When I unwittingly developed my anxiety disorder, I just wanted to relax. I craved relaxation and did all manner of things to try and achieve it and to stop feeling extreme discomfort all day, every day with no respite (except when I managed to sleep). I tried hypnotherapy, I tried meditation, I tried listening to soothing music, waves gently lapping the shores of a golden sun kissed sandy beach. I bought a bicycle and rode a stupid amount of miles every week. I swam huge distances. I was as fit as a butcher’s dog but none of these things provided prolonged periods of relaxation or peacefulness. By the next morning, my mind and body was wracked with anxiety. Back to square one. It was like Groundhog Day but far worse. No matter what I tried to do to get rid of the anxiety, it was back the next day. Relentless stuff. Depression followed.
Don’t get me wrong, exercise is a great for stress relief but having anxiety brings a whole new dimension to stress. It’s in another league. If only people could understand the emotional and physical pain we were feeling.
Sure, exercise tackles the symptoms of stress but does not address the root cause of that stress. For chronic anxiety sufferers, nerves that have been battered into submission need time to desensitise, to heal but that won’t happen if I fill my day trying to make this “thing” go away and stop dominating my life, I was stuck in a never ending fear-adrenalin-fear cycle. I was anxious and stressed about feeling anxious. I was scared of the feelings of fear. It just keeps producing more stress induced chemicals, inciting more fear. I would fight the thoughts and feelings to feel right, instead of allowing myself to feel the symptoms of anxiety and let myself come out of it naturally. That’s what people without inappropriate levels of anxiety do. They don’t do anything. The feelings just go away by themselves because their focus is on other things, probably the reason that drives that particular emotion and not dwelling upon how they feel. Anxiety sufferers are frightened to death about the feelings and try to force themselves to feel better. This is the same as pouring petrol on a fire and expecting the flames to be extinguished. Fat chance.
Getting to the crux of the matter, to no longer feel these feelings, the trick is to allow them to be there and not do anything to change the situation. This stops pouring fuel on that fire. Struggling to change your feelings or mental state is a fight you will never win and simply fans those flames. Try feeling happy when you are sad. Try feeling sad when you are happy. Try feeling full of energy when you are dog tired. See what I mean? You have little or no control over how you are feeling but anxiety sufferers are constantly trying to do this. Trying to control anxiety has the opposite effect. By giving up trying to control anxiety, you eventually regain control!
Allowing or accepting (it’s the same thing) is not a technique or some method. I mean, it is not something you try for a bit and then say, “Aaarghh, I’m still feeling very anxious and hate it. It’s not working!!” That is missing the point entirely.
It is about letting go, developing a relaxed attitude towards the symptoms and allowing yourselves to feel the way you are feeling at any time. Let yourselves fall into any state and do nothing to try and change it. It is not about your mind or emotions being calm, it is about you being calm towards the crappy thoughts the mind is spewing out and the grossly exaggerated emotions that turn pimples into Mt Everest. It’s about being ok about not feeling ok. It is the resistance to emotions that cause the majority of suffering, not the feelings themselves. Acceptance is made easier once the mystery of anxiety is understood and the symptoms completely harmless. Fear is the only thing keeping the cycle going. It’s a natural reaction that is designed to protect us in the face of danger. To fight, run away or freeze (playing dead). Anxiety sufferers have become afraid of the symptoms of fear.
To be free from inappropriate levels of anxiety you have to allow every aspect of it to be there and learning to observe instead of fighting, suppressing, avoiding etc. I stopped hiding from it, stopped trying to suppress it, stopped avoiding things or doing things to deliberately try and feel different. I still cycled and ploughed up and down the pool but didn’t do it with the expectation that it would free me from anxiety.
Recovery is not about managing or coping with anxiety. I never had to manage or cope with it before I developed the disorder so why now? And it wasn’t something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. To recover, you don’t need anything, no techniques, methods of coping or safety behaviours. You just need to be more accepting with anxiety being in your life and be open to it.
The only thing that I changed was my attitude. There is no magic medication to make it go away. Medication does not remove fear. It just masks the symptoms of fear which will still be there if you haven’t learnt how to cope and pass through fear the right way by facing and accepting.
I just stopped fighting with myself and trying to escape or change the way I felt. I just carried on living my life and doing things, regardless of how I felt. You see, for normality to return, you have to carry on doing normal things. Go to work, socialise, take that holiday and take the anxiety with you.
When freedom from anxiety came (it’s a gradual process, progress often going unnoticed and doesn’t happen over night), there was nothing left to manage or the need to keep doing things to find relief and that was always my target. Just like I was before anxiety and how things are now. Recovery is not exclusive to a few brave souls. Each and every one of you has what it takes to recover. You just need to know what to do to recover. Absolutely nothing.
