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Recognizing Your Triggers For Panic Attacks

When you have panic attacks, like I do, it’s important to recognize what triggers them. I’m sure you’ve seen the different blog posts on the Internet that read “trigger warning.” What that means is that the content that you will read may trigger you. So that’s why it’s important to know what your triggers are. With panic disorder, I have specific triggers that affect me and one of them is hypochondria. If somebody talks about having a disease I get nervous and that anxiety could transform into a panic attack. I am working on that issue and exposure therapy. But in the meantime, I am aware that I may get panic attacks due to being afraid I am dying of a random disease.
I get panic attacks when I feel like I am out of control in the situation. But knowing about these triggers is important because of there something I can do about them.
People who have recovered from emotionally abusive relationships often get panic attacks when they are triggered by something that reminds them of the abuse and the same goes for physical and sexual abuse survivors. However, when you’re working on your triggers in therapy you can be more aware of what they are and learn when they come up so you know what you can do to help yourself. The first step to getting well from panic is to know what’s causing it. You may be managing anxiety throughout the course of your life, however, if you know what causes that anxiety you’ll be better off. You’ll be able to figure out how to respond when the triggers come up so that they don’t control you. I have found that awareness is so crucial for my anxiety management plan.
Sometimes it’s a matter of just riding it out. Panic is like a rollercoaster that you didn’t stand in line for. It’s there, it’s annoying and you’ve got to roll with it. You don’t know what to do necessarily but you do know that the panic attack will not last forever. Doing mindful breathing, meditating, and focusing on where you are, and your surroundings will help you to stay grounded during a panic attack.
Also remember that people who have not experienced panic attacks personally may not always understand what you’re going through. So try not to take it personally. I used to get very upset when other people did not get what I was feeling when I was panicking.
Now I understand that panic disorder is difficult to explain to others if they have never experienced it and it’s OK if I feel alone. As long as I am able to manage the panic attacks that’s what counts. If I find that the anxiety is unmanageable that’s when I need to shift and change something. If you’re experiencing panic attacks during this time in your life, I feel for you because I’ve been there. But remember that panic does not last forever. Working on your triggers will help you to understand where your anxiety comes from.

#BookTherapy with Sarah Fader (Me)

I have written seven books and I love writing. I’ve been writing since I was six-years-old, and I don’t play by the rules. I enjoy sentence fragments, semicolon usage, and offbeat humor. I often wish there was a sarcasm font and I still don’t understand why our society can’t get it together to have one. Writing is one of the most freeing and cathartic experiences for me. I get to use SAT words, get my emotions out, and be myself on paper.

Since I love writing so much, I would like to help you write a book. Is there a story you’ve been dying to write? What is stopping you? It’s time to break through those walls and get through those invisible barriers. The clarity you’ll receive when working with me is undeniable. I know that we can produce something you’ll be proud of. I’m well-versed in the world of self-publishing and I can guide you to professionals who will get your book on the market.

Are you interested in hearing more? Schedule a free Skype session me by contacting me here. Click the contact form and reach out! I promise I don’t bite.

Why you shouldn’t convince people to believe in therapy

There are people out there who don’t believe in therapy. I used to try to convince them about how therapy could help people. I felt like I was a therapy evangelist. I would stand on my soapbox and tell them why they were wrong. I’d try to sway them in the right direction. But, ultimately, it would leave me feeling frustrated and unfulfilled. You can’t convince someone to believe in something they don’t. It’s just like this: I believe in astrology. I used to try to convince other people about how accurate and wonderful astrology was, but they didn’t want to hear it. They told me I was anti-science and uneducated. That isn’t a pleasant thing to hear of course. So with therapy, it’s the same concept, I am not going to sit here and tell you to go to a therapist if there’s no way in hell you’re going to do it. I can tell you if you’re interested in learning the benefits of therapy. I can preach to you that there’s affordable or even free options out there. People will either want to hear me or they won’t. But there’s no use in me shouting louder about how awesome therapy is.

