Phobias are hard to Handle.

GTDUMAS

Phobias are part of the disease of Anxiety/Depression.  While I have a number of them, I generally can avoid the trigger situation.  However, my major phobia is related to medical tests and procedures.   My major illness, Melanoma, a deadly skin cancer, occurred when I was thirty one and had a nine month old baby.  While I was told at that time and for many subsequent years that I was going to die, thirty some years later I am still here.  Over those thirty some years I have had multiple tests and biopsies for further disease.  During that process they found no new Melanomas but instead found two new types of cancer. Neither of these cancers were as serious as Melanoma but still disturbing.  So now I have to be tested for all of these diseases plus the usual tests for undiscovered problems.  It is not surprising that someone with my mental makeup would have a medical test phobia.  Unfortunately, it is hard to avoid medical tests and procedures when good sense tells me that the medical profession is trying to keep me healthy and not torture me.   So like a good patient I take all the tests for my problems and agree that the doctors can take out lumps just to be sure they are not malignant.  Suffice it to say, this period of testing it a time of great mental disturbance.   Right now I am in the middle of the tests and the accompanying mental chaos.   This is one of the moments when I have to go back to the basics.

Every day I drive a bus with my anxiety monsters.  Mostly they are quiet but just now they are very active.  As the driver I have to remember each day not to drive the bus to a dark place but instead to look for the light.  I can only do this by living in the moment.  The past is over, the future unclear but the present is the real thing.   The present is usually not too hard to deal with unless you are lying in a MRI tube for 45 minutes.  Even in such a scary present I mediated in the tube and it was over faster.   Finally, I need to have compassion for myself because Phobias are almost impossible to change and the only way I can deal with them is too manage them.   As long as I am trying to manage it, that is the best I can hope for.