Post by sgn on Jan 6, 2014 16:52:57 GMT
I almost completely eliminated one of the things that used to trigger bad b.o. for me: Waking up suddenly from sounds.
And by the way, my smelly areas are mainly my arm pits and my feet.
background
I do know that it sounds strange, but I've had that problem since I was young and repeatedly woke up with panic due to reasons we don't have to discuss here (read my introduction if you really have to know).
I wasn't sure that it was the sound itself, I thought that maybe my body knew it was a bad day from the beginning, and would hate to wake up, or that I was in the middle of some dream. But after I got a smart phone a year ago, I realized that I could get bad b.o. even if I was half awake and surfing the net when the alarm clock went of.
self treatment (didn't work)
I tried to remove and reduce everything that could wake me up suddenly. Instead I got even more sensitive, and sleeping at other places then my home was pure terror, and very often resulted in bad b.o. days.
treatment (that worked)
I went to see a cognitive behavioral therapist, and his way of working with this was something he called repeated exposure.
I got the job of recording the sounds of things that had woken me up suddenly (in a way somehow causing bad b.o.), and made some scripts that would play back random sounds at random times during the night from a speaker next to my head. I think we started with sounds every 25-35 minutes, and when I had gotten used to that (maybe three weeks), we made the sounds a little bit more aggressive, and decreased the time between them for a few additional weeks. And it seems like my brain have generalized it (so i don't panic from other sounds I didn't train for either).
It was much worse in the beginning of the treatment (bad days 80% of the time). We followed the progress by making graphs of how often I woke up with panic, and some crude estimation of how bad my b.o. was, just to make sure that we didn't make it worse (then we would have made adjustments to the treatment). And we didn't have sounds the entire night. They stopped several hours before I would wake up normally, since the body might have calmed down a bit so I wouldn't be unnecessary stinky that day.
current status
I still have two things left that always triggers bad b.o., but the sound problem is almost completely gone. I can have my alarm clock as well as my phone within arms reach when sleeping. Previously, that would have been impossible. I have woken up too suddenly maybe once or twice in a few months, but if the problem would get worse, I could start the exposure therapy by myself again.
And by the way, I'm mainly writing this since my gut feeling for CBT used to be that it wouldn't help against sweating, so I didn't even consider it. I still would guess it's not that effective in the general case, but if your case is a bit peculiar, it might be worth a go.
/sgn
And by the way, my smelly areas are mainly my arm pits and my feet.
background
I do know that it sounds strange, but I've had that problem since I was young and repeatedly woke up with panic due to reasons we don't have to discuss here (read my introduction if you really have to know).
I wasn't sure that it was the sound itself, I thought that maybe my body knew it was a bad day from the beginning, and would hate to wake up, or that I was in the middle of some dream. But after I got a smart phone a year ago, I realized that I could get bad b.o. even if I was half awake and surfing the net when the alarm clock went of.
self treatment (didn't work)
I tried to remove and reduce everything that could wake me up suddenly. Instead I got even more sensitive, and sleeping at other places then my home was pure terror, and very often resulted in bad b.o. days.
treatment (that worked)
I went to see a cognitive behavioral therapist, and his way of working with this was something he called repeated exposure.
I got the job of recording the sounds of things that had woken me up suddenly (in a way somehow causing bad b.o.), and made some scripts that would play back random sounds at random times during the night from a speaker next to my head. I think we started with sounds every 25-35 minutes, and when I had gotten used to that (maybe three weeks), we made the sounds a little bit more aggressive, and decreased the time between them for a few additional weeks. And it seems like my brain have generalized it (so i don't panic from other sounds I didn't train for either).
It was much worse in the beginning of the treatment (bad days 80% of the time). We followed the progress by making graphs of how often I woke up with panic, and some crude estimation of how bad my b.o. was, just to make sure that we didn't make it worse (then we would have made adjustments to the treatment). And we didn't have sounds the entire night. They stopped several hours before I would wake up normally, since the body might have calmed down a bit so I wouldn't be unnecessary stinky that day.
current status
I still have two things left that always triggers bad b.o., but the sound problem is almost completely gone. I can have my alarm clock as well as my phone within arms reach when sleeping. Previously, that would have been impossible. I have woken up too suddenly maybe once or twice in a few months, but if the problem would get worse, I could start the exposure therapy by myself again.
And by the way, I'm mainly writing this since my gut feeling for CBT used to be that it wouldn't help against sweating, so I didn't even consider it. I still would guess it's not that effective in the general case, but if your case is a bit peculiar, it might be worth a go.
/sgn