My Story

Hi, my name’s Andrew Thomas

I was born in a small town in England in the 1960’s. I had a difficult childhood but to anyone who thought they knew me, I appeared to have coped well and was a happy, balanced child.

I was always a shy child and blushed easily, this lead to a lot of teasing from other children and at times made my life in the school classroom very uncomfortable. Events in my childhood made me weary of getting too close (emotionally) to people so I put up a barrier, pretending to be strong and independent but in reality I was insecure and self-conscious.

This was the root of my future problems and is a common BIG mistake – pretending to be one character while really being someone completely different. This causes you nothing but tension and stress.

Given any situation you behave one way but it is totally at odds with how you would behave if you were to act naturally (the way nature made you at birth). This ‘acting’ is well intentioned, it’s a defence mechanism to stop yourself getting emotionally hurt but in the long run, instead of helping you it hurts you.

In my teen years I was became a bit of a loner. By this I don’t mean I locked myself away in a room but what I mean is that I had friends but never got close to them. I felt different somehow, detached – I never enjoyed group activities, what may be called bonding activities, I always preferred solo competition. In my early 20’s I had a social life that revolved around playing pool and drinking beer. It was enjoyable but deep inside I felt my life was hollow, empty. In short, I felt lonely.

In my late 20’s I met my wife. She was the first person I felt really close to. I let some of the barriers down but not all of them - something deep inside would not let me go all the way. It was that old defence mechanism learned all those years earlier.

As a husband and a father I worked hard both at work and at home. It was in my early thirties that my troubles began. At the age of 33 I was made redundant. It didn’t really bother me at the time, or at least I thought it didn’t.

I decided to start my own business and put in a lot of effort to get it up and running but after several months there was no money coming in and my savings had nearly ran out. I decided to return to full time employment while continuing to try and get my business off the ground in the evenings and weekends. I didn’t appreciate it at the time but I was slowly grinding myself into the ground.

One evening after my 9 to 5 work I had a meeting 20 miles away related to my own business. On the way home driving down the motorway I had my first panic attack. It started when I began thinking how tight my tie was. I went to loosen it but I couldn’t get my shirt button undone; I began to feel anxious, panicky. What if passed out? I began to sweat and breath quickly. I’d better slow down. What if I crash? And so the spiral began, I got more and more panicky. Even when I had undone my shirt button the feeling didn’t go away. I was scared; I didn’t know what was happening to me. After that day, every time I drove on the motorway, I was scared that the same thing would happen again, I began to develop a phobia.

I muddled through but at the age of 37 things took a further downward turn. By this time I had given up the idea of starting my own business but I couldn’t stand still. I decided to build an extension to the house. Again, without realising it, I was working so hard I was gradually exhausting myself.

The next disturbing event that I recall was one morning while I was drinking a cup of tea. I had been bricklaying and my wife brought me a drink. I sat on a pile of bricks admiring the work I had just done. For no reason what so ever I began to feel nervous. I had a feeling of butterflies in my stomach. After a few minutes this went away but it disturbed me.

A few weeks later at work I was about to walk into the town one lunch hour but as I walked out I felt light headed so I decided to take the car. When I got out of the car I felt anxious, I still felt light headed and was worried that I may pass out. I walked to the shops with increasing anxiety, my legs felt weak and I began to panic. I quickly rushed back to the safety of my car. This light-headedness, weak legs and anxiety continued at different times and places. I thought I was ill, I suspected that I was diabetic.

Several months later my wife began to have problems with her vision, eventually losing the sight in one eye. She underwent a series of tests to determine the cause. This caused a lot of trauma but I had to remain strong for her – I ignored my own needs. I suspected she had a tumour but after weeks of worrying she was finally diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. She had to give up her work so I was now the only wage earner in the house.

Some time later my father was diagnosed with lung cancer and died 5 months later. I had been very close to him and the trauma of seeing him slowly decline and suffer had a profound effect on me.

Six months later I changed jobs. I settled into my new work but had this feeling that as I was the ‘new boy’ I had a lot to prove. I worked hard but felt the pressure slowly rising. The project I was working on was very complex and the deadline for delivery was fast approaching. I began to take work home and work at the weekends. I worried about my ability to deliver. It was at this time my anxiety cranked up another notch.

Most days I began to experience a feeling of an unsettled stomach that caused me to feel ‘edgy’, it was like a chemical had been released into my bloodstream. My muscles felt week and I couldn’t think clearly. It became so bad that I went to the doctor, as I said before I was convinced that I was diabetic. All the blood tests came back negative. This made me worry even more, why were the results negative? I knew that there was something wrong with me.

The doctor said it was probably anxiety and prescribed me some pills. The only purpose they served was to make me feel ‘spaced out’. My anxiety continued to grow, the project deadline was approaching but I knew I was not well enough to handle it. The crunch came one morning when I got into my car and set off for work. I had only driven a quarter of mile when my stomach began to churn and I began to sweat and panic.

I turned the car round and headed home. When I got home I just sat there and worried. For the next month or so I was constantly worried – what I now know was General Anxiety Disorder (GAD). I developed agoraphobia – leaving the house made me feel very anxious. No matter how much I knew that there was nothing to be afraid of, I experienced an overwhelming fear when I stepped through the front door. I tried numerous ways to conquer my fear but none of them worked. What I did know is that if I gave into my fear then it would only get worse. I decided to face it by not avoiding going out but trying to cope with the fear when I did so.

