People making me question how much of this I'm doing to myself...

[[...]]

I feel like I can't help but think about my situation most all the time. But I cant help it. When you have so many symptoms preventing you from feeling even close to normal, how can you not be aware of that? Will this keep me from healing? Sometimes a doctor or a family member has said something that makes me question if this is something I'm doing to myself or at least making the situation worse. Like it's anxiety that I need help for or I'm in my head causing this and meditation will cure me.  My brain won't think or feel or work clearly, so even when I'm not focusing on if and trying to read or watch it's still always there. So doesn't that prove it's not anything I'm doing to myself? That even when my mind isn't focused on it, things are still way off than they ever have been before? I mean, I've never felt anything like this in my life...not even close. Does all this just slowly start to go away even when you cant help but realize how screwed up you are and how scary it all is?

[[Ca...]]

Ok Coop,

I've been thinking about how I would talk to a friend if they came to me and asked me what to expect if they came off of their benzos. I'm gonna' talk to you like that now, ok!

 

What you are experiencing is partly real and partly imagined. Your brain has been HIJACKED by Klonopin. Right now, your brain is scrambled. This drug induced scrambling is causing REAL pain, REAL uncontrolled anxiety and fear. These things are organic because the drug has jacked up your brain's normal regulatory system. Your normal brain chemicals control all of the stuff that you interpret as emotions. The Klonopin has stopped your brain from doing what it's supposed to do. YOU ARE NOT DOING THIS TO YOURSELF!!!

 

When you get off the drugs, your brain will not immediately be fixed. It takes TIME for your brain to reboot itself into normal working order. Until that time SLOWLY progresses, you can expect your brain to continue LYING to you. It is NOT true that you will be like this forever. You will be like this for a period of time (that no one can predict for YOUR brain). It will continue to SUCK until it doesn't.

 

What CAN help you is to get off the drug completely, stay close to your wife and let her know when your brain is lying to you again, talk positively out loud to yourself (even when it feels like lies), take care of your health, note tiny changes in thought and cling to those as signs of progress, and MAKE IT THROUGH EACH DAY. The days pass and you WILL see changes. You have to WAIT IT OUT.

 

This process is TRUE and HARD!!! If you need help fighting, GET HELP. You will begin to figure out when the old you is starting to climb out of the shell you are in right now. You WILL recognize him. It will be a while, but you ARE NOT GONE!!!

 

I hope the dramatic emphasis is not interpreted as yelling. It is intended as firm reassurance. You CAN keep going!

 

Thanks for letting me practice my speech that I'm sure I will have to give a friend at some point in the future. With the number of people on these drugs, I KNOW I will be needing this speech again someday!

 

PS...Your posts are already taking a different tone which suggests to me that your thought process is moving in a new direction. I see that as a good thing! Keep it up!

 

CBI

[[...]]

I appreciate it. It's hard for me to know what to believe or think anymore. I try the positive self talk all the time and yet I question everything all the time. Monday and Tuesday everything was much less intense than usual, not a window but still much better, and told everyone it's gonna be okay and just take time. And since then I've been suffering again, unable to be okay wtb anything and barely making it, just scared and suffering. And even during each day it fluctuates up and down all the time but close to the baseline for that day. I don't know what causes it to change so drastically.

 

It's so much easier to have that self talk when it's not unbearable. I go from having to believing I'm permanently screwed. Your words help remind me though. I have to just keep giving it that time and it will show me the truth in time. I know I'll keep needing that reassurance. Thanks.

[[pa...]]

Ok Coop,

I've been thinking about how I would talk to a friend if they came to me and asked me what to expect if they came off of their benzos. I'm gonna' talk to you like that now, ok!

 

What you are experiencing is partly real and partly imagined. Your brain has been HIJACKED by Klonopin. Right now, your brain is scrambled. This drug induced scrambling is causing REAL pain, REAL uncontrolled anxiety and fear. These things are organic because the drug has jacked up your brain's normal regulatory system. Your normal brain chemicals control all of the stuff that you interpret as emotions. The Klonopin has stopped your brain from doing what it's supposed to do. YOU ARE NOT DOING THIS TO YOURSELF!!!

 

 

Coop, this is explained exactly the way it should be.  Just ty to reread his/her words and holt onto them.  Love tou you, Pattylu

 

 

 

 

E

When you get off the drugs, your brain will not immediately be fixed. It takes TIME for your brain to reboot itself into normal working order. Until that time SLOWLY progresses, you can expect your brain to continue LYING to you. It is NOT true that you will be like this forever. You will be like this for a period of time (that no one can predict for YOUR brain). It will continue to SUCK until it doesn't.