Best wishes
Beevee
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Such wisdom as always. I will do my best to accept the anxiety. Just yesterday I was thinking back to less than a year ago when I had a severe anaphylactic reaction to pistachios and I almost died. The doctors were at a loss for words when they saw I was still alive. Yet during that time there was not a moment when I felt anxious or had anxiety. I even began eating nuts before I knew which specific one I was allergic to. I’m trying to go back to that state of mind where I worried less. I’ve had chest pain for years, been evaluated by 2 different cardiologists, had an array of tests and it didn’t start worrying me until now. As you said, I need to just leave it be and I plan on doing that.
Thanks for your helpful advice as always. You’re a blessing to this site.
One of my sons has a nut allergy. No clue until he had a bad reaction to a curry sauce. His face resembled a boxer who had just gone 15 rounds with both hands tied behind his back 😲 Spent the night in A&E having adrenalin pumped into him. Said he felt slightly wired but none the worse for the experience. Now, if that feeling or the allergic reaction had spooked him and worried excessively about it, producing the same feelings, anxiety would develop. Sudden trauma can also trigger anxiety. Fear is the root cause of all anxiety based disorders and associated symptoms so the treatment is the same too. Acceptance.
Onwards and upwards Lia. Keep moving forward. You WILL get there by continuing to practice acceptance.
Isn’t it funny how, when we are in real crisis we pull ourselves together but when we are “fine” we just plague ourself with anxiety over things that may never happen? Anyway, so glad you’re ok!
THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT POSTING TO APPEAR ON THIS FORUM FOR MANY YEARS. Everybody who wants to recover should read, re-read and re-read it.
It is brilliantly written and explains exactly what anxiety is - and how everyone can achieve recovery simply by changing their attitude. It's really all you need to know about recovery, all you need to know about where you have been going wrong.
Thank you Beevee for taking the time to share your experience with everybody else here. So good to hear from you again. Advice doesn't get any better than this.
I have never suffered anxiety like I am now, never in my life, I am 77 and have not let fear control my life, I do not know where this came from I have no specific thing I am afraid of, it just grabs me in the morning when I wake up, I am told it is a part of my brain that is out of balance. I will try your suggestion and see if it works for me, I try to accept it thru the day and often get some relief in the evening. Thank you for your insite. Sprinkle 1
I too was the same as you. I had no specific fears ( note - there is very little difference between fear and an intense dislike of something) but stress crept up on me. I still don’t know what stressed me to begin with and gave up trying to figure it out. I developed some physical symptoms (blurred vision, aches and pains, lump in throat, bowel problems etc etc) none of which could be pinpointed despite various medical tests. The doctors didn’t seem to know either which alarmed me even more. I kept going back. With hindsight, it was symptoms of stress, which I was stressing over! Thought might be cancer. All the stress took its toll on my nerves which were frayed, to say the least. My resilience to situations that never used to bother me when I was well, were simply overwhelming. I felt I couldn’t cope. Trivial matters became huge. Minor fears and insecurities became major and blown all out of proportion. Health anxiety ensued which quickly became generalised anxiety. The anxiety would pick at anything, or as I learned, stick to things that resonated with me, provoking a response, and getting one. I had countless anxious thoughts, many of which were easy to let go of, but others not so easy because I believed them so spent ages trying to fight or suppress the them but to no avail. They just kept coming, uninvited, shocking me again and again and provoking a response. The symptoms were relentless for a while. As time progressed, they started to lessen during the evenings or after exercise. Mornings were the worst and very common with anxiety. I gave up trying to figure out why I felt like I did. When anxiety bites, the brain’s reaction is to search for the perceived threat that triggered the anxious response. There isn’t any, other than anxiety itself. Those dreaded thoughts and feelings are just anxiety. Nothing else. I learned to let go and it all disappeared, bit by bit.
Thank You so much for writing to me, I am a smart woman and have tried all my life to improve and understand myself, but I know my brain is beyond my control and that I need to accept myself as is. I will work on the anxiety and the fear it produces, it is evening now and I feel some freedom, I tackled it this morning with your words and will do so again tomorrow morning. Thank you so much for your enlightening lesson, I wish you well and free of anxiety. Sprinkle 1......
Hello, once again pearls of wisdom, I am doing my best to learn from your lessons, morning is worse for me and sometimes I get a break in the evening. I just do not know what my fear is, i try to accepts it, talk to it, meditate.I have a therapist who helps me and I take Lorzapam which helps, but I would like to be off the drugs and functioning normally. Thank you for all your words of wisdom. Sending Love N Hugs. Sprinkle 1
Are you consciously thinking about things / problems or are they thoughts that randomly pop into your head uninvited which you then think and worry about, creating anxious feelings.
