7.5mg methylphenidate at 4.30pm

Took one and a half tablets reasonably same time. Need to look at car. Legs tired from yesterday.
Am I going to get tetchy again?
Pharmacist said not to mix and match.
Still quite spaced out sometimes, not particularly motivated.

Suicide Watch

Last night I had someone break down and start crying on the phone. She repeated that she wAnted to die . I think the main problem is that she has withdrawn from a lot of medication quite quickly; ADD mess as well as antianxiety drugs and the usual gamut of drugs that lot of Americans seem to take…in my experience they are either obsessed by wholefoods and wont even take a paracetamol or pill-munching.

My friend on the phone does have a realistic attitude but now no longer has health insurance so even the ADD stuff by itself is expensive.

I will finish this when I’ve had some sleep and recovered.

Mental Health Hotline

Bloody answering machine.
Left message with absolute confidence I will not receive a call back..
This is the 0203 313 5661

I want Paul McKenna to cure my fear of flying

I like Paul McKenna. He has good taste (I saw him eyeing up my then girlfriend at the Notting Hill Carnival a few years ago.)

Paul McKenna I can change your life  Sky 3 late (2am). Tonight he attempted to cure a woman of her agoraphobia (apparently she’s been alone for only 10 mins total in the last five years). Paul went up to Hull of all places. He must be dedicated. Or they paid him a lot of money. What worked, the NLP or the hypnosis? He does speak very fast and uses a lot of gestures and taps.

NB She had CBT which didn’t work…

Later after he left, the panic came back. How much the original cure was it down to the force of his personality. Interestingly she says ‘Im panicking so I can’t remember all the thing she told me to think about’. She comes down to London for a second session (obviously Paul’s dedication didn’t stretch to another visit to Hull 😉 . She ends up cured but still living in Hull so swings and roundabouts really.

Also, he treats a gambler. He explains the Serotonin high due to gambling. He treats this by changing the association for gambling to a negative one. It seems quite simplistic. Reminds one of a weakened version of the treatment in A Clockwork Orange. Rewiring the brain.

Seeing the agoraphobic helps me because I can see that it’s just a condition that needs treating. It’s not something unique to me.

The best for me is the flying phobic who says ‘I just see that as an accident waiting to happen’. That’s just how I feel. I managed a short flight at Christmas but together is the fear of having an attack the other end, being so far from home He is resistant to Paul’ s initial NLP stuff but the hypnosis does it . After an hour he is good to go and flies. Paul McKenna is my new hero. The kind of change he manages in people in such a short space of time is pretty miraculous. I will blog more about his methods later (on this entry) when I have time.

Business and stress

Today the business which has been faltering got a hammer blow. This is a relief in a way because I have been trying to find a way out. It’s been tempting because I don’t have new job enterprise to go to apart from back to graphics.

I’ve realised a few things in the wake of this failure. Maybe I should have got out earlier and this would have left me richer! However the business I was managing  provided a regular income and the possibilityof me taking it over properly. It’s difficult to get a perspective and those you confide in often have a far better insight. You think they haven’t grasped the complexities but you don’t need complexities to see if something is a ‘yay!’ or a ‘nay!’

I blame myself for some things that went wrong but in reality it was a pretty impossible situation. If I had taken over the business earlier with a company of my own then I would be facing mega responsibilities of premises, leases etc.

I can no longer carry on without trying medication for ADD. Many of my shortcomings running the business were directly attributable to ADD (Unable to complete paperwork, procrastination,  poor follow-through) would I have been able to make it succeed if I had been able to concentrate more, to focus, to plan?

There is something that I read on an ADD forum recently that convinces me that I can no longer carry on without trying the ‘meds’ route. I’m not going to find a magic way of organising things – the ADD Holy Grail – that will just be revealed and make it all just so…

Many people with ADD / ADHD have difficulty with working memory. They may have difficulty with recall, focusing, organization, and distinguishing between important and unimportant cues. They may distract easily, become forgetful, or have difficulty getting started on tasks. Lengthy multiple step directions are often frustrating and impossible to follow.

From http://add.about.com/od/researchstudies/a/workingmemory.htm

Spark! Exercise for anxiety depression and ADD

if you have ADD and have a penchant for going into narratives instead of getting to the point,

Yes, that rings a bell! From a review on Amazon for

The Disorganized Mind: Coaching Your ADHD Brain to Take Control of Your Time, Tasks, and Talents

New dread

Terrible time tonight whilst watching film (Reign of Fire). Great movie. I watched it round at friend’s house. Suddenlyhalf hour from the end strated feeling strange. I had planned to go home on the bus. I’m sure subject matter didnt help (fear, dragons, death) Would I get this if it had been a comedy. Lately I am stressed though and feel ‘tired’ often like my whole body is tired and achey even though I’ve done nothing physical.

