One of the things I remember most from my childhood is endless swimming; from being far out of my depth in the sea, through to training in the pool. I was an endurance swimmer and could go on and on for hours. It was here, in the middle of the depths, that I learnt possibly the most valuable lesson I have ever been taught and one that helps every single day I battle it out with Lupus....... Fear is an uncontrollable emotion, panic is a learnt behavior that can be quelled.
So I thought I would share this with you and how I apply it.
I am afraid 50% of the time.
Lupus and any chronic illness is a scary place to be living; endless tests, endless lost nights, endless bad news (sometimes). It is not easy to be brave all of the time and it is equally unhealthy to always be brave or feel like you have to be. Do I tell people that I am afraid? Not always, most of the time I don't need to, because of the above theory.
So what am I actually afraid of? Trust me, it changes daily. Sometimes its the pain, sometimes its the fear of the future, sometimes its simply the fear of my own body. However fear is an emotion that we all know and one that we need to feel in order to process information; when we are young we are taught to be afraid of crossing the road when the green man isn't there....see fear is healthy.
When fear is not a healthy emotion and can become a problem.
The issue with fear is that it is all to easy to let it consume you with panic. Now panic is a very different emotion and comes from learnt behaviors and in some circumstances we need to panic in order for our survival instinct to kick in. However, panic is not necessary for every fear we have; it is separate and can be dealt with as such.
Now we all know that Lupus, Chrons disease, Fibromyalgia, CFS can be made worse by stress and panic will ultimately lead to stress....a vicious circle that will only make you feel worse. take the swimming as an example. When I was 15 I went to a pool party that involved inflatables, one of the chords holding the inflatable down came lose and I dived down to get it. All was fine until I got stuck underneath the inflatable - terrified and losing the breath I had hold of. I panicked, I kicked, I pushed and eventually I realised if I didn't act this could go horribly wrong. So I stopped panicking - just stopped sat there on the bottom of the pool. In a split second I had removed the panic just holding onto the fear. This gave me the time to make the decision to slowly crawl along the bottom until I found a gap.
Moral of the story - panic doesn't help, makes us make rash decisions and ultimately can make us feel worse.
How do you separate them?
That is a question only you can answer, but here is how I do it. When I begin to panic over test results, hospital visits etc I allow myself only 3 minutes to panic. I sit there, I freak out, I cry or do whatever is needed at the time. I will keep an eye on how many minutes I have lost control of and as soon as I reach three I take a deep breath, tell myself too let it go and let my mind drift to somewhere else.
For me this works 90% of the time - I am human after all, so there are times I have had panic attacks, but there are minimal considering I have the fear with me every day.
So next time you panic, remember that you can control it, you can grab it and you can fight it off with everything you have.