I am a big proponent of people getting the help and care they deserve. We all deserve to have a great life, and people with mental illness benefit from going to see a therapist. Sometimes seeing a psychiatrist and therapist together is the best combination. But again, I’m not here to tell you what to do for yourself. That’s a waste of my time if you can’t hear me. Telling people what to do is never productive. Presenting them with viable options if they’re open to them is the way to go. It’s the same thing for any unsolicited advice. If someone doesn’t ask you for advice, likely they don’t want to hear what you have to say.

Here’s a thought: ask the person this “are you open to hearing about therapy?” Then you can gauge their reaction and react accordingly. Don’t sit there and spout the gospel about how therapy is going to change their lives. Another thing I do is share my personal story about how therapy has helped me. People often learn through modeling or examples. If you can show them proof that something worked for someone else, they’re likely to consider that concrete evidence rather than an abstraction.

Have you ever tried to convince someone to do something? Has it worked for you? I’m seriously curious about this. I would like to know what your success rate is for trying to make someone do anything including (but not limited to) going to get mental health care. I’ve seen this be successful with addicts at times. You say to the person, “listen either you get help or get out of my house.” Sometimes that shocks people into reality. But in terms of therapy, I’m not sure. The person has to be ready to get help.

Kindergarten rules can help your marriage

I’ve been thinking about romantic relationships including marriages and how similar they are to being a child in a kindergarten classroom. Here are my thoughts on the topic below.

When we are in kindergarten we learn to share. We are told that it is polite when you are playing with a toy to share with your friend. You can relate this to romantic relationships in adult life. When you guys are sleeping in the same bed you have to share the blanket as much as you don’t want to, you cannot hog it. Well, you can but your partner will be annoyed.

in kindergarten we are taught we have to take turns. So maybe it’s Jack’s day to hand out the snack and it is Liza’s day to be the meeting helper. Not everybody can do the same job every day. In a relationship when you’re living together you need to take turns doing household chores. Nobody wants to do the dishes every day and nobody wants to do laundry all the time. It’s fair to take turns with these tasks. It’s less likely that you have a job chart up if you are an adult couple living together but maybe that would help. This is helpful so that it’s very clear whose job is whose.
Here’s the difference between kindergarten relationships: in kindergarten naps, are valued. In relationships, if one person takes a nap the other person sometimes gets mad. Unless of course, you’re napping together then everything is fine. But when you have children and one person is napping too much the other person feels resentment. There is no resentment regarding naps in kindergarten. If your friend falls asleep on their mat, you wouldn’t be angry with them. Well, that’s not entirely true, some kids don’t like napping and they will try to stay up intentionally because they want to play. I experienced this when I taught in kindergarten classrooms as a substitute teacher in New York City. The kids would do anything to avoid napping, which frankly I don’t understand because I love naps.
In kindergarten when two kids have a conflict sometimes the teacher needs to intervene and help them work it out. In adult relationships when two adults have a conflict sometimes a therapist needs to intervene and work it out with them. I remember when I was in school, I trained to be what was known as a conflict manager. I would see kids on the playground who needed help resolving conflicts and help them use “I messages” to talk to each other. “I messages” are when you say “I feel hurt when you call me stupid.” These are things that even a kindergartener can use. They are also often used by adults in therapy sessions. It helps people to stop blaming other people for your feelings. You can communicate how you feel without placing the onus on someone else. You see how similar kindergarten relationships are?
There you have it, that is how kindergarten is so similar to romantic relationships. I need to get better at sharing myself. I do love naps though!
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Self Doubt is Part of My Life

I am full of self-doubt a lot of the time. I’m not sure entirely why this is, but it’s been around for as long as I can remember. Since I was a child I have second-guessed myself. I doubt my abilities even though I know inside I am capable of doing stuff. I am good at acting, writing, making people laugh, making cookies from random ingredients, being an advocate for my children, and more. But for some reason I doubt myself. Maybe part of that is being human. All I know is that I wish that I could be confident more often. I can bring it out if I need to, but I have to channel it.

