitive beliefs about danger: e.g. “all this worry will drive me crazy”, or about uncontrollability: e.g. “I can’t control my worry”.
What happens is that you initially worry in order to prepare for future troubles. The worrying causes negative emotion, which then activates your negative beliefs about danger and uncontrollability (i.e. you fear that worrying will drive you crazy, and you don’t believe you can control it). This increases your negative emotions, making you worry more, and a vicious cycle called the cognitive attentional syndrome (CAS) is created.
What metacognitive therapy aims to do is to disrupt the CAS by challenging your positive beliefs about worry (is it really that helpful? How do you know you’re worrying about the right thing?), challenging your negative beliefs about danger (worry is harmless, and stress can actually be healthy). Your negative beliefs about uncontrollability are challenged using the attention training technique (ATT), where you learn to choose what you pay attention to, worry postsponement, in which you’re asked to limit your worry to e.g. one hour per day at a set time, and detatched mindfulness, where you learn to identify your triggering thoughts, and, when they arise, recognize that they are just thoughts and that they are separate from who you are, so you can let them go.
tl;dr Metacognitive therapy regards emotional wounds like physical ones: If you leave them alone, they will heal by themselves, but if you keep picking at them, they won’t.