If it’s the former and you have a particular problem that makes you anxious, then that problem needs to be solved either by tackling it head on or taking a different view that is comfortable with you so that you don’t feel anxious.
The vast majority of anxiety sufferers fall into the second category. That is, there may have been a problem that started the anxiety but has long since been forgotten and replaced by the constant worry and fear about the symptoms of anxiety. These symptoms often include troublesome thoughts loaded with fear which are designed to shock you, creating more fear. This is the classic anxiety cycle which can be broken by allowing yourself to feel the fear (often called the first fear flash) and choosing not to add second fear by worrying / questioning the initial thought that created the first fear flash.
It is your reaction to the second flash that determines whether or not that cycle is broken and for recovery to follow and is where acceptance or allowing comes into the frame. By accepting, you stop adding second fear which is the sole reason those random thoughts keep coming and with such force. Second fear fuels the first fear which is only anxious energy being released in the form of anxious thoughts. They are not reality. Just the figment of an overly anxious mind spewing out anxious thoughts. In simple terms, it’s just energy/adrenalin that we perceive to be negative.
Don’t force yourself to think or feel differently. What I mean is do not deliberately distract yourself to stop feeling that anxious energy, feverishly doing something else to rid yourself of the thoughts and feelings. That energy has to be released and the way the mind and body naturally recovers. By fighting those thoughts/ adding second fear/ deliberately distracting yourself, that energy will keep coming up to be released and the mind and body does not get the chance to start the recovery process. Allowing or accepting, creates the time and space for this to happen and for nerves to desensitise. As desensitisation takes place and the nerves calm down to their normal default setting, the symptoms that are bothering you will slip away and peace of mind and body will follow.
So, let yourself fall into an state, allow those thoughts to come and go without putting up any resistance.
Ok. Here is a summary. Put all your symptoms in one basket called anxiety, allow them to be there, do nothing about them and continue to move on with your life, taking the anxiety with you.
If you do want to be happy, then this is the road to take. If you strive or keep searching for happiness, it won’t happen. Happiness is a by product of moving forward willingly, facing your fears and accepting them.
Thanks for the great insight !!! I can relate. I’ve noticed that when I don’t fight my anxiety.. it doesn’t stay for long. I usually divert my thoughts to something more positive ..and before I realize...I’ve already calmed down. It’s not easy but doable .
I did not do anything to deliberately divert my attention away from anxiety althought it can bring temporary relief. Diversionary tactics is avoidance and not truly accepting
I just carried on doing everyday things and if I felt anxious, then so be it. I did nothing yo change my state of mind and went with the ebb and flow. That is true acceptance. Can you see the difference?
You have to remember that the cause of chronic anxiety are the nerves that control your emotions which have been sensitised and vibrating away like a tuning fork that has been dropped. They need time to heal as nature intends and by letting yourself feel every symptom that anxiety conjures up, you stop interfering with and prolonging the recovery process.
Obviously, anxiety creates fears (anxious energy) that weren't there before but still need to be faced and accepted and not avoided or suppressed in any way.
This energy wants to be released. It's the recovery process and like a bath full of water, using an analogy. The water is the anxious energy and peace of mind and body is represented by an empty bath. The bath has been filled through lots of stress and anxiety and is running over the side. It needs to be emptied so you pull the plug out. The plug is acceptance. Trying to rid yourself of anxiety represents putting the plug back in the hole and stppping the water flowing away down the drain. The more you accept, the more water drains away. Naturally, you also need to ensure the tap is also turned off and not topping up the water level. Turning the tap off is represented by you not engaging with the symptoms of anxiety and to stop stressing over them. It will take time for the bath to run dry but fully dependent on the tap bejng turned off (giving up the battle) and the plug being pulled (acceptance).
Personally, I prefer to take a shower which has no plug on the shower tray so there is no build up of water. After going through the recovery process, I am also in full control of the tap.
Thank you. Don’t see anxiety as something you need to stop feeling or try to control. Practice doing the opposite of all that and the water in that bath will drain away. Whenever I felt the anxiety welling up inside ( every waking morning for quite some time) I would just think about it being energy that needed to be released and let it crack on. Yes, it was still very uncomfortable but I lost my fear of it.
I can relate to this. Did you use antidepressants when you were anxious？I’m using antidepressants and if I follow your advice I suspect that I would need to stop using them eventually. To become stronger by myself without medication. I’m not sure I’m making myself clear.
You are making yourself clear. I was prescribed anti depressants from the outset. Never had them before then and thought it would just be like taking paracetamol for a few days and all would be well again. It wasn’t quite like that! I had high anxiety so when I read the side effects, I felt even more scared to take them. I could only manage taking them for a few days because they made me feel much worse. I was prescribed others ( citralopram, sertraline, venlaxefine, propranol) but too scared to take them because of the side effects I experienced. I also remember thinking that if I started to feel better, would it be down to the tablets, or me? That bugged me. It was probably anxiety doing the talking at the time but I made up my mind to fly solo and flushed them all down the loo. There may still be some blissfully happy fish swimming about the ocean for all I know.
