Post by jt60 on Mar 25, 2009 8:34:19 GMT -5
aspergineering.com/blog/index.php/2009/03/mastering-the-impossible-iv-the-key-draft/
Mastering The Impossible - IV. The Key DRAFT
blog.aspergineering.com
I am going to use my blog as a sounding board for an idea. I gladly welcome comments on what I write over the next few posts and with permission would like to use relevant stories. If you post a comment please bear in mind it may end up published elsewhere.
I have decided to write an e-book about panic disorder.
While this book is a ‘left field’ look at what I have figured out about me, it may just work for you to. I invite you to listen to my story and take what’s useful and leave what’s not behind.
This blog entry will form the basis of chapter four.
When I started working for Duran Duran in 1993 I had such bad agoraphobia that I could barely leave the house to buy groceries.
I literally pushed myself so hard to go on their worldwide tour that I had no choice except to learn to deal with people.
The first show I remember working on was at The New York Academy. In itself this was weird, as I was diagnosed as having “panic attacks with agoraphobia” three years earlier some fifteen miles away in Hackensack, New Jersey - where I had lived.
Standing on stage checking over Nick Rhodes’ keyboards in front of several thousand people was a pretty good starting point for someone who normally sat at home in a room on his own in front of a computer.
However, I am a go getter in life and not a lot stops me.
The effect on me was feeling huge waves of completely irrational non-reality and paranoia. I was really light headed and thought I was going to wet my trousers!
I spent two nights hanging off the back of the stage in complete terror thinking ‘if those keyboards pack up I am going to have to go and fix them in front of all those people’.
“What if”…
The crowd surged into life on one side of the stage, buzzing and alive.
A cheerful, outgoing, competitive in a friendly sort of way, and completely confident Simon Le Bon bounced into view like A.A.Milne’s ‘Tigger’.
While I, using roughly the same set of neuro-chemistry, experienced the most intensely frightening, upsetting and uncomfortable experience of my entire life.
So maybe there is a clue.
In the case of extreme sports, or being a rock star it’s a good buzz, in the case of anxiety or panic it’s not so hot.
Is it simply down to perception?
Maybe because the person experiencing them accepts the buzz as part of the experience.
So why don’t I accept the buzz as part of my shopping experience?
Why do I want it to go away?
Recently I’ve had a huge realisation. I actually don’t want it to go away at all. Every time I get into a vicious cycle, I am perpetuating it, deliberately.
Every time I have a conversation about how terrible I am in social settings, I drive my anxiety levels through the roof. Every time I drive my anxiety levels through the roof, I get something back. I get roughly the same set of neuro-chemicals as someone participating in extreme sports or singing on stage.
As I said in the last chapter. I get my hit for free.
So where else in life are people trying to control the uncontrollable?
I have a friend who is addicted to gambling. I used to think it was about the money till he stopped gambling with money. He enters tournaments and does this thing, where he never ever wins. He has the ability and skill to win, only he doesn’t want the win. He wants to lose.
His game is to beat everyone up until the last round, then to lose everything. I imagine as the game builds he creates a lot of anticipatory tension and that, because he knows he is going to lose his last hand, there is a huge neuro-chemical release around the point he does that, which he keeps coming back for more of.
He may not be spending money gambling at the moment, however he has found a way to invest time into getting his buzz. He spends all his free time doing it. When the buzz is over, he moves on to a new game.
You can try this for yourself. Find an item you really like on eBay which has several days left to run. Each day go and look at the item and visualise it being yours. Imagine where you will put it, or what you will do with it. Decide on a low price you would like to pay for it. If it is an item worth $100 set your sights on paying $10.
Don’t bid. Just watch. Concentrate on the item becoming yours. Build the desire. Spend time reading the description. As other bidders put the price up, accept you will have to pay more. Don’t bid. Allow your perception of the value of the item to increase during the days leading up to the end of the auction.
You need this item. Without it your life won’t be complete.
Now on the last day of the auction, check back every hour. In the last few hours check back as often as sanely possible. Don’t bid. Set your sights on this item being yours whatever the outcome.
Wait until the last minute. Whatever the bid is in the last 45 seconds place a bid one bid increment above it. For example if the item is now $51 enter $52.
Now wait for the auction to end. In those last 45 seconds how do you feel? Regardless of losing, or winning, your neuro-chemistry should be through the roof.
You expect things to work out a certain way, yet you have no control over the outcome. Your body responds.
It responds with roughly the same set of neuro-chemicals that course around the snow boarder’s, the rock star’s and the gambler’s physical system. Roughly the same set of neuro-chemicals that course around the anxiety suffer’s system and those that go to trigger a panic attack.
In the same way he is driven to go for that buzz again and again, so am I. In a way, I have become addicted to the buzz and the way I fuel my addiction is to make life unpleasant for myself so I can get more of those neuro-chemicals.
Without my negative perception of what’s happening to me, there is nothing to fuel the fight or flight response.
Panic disorder?
Horrible isn’t it…
Yes it is…
And the more I say that to myself the bigger buzz I’ll have!
