Mindfullness & Drugs

[Bixente]

Hey!

I have been doing mindfullness, following Willians & Penmans book, for some months now. At the same time I have been going on CBT/ACT treatment for social phobia.
ACT is inspired by mindfullness. The last weeks I have felt that its going in the right direction. In some situation where I get stressed I can see the thought or the feeling as just a thought or a feeling for the moment. That makes me dont get that stressed about the thoughts as before. I can still have anxiety about the situation, but my anxiety is not increasing becaouse of my thoughts about the anxiety. But sometimes I still forget or fail with this and get increased stressed and anxiety. There is still moments where I have a lot of anxiety.

As a part of the treatment I meet a doctor today. She think I shall try Atarax. Its a quite weak drug with the orginal purpose against allegic, but a sideeffect has been less wory and anxiety. There is no more known side effects except that some people become a bit tired by the medecin. There is no risk to get addicted. I dont have to take the medecin on a daily basis just before events that I think can give me much anxiety. I have never before been taking any drugs like this, so its a new thing for me.

I think I dont have so much to lose on trying this medecin, becuase there is no serious side effects and no risk to get addicted.

But I am thinking a bit about in connection to mindfullness. When I am stressed before a event i use to see my thought as just thoughts in the moment about the future, my thoughts are not the future. That help me to decrease anxiety that is about negative expectations. But to decide if I shall take the medecin before a specific event I will have to listen more to my thoughts and " talk with myself". Maybe then I, for the moment, lose the ability to just let the thoughts come and go. Then I lose what have helped me to dont listen so much on negative thoughts. Hope I explained this clear enough. What do u think about this ?

A part of the CBT treatment is to practise on stressfull moments to see my thoughts as just thoughts. I dont want to take away that practice moment by the drugs. But I think I will still have stressfull and difficult moments even if I take that drug. Because of holiday I will not be able to talk with my therapist about this issues for some weeks.

I think it should be possible to combinate maybe taking away the worst anxiety moments and continue practicing on mindfullness.
But I am intressted about what you think about this.

Best Regards/ Bixente ( sorry if my english is not 100 %)

[FeeHutch]

Hello
My gut reaction in this situation is to say it is something you need to talk to with those helping you right now so your doctor and anyone involved in your CBT/ACT treatment because they are going to have a hopefully much clearer understanding of your physical and emotional health. It sounds like the doctor has explained the medication to you, did you tell him or her your concerns about how this might impact on your mindfulness practice?
Fee