Living in Denial: Is It Coping?

[ChaoticGlow42]

I am doing a much better job of not getting upset lately. I'm much calmer....but that feeling/fear still lingers. It's right there. The only difference right now is that I'm not letting it take over. The thing is...I wonder if I'm really any more confident that i am ok, or am I just doing a good job of covering it up. I sort of feel like I am allowing myself to live in denial of how I really feel. Can anyone relate? Does that lingering doubt ever go away?I am starting up with a therapist next month. I hope he can help me. I know I would feel so much better if I haven't been hoarse for weeks now (of course I do have reflux) and it my teeth didn't feel so out of line (they hit when I talk and make it sound like I am talking funny). I do have TMJ too..and if my one upper lip didn't look droopy to me (I was relievedc to see that **s lip droop meant the lower lip and caused drooling. I don't have any of that). Still my mouth is crooked. I just hope that someday I won't feel like I am just masking my fear. It is still better than living with the bad feeling all the time but I hope to someday believe completely that I am ok...and maybe even forget about the anxiety.Jess

 

[simonw00]

Hi JessI know what you're talking about. I have found it vey hard to 'let go' of my ALS fears. It still lingers with me and, when I am not feeling so anxious, I wonder how much of this is denial and how much is successfully managing my anxiety. Either way, I would be pragmatic and enjoy the moments when you are not worried. I have at tiems allowed the irrational ALS fear to totally take over my life and any moment spent not in that space is a good momentCheersSimon

 

[Outlook1958]

Hey there!Yes, there is indeed a difference between stashing the fear up in some corner of your mind or engaging it in the open field. Most psychologists say that any sort of fear or anxiety that has been driven into some corner will break out one day, usually at some unfortunate point of time. Really dealing with that anxiety is much harder than just ignoring it. However, I think that the best thing is just to wait for several months. After a certain period of time the fear will start getting better because there's nothing new with your symptoms and nothing new with the diseases. This is the reason why our fears tend to flare up if we face a new symptom or read some (often incorrect or at least unprecise) stuff like "My colleague's friend's sister's husband read about a man who told about somebody who was twichting for 35 years without weakness and then got **S". I think that the human mind just gets used to certain things after an amount of time if these things don't change.Apparently, my **S-fears have started to decrease - at least I'm not thinking about it day and night and can concentrate on other things much better now. My problem right now is that I'm starting to look out for other diseases like MS, Huntington's disease and other nasty stuff. These seem to have even more specific symptoms than **S, but it is still a little creepy to read about these diseases after having been tuned on self-diagnosis. It seems that my generic health anxiety has caused my **S-anxiety, which in turn increased the generic health anxiety. Great. Somehow I really have days where I don't care about that stuff at all, and days where I'm really sad, depressed and anxious, wondering about wether I'll still have a normal life in one year or not. On the other hand, each time I see an elderly person walking down the street, I tell myself: "Look, there are sooooo many diseases that can kill or at least cripple a human being - if it was so likely to get them, we actually wouldn't even know how an elderly person looks like because there would be so few of them."