See you on the other side of the looking glass
NAT
Mastering The Impossible - IV. The Key DRAFT
blog.aspergineering.com
I am going to use my blog as a sounding board for an idea. I gladly welcome comments on what I write over the next few posts and with permission would like to use relevant stories. If you post a comment please bear in mind it may end up published elsewhere.
I have decided to write an e-book about panic disorder.
While this book is a ‘left field’ look at what I have figured out about me, it may just work for you to. I invite you to listen to my story and take what’s useful and leave what’s not behind.
This blog entry will form the basis of chapter four.
When I started working for Duran Duran in 1993 I had such bad agoraphobia that I could barely leave the house to buy groceries.
I literally pushed myself so hard to go on their worldwide tour that I had no choice except to learn to deal with people.
The first show I remember working on was at The New York Academy. In itself this was weird, as I was diagnosed as having “panic attacks with agoraphobia” three years earlier some fifteen miles away in Hackensack, New Jersey - where I had lived.
Standing on stage checking over Nick Rhodes’ keyboards in front of several thousand people was a pretty good starting point for someone who normally sat at home in a room on his own in front of a computer.
However, I am a go getter in life and not a lot stops me.
The effect on me was feeling huge waves of completely irrational non-reality and paranoia. I was really light headed and thought I was going to wet my trousers!
I spent two nights hanging off the back of the stage in complete terror thinking ‘if those keyboards pack up I am going to have to go and fix them in front of all those people’.
“What if”…
The crowd surged into life on one side of the stage, buzzing and alive.
A cheerful, outgoing, competitive in a friendly sort of way, and completely confident Simon Le Bon bounced into view like A.A.Milne’s ‘Tigger’.
While I, using roughly the same set of neuro-chemistry, experienced the most intensely frightening, upsetting and uncomfortable experience of my entire life.
So maybe there is a clue.
In the case of extreme sports, or being a rock star it’s a good buzz, in the case of anxiety or panic it’s not so hot.
Is it simply down to perception?
Maybe because the person experiencing them accepts the buzz as part of the experience.
So why don’t I accept the buzz as part of my shopping experience?
Why do I want it to go away?
Recently I’ve had a huge realisation. I actually don’t want it to go away at all. Every time I get into a vicious cycle, I am perpetuating it, deliberately.
Every time I have a conversation about how terrible I am in social settings, I drive my anxiety levels through the roof. Every time I drive my anxiety levels through the roof, I get something back. I get roughly the same set of neuro-chemicals as someone participating in extreme sports or singing on stage.
As I said in the last chapter. I get my hit for free.
So where else in life are people trying to control the uncontrollable?
I have a friend who is addicted to gambling. I used to think it was about the money till he stopped gambling with money. He enters tournaments and does this thing, where he never ever wins. He has the ability and skill to win, only he doesn’t want the win. He wants to lose.
His game is to beat everyone up until the last round, then to lose everything. I imagine as the game builds he creates a lot of anticipatory tension and that, because he knows he is going to lose his last hand, there is a huge neuro-chemical release around the point he does that, which he keeps coming back for more of.
He may not be spending money gambling at the moment, however he has found a way to invest time into getting his buzz. He spends all his free time doing it. When the buzz is over, he moves on to a new game.
You can try this for yourself. Find an item you really like on eBay which has several days left to run. Each day go and look at the item and visualise it being yours. Imagine where you will put it, or what you will do with it. Decide on a low price you would like to pay for it. If it is an item worth $100 set your sights on paying $10.
Don’t bid. Just watch. Concentrate on the item becoming yours. Build the desire. Spend time reading the description. As other bidders put the price up, accept you will have to pay more. Don’t bid. Allow your perception of the value of the item to increase during the days leading up to the end of the auction.
You need this item. Without it your life won’t be complete.
Now on the last day of the auction, check back every hour. In the last few hours check back as often as sanely possible. Don’t bid. Set your sights on this item being yours whatever the outcome.
Wait until the last minute. Whatever the bid is in the last 45 seconds place a bid one bid increment above it. For example if the item is now $51 enter $52.
Now wait for the auction to end. In those last 45 seconds how do you feel? Regardless of losing, or winning, your neuro-chemistry should be through the roof.
You expect things to work out a certain way, yet you have no control over the outcome. Your body responds.
It responds with roughly the same set of neuro-chemicals that course around the snow boarder’s, the rock star’s and the gambler’s physical system. Roughly the same set of neuro-chemicals that course around the anxiety suffer’s system and those that go to trigger a panic attack.
In the same way he is driven to go for that buzz again and again, so am I. In a way, I have become addicted to the buzz and the way I fuel my addiction is to make life unpleasant for myself so I can get more of those neuro-chemicals.
Without my negative perception of what’s happening to me, there is nothing to fuel the fight or flight response.
Panic disorder?
Horrible isn’t it…
Yes it is…
And the more I say that to myself the bigger buzz I’ll have!
See you on the other side of the looking glass
NAT
