Further Information

Experiences and explanation book on my anxiety/depression.

The book will be written in both Icelandic and English, so you can choose either.



Can you learn from my experiences/life lessons?

For a myriad of reasons, ever since I can remember, I have endlessly wondered why I did this or that and why I feel this way or that way along with everything else that I found reason to wonder about myself and our community of humans . I didn't really have any logical answers to these thoughts until I got into a deep depression about 20 years ago, but after that the answers started to come together and little by little became a clear picture of how I've been, behaved and felt all my life. I am currently writing this book in connection with my social project sjalfstraust.is.( translates, selfconfidence.is).
Do you want to buy a book in advance for yourself or someone you care about?

As a child and teenager, I thought á lot and very often about what was really wrong with me and why I felt bad and what I should really do about my affairs. At that time I sometimes thought that I wished there was a book or someone who could explain to me in human terms what was going on with me. I am currently writing this book as a hope to be able to help others with their speculations, and even if only one person finds help in these writings, my goal has been achieved.

Preface.

Why did no one tell me that?

For countless reasons, ever since I can remember, I constantly questioned why I did this or that and why I felt a certain way, along with anything and everything else that I perceived as a reason to ponder about myself and our human society.

I actually found no rational answers to these thoughts until I fell deep into depression about 20 years ago, but after that the answers gradually accumulated and started to become a clearer picture of how I have been, behaved and lived my entire life.

I was lucky enough to have my friend read what I had written, and her reaction led me to believe that I needed to improve the explanations in the introduction to the writing so that most people can understand why I decided to write this book in the way that I did.

She wondered who I was writing for, found the writing to be less of a necessary detailed diary and did not see the connections to anxiety and depression in the writing. I am truly grateful to her for these comments because, like many others, I sometimes know exactly what I'm thinking but don't fully realize that others don't always understand my speculations without better and more detailed explanations.
In conversations with people in recent years, it has sometimes felt rather annoying to have to make myself a big deal for explanations about the meaning of my thoughts, and I find introductions to be somewhat uninteresting.

But now I am forced to talk about myself and explain myself in order to create a rational connection to what I am going to write about in this book.

After realizing that I have become very good at understanding myself, I felt that I needed to offer my assistance to others who want to try to better understand themselves and gain increased or even healthy self-esteem where possible.

But at least for those who have experienced anxiety and/or depression, my intentions are for this writing to sound like a journal with detailed descriptions of events/behavior/development/reactions to various experiences along with the explanations and connections that I have gained through experience and knowledge of anxiety, depression and other mental challenges.

This is why I started the community project sjalfstraust.is.

These writings are part of that project ?

As a child and teenager, I often thought about what was really happening to me, why I felt bad when situations were actually safe and comfortable, but as before I was very often overwhelmed by my insecurity and discomfort with clearly too deep thoughts about what I should actually do about my matters. At that time, I sometimes thought that I wished there was a book or someone who could explain to me in layman's terms what was going on with me and my mind.
I am now writing this book in the hope that it can help others with their mental wanderings, and even if only one person finds help in these writings, my goal has been achieved.

In order for all explanations to be sufficiently informative, I will be as open as possible without involving too much of my personal connections with people throughout my life. Sometimes I omit names and direct connections to protect many good people who are not directly associated with my writings.

In most of my explanations, I will include descriptions of my reactions/behavior and explain why I did certain things and why not. However, I am not trying to justify anything I have done by writing about it or hide behind anxiety or depression with what I have done to myself, others or what I have not done when I was supposed to do something right. Everything was my responsibility, and I take full responsibility for my actions. I formally apologize to everyone whom I have not already asked for forgiveness for my mistakes or bad doings. If anyone is hurt because of me and I have not apologized for my actions, I sincerely wish to know about it ?

The anxiety that has caused me all kinds of difficulties in my life was incomprehensible and unknown to me until I was almost thirty, when I sank so deeply into depression as mentioned earlier. After receiving help from a psychologist, I finally gained some rational understanding of myself, but it took many years and still more flaws for me to understand the effects of anxiety and depression on me and in fact many others around me.

Anxiety repeatedly tries to persuade me to fight for it and justify itself, for example, the anxiety found it, in my younger years, justifiable to keep others afraid of me, so that I did not have to worry about anything from others.

Anxiety was so diligent that it taught me to focus only on a small negative detail in very large matters while I did not notice thousands of positive things in the same matter. This is called tunnel vision, as if looking through a tube at a small detail while the big picture is completely lost.

Telling the truth always and having nothing to hide is also a very important factor in the methods because it significantly simplifies one's life and has much less anxiety about remembering what was said to whom and what was not, for example.

Being in the present moment is another factor that, as mentioned earlier, I will weave into my possibly unnecessary detailed stories from my life, hoping someone will reflect on my stories and use them to help themselves because if we are not ready to help ourselves, no one can.

This is part of what cognitive behavioral therapy connects to anxiety and depression, but there are many other great things that have helped me tremendously since I was lucky enough to attend a cognitive behavioral therapy course in 2019, after a difficult time in my life.

I had been listening to and reading the course brochure for about an hour of the 16 or 20-hour course when it hit me that I had been applying cognitive behavioral therapy to myself almost ever since I can remember, but I had no idea that I had been doing it, and I was far from always using the method in a rational way and therefore often got into trouble with myself and no less in trouble with others.

But since I realized how skilled I was at working with my mind in this way, I started incorporating all my other methods into my puzzle and can now say truthfully that I have never been as satisfied and peaceful with my life or known my self-esteem as healthy.

Since it worked well for me with a substantially increased understanding of the mind's tasks, I will invite you to see if you can achieve the same goals in your life and well-being with my words in my way.

Here is a link explaining CBT, for those who don't know about it.
https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/talking-therapies-medicine-treatments/talking-therapies-and-counselling/cognitive-behavioural-therapy-cbt/overview/

For the dyslexic, this will be an audiobook. For ADHD (broadmind and more active, as I like to call this ability), it is best to read/listen just briefly at a time and then move around.

For anxiety, it is best to try not to worry about whether it is possible to grasp the methods or not, but rather try to read it as a daily residency and then see if there could be any benefit from reading/listening to it. For the depressed, be sure not to wonder why you did not previously notice any of this or worry about having not read this until recently and done something about your matters ?

Anxiety is for the future but depression is due to something in the past. ?