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Hi, My name is Belladora. I was diagnosed many years ago. I have been dealing with Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia for over 40 years. I was housebound for 3 years and eventually got out. I maintained as best I could. Just in the past 3 months I have had a complete relapse. I can go short distances, 1 mile radius. I have pushed that radius and ended up drained for a week. It's not good enough to have the diagnosis now I need to figure out what happened. Well, long story but I will not bore you with details.

...."Where to start" Certain things that have happened recently ,have made me want to share my journey so far with you all and I hope you understand. So.. I was born on the 24th of May 1994 weighing a very tiny 1.5lb.. so I guess i didn't want to give up just then! I have two Loving, caring and supportive parents who are the nicest people anyone could ever meet. So as I grew up I'd like to think that they brought me up to be a respectful, kind and caring person. which sometimes I highly doubt, but I'll come to that later. So I was diagnosed from a fairly young age with NLD (Non Verbal Learning Disorder) I learn better by practical ways of teaching.. rather than reading text books. also I sometimes can't get everything down that I want to say that's in my brain to make sense.. .. so I apologize if some of this "Story" lacks structure or sense! As a kid I was always very very impulsive and hyperactive and had a wild creative imagination and it never really caused any problems up until I was about 12. When I was 12 I moved from primary school too my first secondary state school. Before the move my Primary school was a local Country Village school.. with a maximum capacity of (50) people! so I guess my hyper episodes and franticness could of been checked up on. So it was a big shock for me when I first arrived to the secondary school that had around 1200 students. So being premature at birth I have always been small, and as I was growing up no one really noticed it..and I didn't care about it.. until I started to get Unwanted attention from the local school jokers/bully type characters. The first few weeks at the new school I managed to get past them..without any trouble but that quickly changed.. being the smallest in my class I didn't really have the ability to defend myself.. so situations started to happen where Some days they'd try and put me in a locker or Bag and sometimes the bin. So after A few weeks of that happening, I started to lose myself as a person. to stop getting teased or put in a bin I decided to go with the " If you can't beat them, join them" way of things. So I almost created this completely different "George" to fit in..(But mine was extreme) My behavior started to get worse, I started to get into a lot of trouble at the school. I became constantly angry, and I hate to admit it but I became one of the "Bully's/Jokers". I felt like I had a sense of belonging. and this impulse was the hardest one to control.. The feeling of being liked, or to be someone different to fit in. Anyway after a year of being at that school, My parents moved me realizing if I stayed I was heading down a dangerous route. They moved me to a private school that was a lot smaller. and at first I felt alienated I hated everyone there and the concept of "Posh school".. So I'd been at the school roughly 6 Months and I had made friends but for all the wrong reasons.. I was known as "Nutter George" "Crazy George" anything to get that attention and feeling of safety and protection I'd do it.. whether it was to break something or general disrupt the classes I'd do it. It was towards the end of my first year that a friend came to me.. and said "Oi mate, there auditioning for this school play you should do it mate and take the piss".." My typical response as a idiot would say was "No way, Drama is for gay-boys.." eventually he dragged me to the audition room and I did an Audition.. this strange feeling came over me.. I WAS NERVOUS!.. Looking back on it now.. it must of been a good thing.... (This is only Half of what my Story) but my computer keeps messing up.. but I hope you guys enjoy the read. sorry for my bad grammar and punctuation... I'll do the rest ASAP.

We talk about Holistic Therapy but what is it exactly? The word 'Holistic' means wholeness. To bring together the parts of ourselves that have become estranged from us. Our ability to reason. To understand what is happening etc. and to reintegrate them into one whole person. In nervous anxiety we often feel 'detached', cut off from the real world with feelings of unreality. Frightening! But can we reason ourselves out of these feeling? Can we be logical and say 'I am here, I am OK. This is a passing phase'. No, we can't because we are not capable of real coherent thought. To be whole means to have the mind, body and feelings acting as one. When in an anxiety state the three elements mentioned tend to go off in different directions. The heart may feel one thing but the head says otherwise. The head says everything is OK but the body says 'no it isn't'. In health anxiety, for instance, the mind is convinced that we are ill; or have some bad organic disease (dis-ease!) but even after being told by experts that we are OK; the mind is still at odds with the body. Feelings fool us into this error of belief and, being at the mercy of feelings, we put ourselves through hell. Bringing our minds, body and feelings together again so that we become whole is not easy. In Western society we are used to having the 'persona', the masks that we put on in the morning and change throughout the day according to who we meet. We are never really 'ourselves'. Whole. This is where Mindfulness is so important. (See write up on site). The ability to concentrate our minds on one thing at a time is the bringing together of the fragmented parts of ourselves into wholeness. We no longer anticipate, the curse of anxiety. We no longer look back with recrimination and guilt, another curse, at what could have been had we done so and so because we are living in the present which, logically, is the only place we can live. We need to question ourselves. To ask questions about why we feel the way we do then sit down and listen to the feelings. They are always trying to tell you something about life, YOUR life; why you may need to change your lifestyle, your friends, your attitude to others and sometimes your employment, if that is possible. Being in a nervous state is often that arrival at a crossroad in life. We can choose which way to go if we have the will and the determination to do it. It can be done even while we suffer because it is the suffering that goads us on. To get out of the mess we are in. There is no greater incentive than to suffer! When you feel bad sit down and ask the feelings what they are trying to tell you about yourself; your fragmented self and how you can pull the parts together, to become 'whole' again. J.

When we are born we set out on the sea of life. We get in our rowing boat and off we go. The hazards of the big lake we are on soon become apparent. Other rowers bump into us. Some try to sink our boat. Others try to take over or give us false instructions on how to row. We have to sort the false from the true. A difficult task especially for those younger ones with no experience of rowing. But we are on the surface. Most people; the vast majority, go along on the surface all their lives and we, the sensitive ones, often envy them. But wait. Stop rowing for a moment and look about you. The lake of life is vast and you can't see the shore from whence you came or to where you are going. But what are you rowing on? The lake. Beneath you are the depths. This is where the real gold lies but it takes courage to jump over the side to look for the gold; safer to stay on the surface. But supposing you do jump over and swim down to where the treasure lies; what do you find. Below the surface, away from the frenzy of the surface waves (fear, anxiety) lies peace. Divers talk about how peaceful it is when in deep water. Try to meditate on this when feeling down. "You are rowing slowly and gently across the lake. Then it gets a bit choppy so you decide to seek the peace in the depths. You jump over the side and start to swim down. Don't be afraid. You swim down and you find you are in a safe environment. Fish swim past. All is green and peaceful. Look down. Lying on the seabed is a chest. You open it and inside you find what you have been looking for.The gold. Peace. Your peace. The peace that passes all understanding". When in deep meditation it is sometimes difficult to come back to 'this world'. But the secret lies in bringing the peace back with you. So get back in the boat and start to row again with that peace there knowing that you can always go back and find it again if you run into troubled waters. It's your lake; your boat and your peace. Find it. J.