Anxiety at Christmas

Well writing down and sharing my anxiety has made me see it differently. The panic attacks I get are unreasonable for what I have to cope with I think I have a phobia of Christmas.

After having chemo I had a phobia of the water you drink from the large bottles available in hospitals. I started to feel sick after drinking it. Why - because before they gave me chemo which made me very sick they gave me a cup of the water to take some tablets. I feel nauseous just writing about it. So my mind associated the water with sickness.

My local NHS hospital offered Emotional Freedom Technic- EFT sessions ( tapping) and this helped a great deal. Since then I have tried to learn more about it but haven't practiced it for a while. So next Christmas I am going to try to remember to do lt if the panic attacks start or maybe before they start. I had never heard about it before the sessions and please search you tube or the Internet to learn more if you are interested.

This also shows how the power of sharing can help us see things differently.

We did a secret Santa for all the adults this year you can't imagine how much stress that lifted from me. My Christmas was happy and stress free for the first time in many years.

I think a lot of people share this problem ajanela and I suppose the trick is as you say to do it on your terms which is pretty much what I do. I like the traditional Christmas but have given up on the parties, visits, shopping (do it all online) etc etc - I suppose DH and I are quite boring really.