Being confident takes practice. Every day I tell myself I am doing the best that I can. Every day remind myself that making mistakes is normal; whatever normal means. I try the best that I can be a good friend and family member. I believe that’s all we can do. In addition to working on ourselves in Therapy whether that’s in person are with an virtual therapist. The most important thing is to keep being self-aware and keep trying to find insight.

I’ve talked about how I don’t like the expression “working on yourself.“ but there sort of isn’t another way to phrase it. You have a “self” and it needs to be “worked on.” That’s what you do in life. It’s a process and I hope that one day I can have more confident days than insecure ones. However, there is power in admitting your insecurities.

There is confidence in being not confident. If you pretend to be confident when you aren’t that doesn’t serve you well. The most important thing that you can do is be true to yourself and that is something I know I am doing. Sometimes I feel down and I honor those feelings. Sometimes I feel anxious and I let myself feel that way because those are my feelings and I’m entitled to them.

I get frustrated with people when they don’t hear my feelings, and I’m entitled to those feelings. There is no right way to be human. There is no right way to exist as one of my best friends Allie Burke once said.

That made me feel so great. Allie has always supported me in my insecure times and I love her for that.

Being human is so hard. But I’m not a cat so I’ll continue being human. Owning who you are is the best thing you can do because then you won’t be disappointed in yourself. I know myself pretty well. I’m aware of my flaws and I’m aware of my strengths. And that is the best that I can do.

Sometimes I wonder if insecurity is (in fact) a strength; I believe it could be. If you’re aware of your weaknesses (for example) when you’re battling an opponent in a fight, then you can overcompensate and win.

What about you? Are you confident or insecure?

Why didn’t you take my advice?

As human beings, we like to be experts and give advice to friends and loved ones. But it isn’t personal when the person does not take your advice. I do come across many people who get upset when another person does not take their advice. I can understand this to some degree but on the other had it doesn’t quite make sense.
You can give people your input about what you think would be helpful for them to do. You can share your life experience with them. However, it is ultimately up to that person to make their own decision about what they’re going to do. As much as you want to help, they might not listen to you and you have to accept that or just continue to feel frustrated about them not listening to you, it’s your choice.
You cannot force someone to take your sage wisdom. that’s just not how it works. They are going to make their own choices regardless of your input, and it’s not a personal affront if they don’t do what you told them to do.
Even therapists and counselors can be offended or have their ego impacted when their clients do not follow their recommendations. I’ve seen this happen with school counselors especially because they believe they know what’s best for their students. When the student doesn’t follow their guidance they get upset. We are all human beings and we have the ability to assess situations and then make decisions accordingly. I think it’s silly for therapists to be offended if a client does not take their guidance because it isn’t about the therapist. It is about the clients’ readiness to follow a treatment plan or not. As my therapist said, if the client can’t do the homework, it’s time to switch gears. They didn’t fail, it just isn’t working for them. That made a ton of sense to me.
If somebody doesn’t take my advice sometimes I get frustrated. Because I spend a lot of time caring about people. And if I disagree with what they have chosen to do it can be hard to watch them. Especially if I feel like their behavior is going to be harmful to them. But people need to be able to make their own mistakes and learn from them.
I have been on the other side of this and had people give me advice that I did not take. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate what they were trying to tell me. I  had a different perspective and I came to another conclusion. I still appreciated the person giving me their perspective and guidance because it was meaningful to me.
Finding our way in life is challenging and we try to help one another by advising each other. It’s natural to want to give advice when you see your friend struggling. But if they don’t take it it isn’t about you just remember that. I have to remind myself of this as well, you are not alone.

What if there’s nothing wrong with us?