Buzzing feeling in head. I immediately thought of what I had eaten (as I always do) Some beers a good while aho, some chocolate pudding, cup of decaf tea (was it really de-caf?). Disorienation followed.

Nothing was working, I concluded it must be a Panic Attack but as usual it felt different, like it wasn;t ‘panic’ per se . Reminded me of when it first happened (2?) years ago.

Everything seemed ‘echo-y’ things friend said seemed to echo in my consciousness a few seconds later like I delayed processing.

Yawning constantly. I didnt watch the end of film. tried to sleep. Very tired very quickly because of exhaustion (heart racing etc) PAs usually make me v.tired so it gave me some reassurance that it was a PA rather than my usual assumption of food/drink being spiked.

EXTREMELY unpleasant. Luckily I di go to sleep and woke a couple hours later normalised.

It’s now 3am ish.

Someone told me (and I also read somewhere) that TV watching affect sleep even if it doesnt actually eat into your sleep time. Alos I know TV watching late at nigt is bad but this is when they put all the good films on and I havent got a DVD recorder. Musr get one and refuse TV – also PC – after 9pm?

Thought of Linden and Barry method but egging on the PA didnt seem to work, nor did trying to do maths , using higher brain function to override Amygdala (sp) baser brain function. Couldn’t think straight enough to think of anything to do .

Also wsn’t inclined to jump up and down eating apples, I think the weirdness of that would have freaked me out even more than I was!

What helped was just going to sleep aided by the tiredness, getting unconsciousness asap

This rturn of the shit is a setback. Is more to follow.

I’m getting better…

It seems I’m improving, hence the lack of recent posts. I still have the occasional bad moment – in fact I had one today – but I can stave off the panic attacks and assure myself that i will be OK.

Distraction seems to be the larger part of this. I felt really rough earlier and thought I was heading for a migraine as I had some visual problems (probably as a result of staring at a small laptop screen for so long). thought I was going cross-eyed, brain tumour etc

My sleep hygiene is still lousy but at least it’s stable; i’m getting to sleep at 6am and rising at 1.30pm.

Back online – have you missed me?

I’m back online after a blimp with my internet connection. It’s Thursday night already. Had to go to hospital to hav bloods done ready for an appointment with the endocrinologist next week. Actually got some sleep last night (from 3am onwards) so am beginning to reverse the nocturnalism.

Today, after the blood test this morning, I stayed out a lot of the day –  including an extended stay in an shop. Managed quite well but was getting a bit ‘spacy’ towards the end. Managed a would-be stressy call to my ISP but was helped by helpful peron on the other end who sorted out my problem. Thank God for the Scottish (Gordon Brown excepted).

To the doctors for a repeat sick note. Another 3 months?! he exclaims. No, I explain , the last one was for 3 months but I’m getting better but I’m not ready to return to work yet. He’s slightly foreign so the nuances get missed sometimes.

I just don’t want to rush it (going back to work), have a relapse and end up worse. This happened to a friend of mine.

The c*** upstairs kept me awake last night ’til I stuffed earplugs. He is truly scum (trust me n this, I will restrospectively blog on this to justify name calling) but it is amazing to me that alcoholics like him don’t drink themselves to death earlier.

‘Revolutionary methods’

I will check this out since it’s in London. What’s pissing me off is seeing all these ads for Joe Barry’s ‘revolutionary method’ for panic attacks which claims you will ‘never have another panic attack’ etc etc. ” ‘revolutionary’ technique. Typical is this WordPress blog which leads to another glorified advert. Even when you try and find a review it leads you to sites with pages of guff about this If you type in ‘joe Barry’ and ‘scam’ into google, top of the list – apart fromhis sponsored ads – is this site which says in bold letters “You are about to find out the shocking truth about Panic Away!” which then turns out to be basically another long advert which says ‘if you buy through this site, you’ll get a free report and a discount’ etc etc. There seem to be quite a few sites like this which obviously have some sort of deal going with Joe Barry. The funniest one featured a “Worzel Gummage’ character. See Worzel selling here

The only actual reviews I found, rather than links to more adverts, didn’t rate Barry’s method another better than the Linden method andcertainly didn’t give the impression that it was some sort of instant fix the way these adverts imply. A typical example of the sort of advert-posing-as-posting is this one

bennash
New Member

Joined: 22 Nov 2006
Posts: 9
Location: England Panic Attacks

Hi All,

I have gone down the road of trying out most of these programs as I believe that it is important to keep educating yourself about different conditions. I used to suffer for about 3 years from Panic Attacks and I kept on buying and reading new material and there is always something you can learn from different authors and perspectives.