Around that time, I was lent a book called Hope and Help for your Nerves by Dr Claire Weekes. It took a while before the contents started to make some sense and able to relate to what Dr Weekes was describing and how to recover. That book became my bible and laid the foundations to recovery from anxiety. I bought one other book called At Last a Life by Paul David, an ex-sufferer who recovered following the same principles of acceptance. He also has a very useful blog on his website, anxietynomore.co.uk. Lots of great advice and guidance from plenty of other people who have also recovered or on the road to recovery by accepting their anxious state instead of battling to think and feel differently. There are no gimmicks, no hard sell and he prides himself in refusing adverts on his website because he’s only interested in helping people by passing on his knowledge and experience. I’m just doing the same.
His book complements the books published by Dr Weekes who pioneered self help treatment for anxiety sufferers. I didn't need anything else and got down to practicing acceptance.
I know medication helps others but I saw them as a sticking plaster for a broken leg. I saw them as a crutch, a comfort blanket, something to lean on, just in case.
I didn’t want any of that. I wanted to be able to stand on my own two feet, look Anxiety right in the eye and say, so f**king what, I don’t care, not continually looking over my shoulder, fearful that the anxiety would return. Fear is the driver so to banish anxiety completely, you must learn to lose your fear of it. Tablets don’t help with that. Losing fear of anything has to come from within you. You have that inner strength. We all do. Some of you just don’t know it yet.
I appreciate your post; you were able to describe things I am feeling when I am at a loss of words. When you said “take a holiday and take the anxiety with you” really hit home because I/society always thinks we can just get rid of it, but in actuality it may never go away but our ability to cope with the disorder increases. We are all strong and unique in our own ways, we just have to learn to embrace it. 😊
It’s about coping with the symptoms the right way so that they eventually disappear. Being ok about not feeling ok instead of stressing about not feeling ok. To achieve this, the attitude is about not caring, even if it stays forever, which it won’t!
It’s not about having to put up with the symptoms or struggling along as best you can. Acceptance will eventually see to it that those symptoms will fade away completely so that there will not be anything you need to struggle with.
It’s true that anxiety is part of our dna and designed to protect us from danger. At the moment, you have inappropriate levels of it when there is little or no threat to your safety and wellbeing. In recovery, you may still feel anxious in the appropriate circumstances but because you will have passed through the anxious state so many times and come out the other side while accepting , it’s no longer a big deal so it’s soon forgotten. Your focus will be on other things, not the symptoms...because you no longer care about them.
I'd say my anxiety stems from early childhood. I have a physical disability and I was always nervous people would notice and ask me about it, because I didn't know what it was at the time. Even walking in front of people would stir up that nervous feeling since I walked with a limp, and still do. Often my leg would spasm, and that made walking damn near impossible. Throughout the years, I would always be nervous around people and could never relax until I was alone. This affected me deeply as got older and led me to acquire different kinds of anxieties, particularly social anxiety. There's been periods when my anxiety was so high that I couldn't make a sound, and chose not to go outside because I was afraid to be in the presence of other people. And when I had to, I'd start to sweat profusely.
What always started to save me was exercise. And very gradually through that process, I began to get stronger and I felt better about myself as a whole. But I could never get to that step unless, like you said, I changed my attitude, stopped fighting with myself, and just let go.
Thank you Beevee for sharing your story and your insights. I enjoy reading them
Onwards and upwards. The worst critic is usually yourself so please don’t be too harsh on yourself. I’m sure most people wouldn’t take any notice about those with a disability or treat them differently.
And, as the old saying goes, whatever people want to think of me, it’s none of my business!
Take care
Beevee
Hi Bevee,
Thank you for your reply on a previous post. I have felt a shift in my attitude towards anxiety- at times I can say it genuinely doesn’t bother me if it’s there or not. Your words are starting to make sense to me without thinking about it. It doesn’t seem to matter as much even during difficult moments.
Could you clarify what distracting yourself from anxiety could look like?
For e.g. sometimes still I am woken up in the night by anxiety. In the darkness it feels ten times more stronger and ‘letting it be’ feels so wrong and impossible. I just usually let it be as best I can and avoid falling into any kind of coping behaviour. Is watching something on my phone or just laying there with anxious thoughts flying around (and arguing with each other- do this and do that etc) the best option? From the sounds of it we just lay there and let the anxiety have its way with us. Is that correct? I usually remind myself that ‘so what’ it is what it is and sometimes it fades and sometimes it doesn’t. I try not to get caught up in it too much. Is this the way to deal with this?
