By Craig, No Panic Volunteer
In 2005, I had my first experience of problematic anxiety. I remember that feeling of adrenalin rushing through my body, a flush of heat over my face with beads of sweat forming on my forehead as thoughts started to tell me that something was terribly wrong… I needed to get to safety. The only problem was I didn’t know what the danger was and I didn’t know what would make me feel safe. My mind could only reach one conclusion, something about me was fundamentally broken and I was surely on a path to ‘losing my mind’… whatever that means?
For most people who experience problematic anxiety, I am sure this will sound familiar. I am also sure I won’t be the first person having experienced this to tell you that here I am 18 years later and my mind was never ‘lost’… but in a way, that makes it all the more confusing… why all the drama if I am actually ok?
Without access to the right information and understanding, or the right support, it’s no surprise that this confusion leads many to believe that their mind is truly about to break. It’s at this point that the process of psychoeducation is such an important and critical step along the road to recovery.
Initially, I didn’t know what the phrase ‘psychoeducation’ meant, but it’s become so important to myself and many on their anxiety journeys. Psychoeducation, literally, is the process of learning about a mental health condition, it’s causes, symptoms, prognosis and treatments.
As with most anxiety treatments, there is rarely a single magic bullet, but I and others have found psychoeducation to be crucial in removing a lot of the mystery and bewilderment from the anxious state. For anxiety specifically, I’ve found it useful to understand why the body triggers anxious reactions at all, why they can be not only beneficial but critical in our lives. I’ve also understood more about why our nervous systems can sometimes lead to this process going wrong, i.e. becoming persistent or acute out of context. Psychoeducation has also helped me understand why something which to me seemed like a nervous reaction in my mind, could lead to my hands feeling sweaty, or sweat coming across my brow.
Again, understanding these processes does not magically stop them happening, but they do help you understand the limitations of anxiety and why ultimately it is not a process that directly causes you any harm or leads to specific other mental illness. I know for myself, this left me feeling much more empowered to take the steps needed to help my nervous system recover, without the added pressure of trying to figure out what on earth was going on all the time.
Our own no panic website, we have a whole section under the ‘resources’ menu which can really help you understand what’s going on here. Hopefully you find some useful material there, if there is something not covered, that you’d like to understand more on, why not suggest another topic for us to add?