 

What CAN help you is to get off the drug completely, stay close to your wife and let her know when your brain is lying to you again, talk positively out loud to yourself (even when it feels like lies), take care of your health, note tiny changes in thought and cling to those as signs of progress, and MAKE IT THROUGH EACH DAY. The days pass and you WILL see changes. You have to WAIT IT OUT.

 

This process is TRUE and HARD!!! If you need help fighting, GET HELP. You will begin to figure out when the old you is starting to climb out of the shell you are in right now. You WILL recognize him. It will be a while, but you ARE NOT GONE!!!

 

I hope the dramatic emphasis is not interpreted as yelling. It is intended as firm reassurance. You CAN keep going!

 

Thanks for letting me practice my speech that I'm sure I will have to give a friend at some point in the future. With the number of people on these drugs, I KNOW I will be needing this speech again someday!

 

PS...Your posts are already taking a different tone which suggests to me that your thought process is moving in a new direction. I see that as a good thing! Keep it up!

 

CBI

[[pa...]]

Sorry Coop, my response didn,t post correctly.  Read and listen to Cantbelieve,s message.  He/she explained it exactly.  Can you print that out?  If yes, do so, then you have it to reread, to reinforce

The true message.  You are not causing it.  Hugs, pattylu

[[...]]

Coop,

 

It's not you, man. I promise you that. Someone said it's like our brains are hijacked. That's a pretty great description. But it's not your fault you're like this --the thing that helps me deal with this the best is that I know I wasn't like this pre-withdrawal, so I find it hard to believe I suddenly developed an anxiety disorder that coincided right after I stopped Xanax.

[[sp...]]

You're not doing this to yourself, coop, you're in a terrible situation and you're muddling through it, which is the best anyone can do when life throws terrible curveballs at you. You do have more control over the way you respond to it than you are giving yourself credit for, but I don't know if you're going to be able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps without some real cognitive/emotional support. It took me months/years of suffering, talk therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy before I was sufficiently broken down to understand how to start to pick the pieces up again (and I'm not nearly done tapering yet, I'm looking at several more months in the best case).

[[Th...]]

I feel like I can't help but think about my situation most all the time. But I cant help it. When you have so many symptoms preventing you from feeling even close to normal, how can you not be aware of that? Will this keep me from healing? Sometimes a doctor or a family member has said something that makes me question if this is something I'm doing to myself or at least making the situation worse. Like it's anxiety that I need help for or I'm in my head causing this and meditation will cure me.  My brain won't think or feel or work clearly, so even when I'm not focusing on if and trying to read or watch it's still always there. So doesn't that prove it's not anything I'm doing to myself? That even when my mind isn't focused on it, things are still way off than they ever have been before? I mean, I've never felt anything like this in my life...not even close. Does all this just slowly start to go away even when you cant help but realize how screwed up you are and how scary it all is?

 

Hi Coop,

 

I am 3 years off and i not fully healed but what I can tell you from my experience is that it is totally normal to think about painful troubling symptoms when they are so locked in day in day out ... how could it not be ? what I found is that symptoms would just disappear and sometimes I didn't even know that they had done and it was only when I checked my progress log that I keep that would realise that some had gone or at least receeded temporarily ... the problem is that the improvements tend to get overshadowed by the lingering symptoms ...

 

People are very good at telling what you should and shouldn't do when they have never suffered anything like what you are going through, the probelm is that they become emotionally knumb to seeing you struggle day in and day out and it just becomes the normal you, and it is not normal by any means  .. anxiety can make the recovery more difficult so any techniques that can be learned, any self help measures can ease it along rather than hinder it but in the main only time can help and support in whatever form you can get it.

 

When people mention that you might be making it worse, just smile and know that they would probably not cope with 10% of what you have had to endure with the same dignity and resilience that you have to show day in day out ..

 

Mike

[[jo...]]

Hi coop

 

The benzo withdrawal situation can be on our minds all the time as it can aggrevate obsessive tendencies which we feel we cannot help.

Distraction helps some, like a bit of 'time-off' from the symptoms.

 

Although worry and obsessiveness are symptoms of withdrawal, they also, don't exactly help our recovery.

 

If we can convince ourselves its the benzos that helps enormously, but for me, this is hard, because some of my non benzo problems ARE happening, whether I be on benzos or not. The obsessiveness and worry affect how I handle them.

 

Doctors and family members haven't gone through withdrawal like you, and therefore don't understand. People just don't like to see us ill.

A decent doctor is keen for their patient to heal, so when benzo withdrawal cases come in, the doctor must also feel a bit discouraged, as decent ones became doctors to heal others, and as benzo people heal more slowly, the doc may think we are not improving.

Don't take this personal though, if they had w/d they would understand.

 

I know what you mean about it always being there. I despair sometimes.

 

Judging from the journeys others have taken with benzos, yes, the windows of normality become wider, and they slowly start to feel better and regain their lives.