I have read Panic Away by Joe Barry and I think that this is a great product and it has a technique that I think is great. I kept on using the technique and some other things that I have learnt and with consistency and time I don’t have them anymore. I also made a lot of other lifestyle changes which helped as well, taking out certain foods, exercising regularly, stop taking alchohol, coffee and other things. It depends how much you want to stop these attacks. I am actually now very thank ful because all these changes have made my life 500% better. It sounds silly but I am grateful for having the attacks because they made me change.

I do have say that Joe Barry’s book was very useful to me and it is less money. In my opinion though I would continue to invest in these programs and learn from them, thats how I beat them. If you don’t like them most have a refund policy so get your money back. I think Joe Barrys book is $67 which is nothing really and you can contact him via email aswell.

One other tip that if I was to go through what I went through again, I would get someone to do the exercises with. Phone each other up or find someone that has beaten them and get some advice. Talking to people who just talk about getting through this will not inspire you to get through it. There is a great phrase which as irritating as it is, it has a point. ‘People become the people they spend the most time with’ Just think about that for a moment…

Check out this site as there is a great book you can get for free as well
http://www.panicawayforever.com
that I think has some great techniques in it. You only get it if you buy the PanicAway program. If you really can’t afford it then just buy it get the free book and then ask for your money back. I would not advise this because I think it is worth the money you spend. But just do something to help yourself because life is better on the other side.

Take care

Take a look at what else our friend ‘Ben Nash’ has to say on the subject…mmmnn eventually he admits he is promoting his own book.
“Check out this site as there is a great book you can get for free as well ” is the main phrase that truly gives it away. This person is on one of these sponsorship programs whereby sites are set up encouraging people to buy from them in order to get a discount or ‘extra book’. And where does www.panicawayforever.com lead you to? Well, it’s our own friend Worzel gummidge! It reminds me of a pyriamid program which doesn’t inspire confidence. If the program was that good, it wouldn’t need these type of bullshit sales techniques. And what are we to make of this strange claim at the end of Worzel’s page?

The ‘One Move Technique’ works, LIKE A DREAM. Here is the thing. Unless you figure out WHY you have started to have panic attacks you will not find a cure AT ALL. The ‘One Move’ technique will work, but something else will come up in its place unless you get to the source of the problem. I am not talking about analysing your personality, that doesn’t work. I am talking about acknowledging there is a message behind your anxiety and panic attacks and that message is……. Depending on how you live and everyone is different. And this is really where there is a gap in ‘Panic Away’. It covers the broad spectrum of people with different lifestyles, it works for everyone and it gives you one answer, one cure all and sometimes this wears off.

A word to our American sponsor

Cheesy ads that go on for ever and have all the buzz words may work fine in the States but don’t go down well in the UK and other places where they just come across as some kind of scam. I have worked with Americans and must say their approach to business is somewhat different to ours. In the book King Rat by James Clavell remember when King Rat prepares the eggs for the British officer (I don’t have the book to hand and can’t remember the names,sorry) who says ‘Not bad’ as about the highest compliment he can give. The American GI is incensed. Not bad! What d you mean, not bad!

This is a comment about another technique – The Linden Method – which pretty much sums up the situation as I and others see it

“If you search the threads on the forum there was a lot about it about two months ago. The general feeling was that it helped some people but that it really was quite a lot of money for receiving information that was easily and freely available from elsewhere.

“I think it’s like other “talking” type therapies – they need a genuine effort and commitment and then they will yield results for many people. One of the problems with anxiety and depression is that they suck away the enthusiasm all so easily. I suppose, also, if it truly did work as easily and quickly as it claims, everyone and his dog would be using it! “

and this from another member who thinks the drugs DO work…

“Hi I bought it but to be honest it wasn’t great. A lot of money for common sense really. It didn’t cure me – its claims are false in that respect. I am concerned that they take advantage of those desperate to feel better which I was – it took a long time to be delivered from memory too. It was the Citalopram that helped me and a lot of hard work,”

I will have more to post here shortly so watch this space…

Meanwhile www.NoMorePanic.co.uk looks good so far as a source of genuine self-help advice.