My fear symptoms had basically been in full remission for months. What a welcome relief that was. Unfortunately, they came back about a number of weeks ago.
The best I can describe things, it’s like a flood of fear hormones (e.g., cortisol) rushes into my brain for no good reason. This neurochemical change provokes the sensation-as-of-fear: the feeling you have, for instance, when you walk down a dark, deserted alley, expecting someone to jump out at you. Once I “feel afraid”, albeit in that peculiar fashion, I naturally look around for something that I’m afraid of. After all, normally there is some external trigger of those hormones. All too often, I am able to confabulate something: “I feel afraid because I’ll be going running” or “I feel afraid because I’m aging”. Worst of all, because of the cortisol, I am back to experiencing meta-fear: I worry that the fear symptoms are all coming back, that they will get more severe, etc., and that ratchets up how scared I feel. And that latter fear isn’t merely physiological.
Things aren’t so bad yet that I need to scale back my work hours, or anything like that. At this point, I am delighted to report that I’m still okay to be working full time. But, in addition to the feelings being no fun, they do sap my energy and they make it hard to concentrate.
My Dialectical Behavioral therapist has me trying to track when the fear-like feelings show up. So far, I haven’t been able to identify any correlation; it seems pretty random. She also wants me to pay attention to what’s going on in my body when the fear strikes: where do I feel things, what bodily changes are happening? This serves twin purposes. Mindful awareness of one’s own body helps take the fear-sensations away. What’s more, such somatic vigilance may eventually help me to identify a cause. Is there anything bodily in common, even if the external circumstances are highly variable?
Wish me luck!
That’s unfortunate, Rob. I hope it’s a very brief setback before your full recovery.