Anxiety and Panic - The Brains 'smoke alarm?'

[mummybean84]

Hi Everyone

Im a 30 year old mum on 1 DD and have been suffering for about 2 years now with anxiety/panic and a specific phobia. it all makes life quite difficult at times and i have been going through a bad patch recently.

I was watching this morning a few days ago and a women of there was talking about panic and anxiety, she used an analogy i found really helpful so thought i would share it to see if anyone else finds it helpful and to ask what people think? feel free to let me know if you disagree too!

She was saying that when you frequently feel anxiety or panic you need to think of your brain as having an internal 'smoke alarm' it is designed to detect danger and alert you in an emergency. However just like a smoke alarm in our house sometimes it goes off when there is no real danger (for example a piece of over cooked toast) and the alarm is triggered. some are more sensative than others too (in my case the alarm goes of if someone five houses away lights a cigarette!)
By learning effective coping stratergies we can learn to recognise when it is a false alarm, see there is no danger open the window flap a tea towel and it will go off on its own!

At the moment every time my smoke alarm goes off i run around in a panic screaming ' the house is on fire, im going to die!!' and instead of turning off the alarm i get in a state.

I guess the good news for us is if there ever is an emergency we know we all have working alarms that will alert us and one thing is for sure, non of us will be caught out without working batteries!!

[dnwig]

That is a good analogy. Have you tried CBT? Can help reprogramme that oversensitive alarm!