My doctor loaned me a relaxation tape that helped but didn’t cure my phobia. Shortly afterwards I discovered a book written by a lady whose life was blighted by agoraphobia for 8 years. She is now completely cured thanks to stillness meditation. The book is in two parts, the first part describes her life story and the second part describes how to do the meditation. I cannot emphasise enough the part stillness meditation played in my recovery. If you would like to find out more about his book then click here. I was amazed at how my anxiety completely vanished when I meditated and this relaxed state gradually continued into my everyday life. 

If I became anxious while I was out then I would think of my meditation and my anxiety level would fall. Later I learned the tapping technique that reduces anxiety and phobic responses almost completely.

I was put on a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) course where I learned what made me react the way I did and how I could undo my negative thinking and behaviour. I learned that my problems all stemmed back to the rules that I lead my life by, those rules formed all those years ago in my childhood. I learned things about myself that were so obvious but I had hid them away.

My rule that I had to be strong and appear strong made fear of failure at work, fear of failure as a father, unbearable. I replaced that rule with : “I try to be strong and successful in everything that I do but I know I am human and sometimes I will fail. People love me and like me for who I am, my sense of humour, my loyalty and my honesty. No one is perfect and neither am I.”

Reading the above new rule is one thing but truly believing it is another. This is where the behavioural part of CBT comes in. I had to identify situations where my old rule would cause me difficulty and test out my new belief. The first thing I chose to do was to reveal everything I had discovered about myself in my CBT sessions to my wife. If the old rule still dominated my life then I wouldn’t be able to do it. I would not be able to admit my weakness, my real character.

One evening we sat down together and I went through my life history – warts and all. My old beliefs told me my wife would think less of me for this. My new belief told me that it would make no difference to how she felt about me. You can guess what happened. My wife not only understood, she told me she loved me more for being honest and open. She married me for my good ‘human’ qualities not because I was strong and never failed. She didn’t care if I failed, as long as we were together that was all that mattered. This reinforced my new beliefs and weakened my old beliefs. Further tests helped strengthen my new beliefs to such a point where my old thinking patterns have been completely changed.

CBT works best in a group sessions where others who have similar problems to yourself can offer support and understanding that even close relatives cannot give you. (No matter how hard your nearest and dearest try, they cannot truely understand what you are going through whereas fellow sufferers know first hand). If want find out a little more about CBT before you join a group then you may want to take a look at the course book we used during my therapy sessions.

Within 12 weeks of starting my CBT and meditation I had returned to work full time. I’m not going to pretend it was easy, like everything in life I had to work at it, but with my new tools of CBT and relaxation techniques, things got easier and easier over time.

Within 6 months I was able to get on an Aeroplane and enjoy a 2-week holiday in the Canary Islands.  6 months earlier (when I was terrified of just walking out of the door 100 metres to the local shops) the thought of ever being able get on a plane again, stuck in a confined ‘tube’, with no means of escape, seemed impossible.

Again I’m not going to pretend it was easy but it wasn’t hard either. I particularly remember sitting in the waiting lounge at Manchester Airport waiting to board the ‘Plane. I was anxious and nervous wondering if I could handle being in such a confined, claustrophobic environment – could I handle it? I went to the toilets and sat in a cubicle, meditated for 10 minutes followed by the Tapping Technique and my anxiety levels fell drastically. By the time we boarded the Aircraft I was actually enjoying the experience!

Since my low days I have gradually increased my stress capacity, continued with my meditation and changed a number of things in my life. I now run 15 miles a week, this helps burn up any excess adrenaline that a stressful day produces. I recently ran a half marathon for my wife’s MS Charity. Again, running 13 miles would have seemed impossible at my lowest ebb.

I have taken up Tai Chi – movement meditation as I like to think of it. You may want to try it yourself in which case I can recommend an excellent DVD. I have also been to college to learn Spanish in the evenings. The point of this was two fold. Firstly, I’ve always wanted to retire to Spain when I’m older but more importantly it was something I had to challenge myself with. All those years of classroom fear when I was younger made me uncomfortable in such group situations. In meetings at work I could shrink into the background and avoid having the ‘spotlight’ shine on me. In a language class there is no place to hide. You have to speak in front of the whole class, what’s more in a language you cant really speak. This is a brave thing to do, to expose yourself to possible ridicule. I did it and this further rebuilt my confidence and helped me one more notch up the ladder to get back to where I had fallen.

I have recently read a book by Paul McKenna who has made a study of highly successful and effective people, how they think and how they behave. This is a subject that has always interested me - why do some people ooze confidence and self belief but others (me for example) have a low self image and behave submissively in the company of other people? Paul describes how you can 'reprogram' your mind, to begin to think in the same way as a super-achiever. He describes how to master your emotions and run your own brain, how to have supreme self-confidence and become the person you really want to be.

Take heart from the above. No matter how bad you feel now, promise yourself that starting from now you are going to change your life and yourself. You will do it little by little, step by step, but day-by-day you will move from where you are now to where you want to be.

Remember a thousand mile journey starts with a step of one yard.