Did i suffer the same way? Very much so!! It also sounds as though you are more accepting so just keep on doing what you are doing which is literally nothing!
I'd wake in the night and every single thought that popped into my head would flood me with terror. One after the other. I could never get back to sleep. I learned to just let those thoughts fly around and have their say and not engage with them. If the mind chatters, so what? Let it chatter. It may make you feel extremely uncomfortable and feel scary which is absolutely fine but resign yourself to this and genuinely think, so what? Instead of you arguing with those thoughts e.g. What if I never recover, what if my heart stops? So what? The thoughts are just balls of energy being released and of no importance. In fact, it is all complete nonsense. I nearly said complete bollocks.
If you can't sleep, fine. Pick up a book, watch tv, make a cuppa etc but not with the expectation that it will fix you. If you fall back to sleep, fine. If you cant sleep, fine. Accept it all.
Distraction techniques can be best described as any type of deliberate behaviour undertaken in the hope that it will get rid of the anxiety and associated symptoms. For example, mantras, obsessive acts, feverishly going about things. I'd go running or cycling and feel despair when the symptoms returned. I was doing it because I was hoping it would fix me. It did provide temporary relief but I was pinning my hopes on it fixing me. I still went swimming but I was now doing it for myself, not to try and appease my anxiety.
Thanks! This helped a lot. Dr Claire Weekes mentions ‘accepting’ and not ‘putting up with’ and it’s something you’ve mentioned too.
How can we know if we are ‘accepting’ or ‘putting up with’? I could be wrong but it sounds like ‘living your life despite anxiety’ and letting the symptoms rage on sounds a bit like we accept that we can’t get rid of it so we put up with it while we keep living? I don’t like my anxiety (Paul mentions he didn’t like how he felt but he stopped adding fuel to the fire) but it kind of sounds like the same thing? I feel like I’m caught between both. Could you clarify what you and others mean by that?
I really do want to get better. I have started doing everything again regardless of not if I want to (most times I don’t). Some days are better than others. The anxious thoughts and habits are there (as they should be). I don’t particularly like my anxiety symptoms (who does?) especially waking up exhausted and difficulties sleeping. As much as I let it be, the negative thoughts and feelings remain (doesn’t this add fuel to the fire?) despite the fact that I’ve adopted a I don’t care attitude for some time.
I’m not trying to sound like this problem should have been solved but I do worry a bit that the fact that these habitual anxious feelings, thoughts are STILL frustrating me a little. When I feel like absolute crap in the night.morning should I expect to feel this way and resign myself to this fate? I’m not sure how not to care about this particular symptom as it really makes it difficult to give my mind a break . I’ve tried not to care for such a long time but it hasn’t seemed to help in the slightest and anxiety can’t help but tell me this morning exhausted and tired me is me forever.
How do we deal with frustrations, doubts about recovery when our symptoms/feelings/thoughts rage on as strong as ever and how do we know if we’re genuinely accepting or putting up with these things?
Apologies if this is long. I’ve never quite fully had this explained to me. Might help to hear it from someone who knows the difference between the two and can enlighten us who feel so lost and unsure about it.
Thanks Beevee. You’re a legend. It’s helping me get my head straight for good.
Accepting: letting out a sigh, dropping/ loosening the shoulders, having a “whatever” attitude and carrying on, even though you feel crap.
Putting up with: carrying on but through gritted teeth, trying to hold it all together, wondering when it will end.
Adding fuel to the fire: scary thought pops into your head. It frightens you. You then add more fear by responding or battling with that thought or feeling e.g. What if???
Not adding fuel to the fire: scary thought pops into your head. It frightens you. You do nothing except acknowledge it being there and observe it ( oh, here’s a scary thought and let it go) e,g. So What!? You stop identifying with the thought, no matter how loud the symptoms scream for the attention they need to survive.
How to deal with frustrations, doubts about recovery: Accept them too. It’s all anxiety, being anxious about being anxious. I used to have terrible doubts about anything and everything. It all just disappeared.
I viewed the anxious thoughts and feelings as just negative energy coming up for release. I detached myself from them and became an observer of the symptoms instead of getting involved. A bit like listening to a couple argue with each other as opposed to being one of the couple. I stopped identifying with the thought or feeling/lost my respect for them. It took a bit of time to let the symptoms go so don’t put pressure on yourself. Practice makes perfect. It still felt bloody uncomfortable and unpleasant for a while but I just learned to accept it.
How do you know if you are genuinely accepting or putting up with:
Acceptance: When you stop trying to work out the difference between the two. You just allow it all without question. You stop trying to make sense of it all.