What if there’s nothing wrong with us? What if the issue is with society itself. I believe in mental illness because it’s real. Schizophrenia is real- people actually have paranoid thoughts and delusions and see things. Because two of my really good friends are schizophrenic. My disorder is real, anxiety disorders are real, OCD is real, these are all real things. But the thing is that society expects us to do regular things like hold 9-to-5 jobs even though we have mental illnesses; this is not always possible.
I understand that there is a bell curve and there needs to be some standard of “normal“ for the purpose of research and things. But if society were more understanding of peoples issues, maybe these things would not be considered disorders. People operate differently and that’s the beauty of the world. We are unique individuals and we have a variety of symptoms that we manage. But why does it have to be an illness? That’s what I want to know. I am not a walking DSM diagnosis, and neither are you by the way. I am not invalidating your experience, I am saying that we experience symptoms and they are extraordinarily true for us. I just don’t like the idea of telling someone that there something wrong with them.
We all have things to work on in therapy whether that’s with an in-person therapist or somebody on the Internet. But the thing is that it’s sometimes helpful to see things outside of your “disorder.” I want to be clear everything that you live is real and true. I want people to recognize that maybe if society were more understanding of what we go through in terms of the symptoms of mental illness then we wouldn’t be calling it an illness. Not everybody can work a regular workday in an office. For example, I prefer to work from home/remotely.
This helps me with my executive functioning skills and ADHD. Because I have no sense of time it’s really hard to manage my time and it’s easiest for me to do that in a home environment. Plus I have social anxiety and being around massive amounts of people during the workday is difficult for me.
Even the ADA is sort of stigmatizing in my opinion. What it’s saying is that we are required to provide reasonable accommodations for people that have disabilities, which is a great thing. But what that implies is that we have stuff that is considered not “normal.” And so we as a society need to evolve and consider the fact that not everybody falls into this cookie cutter standard of normal.
It’s like they say in therapy it’s not about your diagnosis per se it is about the treatment plan. We experience a variety of symptoms and we can treat those symptoms if we know what they are.
What about you do you find that having a diagnosis is something to help you identify yourself?

Sometimes I’m Glad I’m Disorganized

Sometimes I am glad I’m disorganized. I know that sounds weird, but the people I know who plan every little thing seem unhappy somehow. There will always be a part of me that enjoys living life spontaneously. I get a feeling about something or someone and I go towards that feeling. This can be a great thing or my impulsive nature can get me into sticky situations. I’m trying to find a balance between these two aspects of my personality.

Planning is inevitably a part of life. People plan trips, they plan for their kid’s college fund and before that even happens they plan for marriage. That’s the thing though, how do you plan for a relationship? Do you anticipate what problems may arise in a relationship in the future? It doesn’t seem possible to plan for each and every scenario because life is full of surprises. For example, you can’t predict if your partner will be unfaithful. Sometimes that situation comes out of the blue.

I think that planning is a good thing, but bear in mind that things can go in a different direction as much as you plan. It’s like that expression about making plans and God laughing. That’s pretty much the way life goes. That’s part of the reason I don’t like to plan each and every thing that goes on, because it increases my anxiety. When you have more flexibility and are able to go with the flow, life seems to go more smoothly. I find that when I get rigid with the way things “should” go, I get upset when things don’t go according to what I planned.

So, that’s why I make a conscious effort to be spontaneous. First of all being that way is more fun, and then when something doesn’t work out the way I thought it would, it isn’t a loss because I can just try something else. Life is way less disappointing when you are able to consider different options. It’s also way more exciting to be open to new things rather than being stubborn about the way things should go.

The one area that I have trouble with this is making plans with friends. If I have it in my head that I’m doing something with a friend and that plan gets cancelled, I have to readjust my expectations for the day. I understand that things happen and sometimes people have to cancel. In fact, I sometimes don’t feel like hanging out with people. Whether that’s because of my social anxiety or something happens and I need to cancel. But, generally I try to stick to the plan if I can.

I don’t like missing out on things. I want to enjoy my life and be involved in as many fun projects as I can. And sometimes fun things come up at the last minute and they’re unplanned! That’s fun too! Either way, as long as I am following my intuition, I am happy.

So, what about you? Are you a planner or do you do things on the fly?

Am I bad at relationships?

