Coping With Symptoms: Changing Responses

[Spaghetti69]

One way i use to cope with many of the symptoms i get is trying to change my way of responding to a symptom. When i first started getting twitches etc i used to get very scared and worried that i had one of the big three i.e. *LS, MS or Parki*sons and obviously this would make the symptoms worse. It was not the symptom that feeds the anxiety but instead the way i responsed to it. When people on here get anxious they blame the symptom but it is not this, but instead they way they choose to respond to it. If you try and associate a positive feeling to a twitch instead i.e. "oh great another twitch just my BFS playing up, at least i am healthy and dont have a bad illness" you will gradually find that the anxiety eases and you will start to ignore the symptoms more. I am trying to do this currently and it is certainly working with the twitching. I still get concerned about the buzzing, vibrations but i am working on this currently. It is called NLP and well worth investigating. Most of the problem with us is that i think we probably share similar character triats and alot of us are probably control freaks..( i know i am ) Because BFS is something we cannot control it really freaks us out. NLP and CBT can certainly help with this. I hope this helps someoneThanks,

 

[DrewPanncys]

Pezz: Are you referring to Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP)? If so, this is indeed kind of the new "hot" area in psychotherapy right now. It might be very helpful to those who struggle with compartmentalizing mind (thoughts about illness, anxious emotions) and body (how those thoughts and emotions can affect the body and vice versa). I'm glad you found something that worked for you in dealing with BFS. I esepcailly think your point about choosing positive thoughts about the twitching ("Oh, there's that pesky BFS again. Glad I'm not having to deal with anything more serious.") is an excellent example of the direction many of us need to take in coping with BFS symptoms. The more one "practices" such thinking, the more automatic it will become. Many of us are struggling now because the automatic thought to our twitching is far more catastrophic in nature and thus more likely to trigger anxiety. We might not be able to choose whether we have BFS/BCFS but we are totally able to choose how we are going to cope with it and what sort of attitude we are going to take regarding it. Thanks for sharing and best wishes to you.