Putting up with: Analysing/ overthinking it all, trying to figure out the difference between putting up with and acceptance! Still trying to make sense of it all.
You don’t have to overthink acceptance. Simplistically, it’s doing other things with your life regardless of how you feel, with the understanding that you still may feel awful for a while and not putting a time limit on recovery. Just keep moving forward. Keep on keeping on! Those breaks in the clouds will get bigger and bigger.
Oh, and stop trying to sort your head out. I can assure you that your head and body will sort itself out. Your mind and body will fix itself when you step out of the way and stop trying to fix yourself.
Overcoming anxiety is like learning to drive a car. Instead of the steering wheel, gear stick, brake, clutch and accelerator pedals, you have Dr Weekes’ facing, accepting, floating past and letting time pass.
In the beginning, you struggle. Steering the car, changing gear in synchro with the clutch and accelerator pedal, checking your mirrors, using the handbrake. It’s a lot to manage for a novice. You may find yourself checking to see where the pedals are, what gear you are in, leaving the handbrake on, forgetting to check your mirrors. It may seem overwhelming at first and will make lots of mistakes along the way, stalling the engine, clipping kerbs etc. After a few outings and lessons, you begin to get the hang of things and the process of driving gradually becomes automatic. It’s all still happening but you aren’t really thinking about your hands and feet and concentrating on the road ahead. The more you practice, the better you become and you finally pass your test.
Learning to face, accept, float past and let time pass is the same and all it takes to overcoming anxiety.
Thanks Beevee! I will motor on as you suggest and simply leave it all to be. 🚗😊 I’m starting to think I don’t need to think or do anything other than let it be and keep plodding on taking all those doubts, fears and feelings with me. 🧐 No need to sort myself out- I’ll let my mind and body do that. Thanks Beevee! 😀
Such a great post, but oh am I struggling with this tonight. An adult som with what we believe is at the very least, severe anxiety disorder. Most likely an austism spectrum and/or bi/polar issue as well. Clean7 years this month, so that is a plus💪🏻🙏🏼🙏🏼
Job anxieties, what ifs about 15 month old grand son, anxieties over other adult son’s job choice, chewing tobacco and what that could bring. The fact I am awake at 1:34 am and need to be up at 5:30 and on the road for3 hours is adding to the worry mix which increases anxiety😆😩
All of what you say is true, yet I worry, stress and get anxious! Ugh🤦🏻♀️
Hi Beevee!
Could you explain the ‘floating’ concept of Dr Claire Weekes? I didn’t quite understand what she meant. How is it any different to getting through the day (e.g. going out, going to work etc.)?
Also how did you finally realise that you were on the right path? Did your anxiety leave bit by bit or did it all disappear one day? I feel ok at times and not at others. It’s been like this for a while...should I expect to have all these symptoms, doubts and feelings until I recover? I suppose what I’m trying to say is this: even when we are doing nothing and learning to fall into any state of suffering and letting the thoughts and habits do as they will (without adding fuel) do we recover in the background despite the presence of anxiety symptoms still raging? Not sure how the brain gets a break when it doesn’t ‘feel’ like it is. Hope that makes sense.
Floating is literally going about your business and taking the anxiety with you with a relaxed attitude of “so what if you feel like crap.” You will still feel extremely apprehensive, fearful and be full of doubt about doing normal things but do them anyway. It’s just your nerves making you feel like this and sending false messages to your brain which interprets it as being a threat so goes into protective mode to keep you out of danger. So you feel anxiety which is very uncomfortable. You can either believe the threat and avoid things, thus telling your brain that there is a threat (e.g. going to the shops) or you can face those perceived fears and push on through with the I don’t care how I feel attitude.
Your nerves are sensitised and take time to desensitise. Recovery is taking place behind the scenes. You are desensitising by doing normal things, carrying on with your day but recognise that it does take time. Letting time pass (Dr Weekes). You mention times of when you feel ok. When anxiety and all the symptoms aren’t there. What are you thinking about during those “quiet” times? Worrying about anxiety or just cracking on with things, relaxing? What did you do to feel relaxed, at ease with yourself? Nothing, I bet. It just happens. I took those quiet moments as my yardstick, my goal and just carried on (glimpsing - Dr Weekes) .
It made accepting all the crap easier and my inner voice got stronger and stronger, telling me to carry on, regardless of how I felt. Anxiety took a back seat, still kicking and screaming, mind! I didn’t need it to tell me what to do, or not do. I was in the driving seat. I ignored it and and concentrated on the road ahead. Yes, you can hear it scream from the back seat but you just don’t let it bother you so much. You rise above it.
I looked at anxiety like it was separate from me. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t who I am. There was me and then there was me with anxiety. When it was there, I knew it wasn’t the real me and had the belief that it would go at some point so just accepted the shit. I simply resigned myself to it, knowing that it would pass eventually.