The short answer to this question is probably yes. I think I have relationship PTSD that dates all the way back to my teenage years. And please do not misunderstand, I am not blaming anyone though I have been accused of that. I was upset about that for a while, but it’s my blog and I can write whatever I want on it. Anyway, I have had several longterm relationships and I’m convinced that I have no idea how to be in a relationship. I think it’s because I have a hard time trusting that the other person will accept my craziness. I am crazy and sometimes it’s hard to deal with, other times it’s a fun sort of crazy. I’m not putting myself down when I call myself crazy. I know that I have neuroses and that is something I am well aware of. So please don’t tell me I am self-deprecating when I say I am crazy. It’s my right to call myself whatever I want. If I say I am a panda, then I’m a panda. If I say I’m crazy, then I am crazy. For example, I have two friends who are Paranoid Schizophrenics and they often get yelled at for referring to themselves as “schizophrenic” by other mental health advocates. To me that’s ridiculous. It’s their right to call themselves what they want. If you don’t like it, oh well. People need to chill about this stuff.

So me and relationships, I not saying that I could never have a successful romantic partnership. I’m saying that I am a complex person who deserves to be with a man who can appreciate that. He needs to understand and love my honesty. He needs to be able to keep up with my level of activity in multiple areas of my life. He needs to accept that I have social anxiety and even though I seem like an extrovert I am not. I am clearly an introvert and sometimes being at parties makes me want to hide in the closet. I can’t handle being around large crowds of people because it’s hard for my anxiety disorders.

I’m not expecting the person to fix me, I just want to be understood. I am a giving and empathetic person who will do anything for someone who loves me and I love back. Okay, this is sounding like a dating profile. I’m not trying to get a man. I am happy being a single mom doing my thing. I don’t need a dude to complete me. And I don’t think anyone should want another person to fix them. I wish that before I had gotten married I had tried to talk that out first. But hindsight is 20/20 as they say, whoever “they” are.

So, are you bad at relationships? I don’t think that’s a terrible thing. We all have challenges and it’s good to recognize what we need to work on. If I can be more trusting of men, perhaps I’ll have a healthy relationship.

If you saw my message why didn’t you respond?

I hate Facebook for many reasons, but one of the biggest ones is that when you send a message to someone, you can see if they read it. It’s hard for me because if they do see it, and they don’t answer me I feel like they are ignoring me. Now, I understand that this is not rational. People are busy leading their lives, having families, doing jobs and things. I have a job and a family too! But, the little thing that reads “seen” at the end of a Facebook message is problematic because it reminds you that you are not that important. If the person sees your message and doesn’t say anything you are left wondering if you offended them, they’re busy, they don’t want to talk to you, or many, many other things. Now, I am guilty of not replying to messages on Facebook after someone sends me them. I have my reasons depending on the context of the message. Sometimes I just get anxious and don’t respond.

If you have an iPhone, the same issue applies. Unless you turn that setting off so people can’t see it, you can see if someone read your message. If they don’t respond after they read it, then you’re left wondering why. This is one of the reasons that technology frustrates me. Maybe we know too much about the inner workings of each other’s brains because of devices. Before cell phones and Facebook, we didn’t know if someone had listened to our voice messages on the answering machine. And taking it a step further, there were days before answering machines when if someone wasn’t home you had to WAIT until they got there to talk to them again. Now, we’re spoiled because we have so much access to people. You can send someone a text and in seconds have a response to your question. In some ways, this is a blessing but in other ways, it stunts our emotional growth. As someone who loves to talk to other human beings, text messaging frustrates me. I would rather have a face-to-face conversation with another human being than interact with a screen.

There is a lot of pressure to respond to things in our world. I am guilty of getting upset when people don’t respond to me too. I’m starting to rethink that though. I want to be more understanding of the fact that people cannot always get back to me instantly. I realize that part of this is my anxiety and I’m working on my behavior but it’s a process. For me, it’s about impatience more than anything else. I want to have an answer to the question I just asked or I want someone to laugh at my joke. Maybe I want to get advice from a friend and their lack of response makes me nervous. Whatever the reason that I don’t get a response, it makes me nervous. But, the reality is that it doesn’t need to. People don’t respond for a multitude of reasons.

What about you? Do you freak out when someone doesn’t respond to you?