Recovery is not a straightforward business. Lots of ups and downs, plenty of false dawns, setbacks, bumps in the road! Accept it all. Setbacks, like a bad game of snakes and ladders, make you think you’ve gone back to square one. Far from it. Setbacks are the signs telling you that you are on the right road. There will be plenty but they are a positive sign that you are heading in the right direction, even though it may not feel like it! Don’t get drawn into the mire as the anxiety screams for attention, trying to convince you that there is no way out. It is just the mind and body fixing itself so don’t interfere with the process by panicking about the setback/ square one feeling. Let it pass.
My symptoms tapered off gradually. Recovery was very subtle, I didn’t notice many of the symptoms disappearing. They just quietly slipped away but for this to happen, you have to carry on regardless and not run away from the symptoms (facing and accepting). Otherwise, you will remain in the shadow of anxiety and that is no way to live, especially when recovery is entirely possible. Don’t be bluffed by anxiety. It may feel like the proverbial monster but when you practice the teachings of Dr Weekes, it’s just a furry little kitten. You will have lost your fear of it and regained control by stopping trying to control the anxiety, through avoidance etc
Is part of the setback/healing process falling back into the obsessing/worrying/analysing habit?
I know I shouldn’t, but it happens automatically when anxiety gets triggered. I could see my mind automatically doing it so I just did my best to leave it alone and not add fuel to the fire.
I didn’t do it perfectly- the anxiety tried to convince me I was back to square one.
People say setbacks are essential but every time it hits I feel back to square one with my reactions. It’s early days but is this what one should expect to happen for the many months to come?
E.g. my sleep improved drastically on its own. Yesterday anxiety was high and I didn’t sleep much at all. I fell back into obsessing/worrying but tried not to get involved further with it. Still felt shit and full of anxiety.
Is this how it goes? At least when I woke up I thought duck it, still got to go to work and get through the day. It doesn’t matter if anxiety is back or the sleep is back to square one. Just accept it and don’t add to it.
Could you tell us about what your own setbacks looked like and how not to fall into the despair it brings?
Setbacks just felt like I had gone backwards in my recovery. Any progress that I felt I had made simply disappeared. I was back in the dark hole and seemingly no way out. All the symptoms, the fear, the doubts, flooded back and felt as strong as ever. I felt hopeless and in the depths of despair. When you are in the thick of it, you don’t feel or see anything else. Just anxiety and all it’s symptoms.
It is difficult not to feel despair, especially during the early stages of recovery when you are still learning about anxiety and acceptance but accept that too! If you feel despair, let it happen.
The key to recovery is all about stopping trying to make yourself think or feel differently. The best quote I have ever heard about anything is this...
“You won’t get better until you STOP TRYING to get better. “
It is the trying part that inflicts the damage and stopping you from recovery. Trying to stop feeling anxious, trying to stop thoughts coming, trying to change how you feel, trying to avoid or suppress thoughts and feelings. Stop trying to do anything to make yourself feel better. You will start to feel better when you stop trying!
Recovery is a process. The more setbacks you go through and come out the other side, the more the feelings of despair diminish. With the experience of previous setbacks under your belt, confidence to not engage or identify with the thoughts and feelings and to let yourself pass through them increases.
You’ve been through setbacks before and get to a stage where it is just another setback. So what!? They are nothing special, nothing to write home about. Sure, you still feel all the symptoms but your inner voice tells you to quietly go about your daily business and take the thoughts and feelings with you. You no longer feel despair or hopelessness. Just the symptoms. You are accepting.
Do we also accept the feelings of depression, sadness and numbness that come along too? I’ve been feeling much better of late but these negative feelings keep surfacing at random. I’m do my best to let it be and not get caught up in the ‘you’ll never recover’ and ‘this is you forever’ type of loop but I’m not sure this is the way to go. Do same methods apply with depletion and sadness caused by anxiety? You have mentioned before that you dealt with this sort of thing. Thanks very much
Yes. Accept all the symptoms of anxiety, which includes depletion. No half measures. Like you said, don’t get caught up in all that negative rubbish. That is just anxiety too. Let all those negative thoughts come, let them have their say but learn to observe and stop identifying with the content of the thoughts. Its just anxiety letting off steam in the shape of anxious thoughts which will gradually fade away when you learn to let them go. By letting them come, you gradually draw the sting out of them and rob them of their power to shock. They simply melt away. I had countless negative thoughts and feelings about thousands of different things. I made the mistake of reading too much into them which just kept me trapped in the cycle. Once I stopped engaging with the symptoms ( it still felt unpleasant for a while) they disappeared bit by bit. Recovery doesn’t happen overnight and isn’t a smooth transition. There will be bad days, very bad days but moments of clarity will start to appear. Those moments are the benchmark and all the encouragement you need to carry on, practising acceptance and doing nothing to try and change the way you feel. As I’ve said before, don’t go searching for recovery. Recovery will come to you.
Swot up on Dr Claire Weekes 😎 who pioneered acceptance as the way to recover. If you follow her advice, you cannot fail to recover.
I feel my number one barrier to accepting any of the anxious thoughts/feelings/symptoms is my lack of patience. I’m very hard on myself as my inner commentary runs 24/7 and even though I can’t do anything about it- my habit is still to get involved and be affected by the what if’s. I’ve been so used to trying to fix my anxiety and getting frustrated over the years that I’m having difficulty overcoming this to apply acceptance. I hope this makes sense as I’ve been doing my best to adopt the don’t care attitude for the last 2-3 months and gradually living my life again. Any guidance would be best appreciated. Thanks very much.
Those what ifs will still resonate and sting, provoking some sort of secondary action. It can be difficult to let them go /accept them but keep practising. If the mind is chattering away, let it chatter. The more you practice letting it go, the easier it will get. It does take time to develop this "whatever" attitude towards all the symptoms and that includes accepting that you can be harsh with yourself. Accept the lot and question none of it. In a nutshell, acceptance is simply living your life as if you didn't have anxiety.
How do we move to ‘letting thoughts come and go’ and ‘doing nothing’ about it? A lot of my thoughts come automatically (e.g. thinking about anxiety, thinking about all the information in Dr Claire Weekes/Paul’s books/success stories etc, usual compulsive thoughts, negative thoughts, thoughts about recovery) etc
Now I become aware of it and realise I’m thinking about it and try ‘not to add’ to the chatter. It’s almost like it’s a habit for this to happen. I’m trying not to add ‘fuel’ to the fire but it doesn’t feel right. There’s a strong urge to ‘listen’ to the thoughts and I don’t even realise I’ve been pulled into it.
I also feel very hyper aware of my thoughts, feelings and emotions when this happens.
My question is this, how can I move on from being stuck in noticing and adding to this chatter? It’s only been a couple of months so am I expecting too much too soon?
I’m finding it difficult to simply view all of this as anxiety and not blame myself for the thoughts and feelings I’m experiencing.
How did you truly move to being ok with everything? I find it so difficult. Some days better than others but hard not to feel like this is me forever.
I’m young 23; about to be married and move out of home and start full time work. I’m trying not to force anything but the pressure is there. I’m experiencing a lot of guilt and fear about this.
Hi. I think you might be expecting too much too soon. Possibly striving for recovery. In simple terms, learn to let yourself think and feel everything. Accept it all. Accept that you are hyper aware of your own thoughts and feelings. Your anxiety will have you believe this is forever. Let yourself think that and do nothing about it.
Don't try to do anything with the anxiety except to Let it be there and have its say. I learned that it is just anxious energy coming up to be released and part of the recovery process. It needs to be felt for it to be released which is why doing nothing to stop those thoughts and feelings coming is the way to recover. You stop adding more fear and stress which gives your mind and body the space it needs to go through the recovery process.
I did not do anything special to revover. I just carried on working, socialising etc even when I felt like doing the opposite and hiding. If my anxiety screamed at me, I just did the opposite.
I did nothing to try and stop myself feeling anxious and learnt to let it all be there with zero resistance.
This post was great for me and has come at a time where I have just begun my journey to recovery. I had my first "normal week" last week which I was back to myself with small periods of anxiety during they day. I feel as though it is slowly losing its power over me. I have overcome quite heavy physical symptoms and panic using acceptance (which was something I have worked on with my psychologist, thankfully he believes in acceptance). The physical symptoms don't bother me anymore.
I am still getting to grips with the thought related symptoms. I struggle with self doubt over my abilities to overcome the thoughts. I have dark thoughts and they still send me into a spiral sometimes. I would just like to ask if you experienced this and how do I know the difference between acceptance or suppression? What should I be doing when these thoughts enter my mind?
Good to hear from you and glad acceptance is beginning to pay dividends.
In my opinion, suppression is something that you try to do to rid yourself of that thought, change the impact or to stop yourself thinking it.
For intrusive thoughts, a better description for acceptance might be the use of the word “allowing.” Allow the thought to come ( “first fear flash”). You cannot stop them coming and nor should you try. They are fuelled by your anxiety and possibly through habit.
Let the thoughts have their say, let them shock you. I think the important part is the next step which requires a bit of practice and patience. You either engage with that thought which includes suppression or you learn to just observe the thought and not engage with it. For example, change your reaction from “What if???” to “So what!?” and move on. The reaction to those thoughts is sometimes known as second fear (read Dr Claire Weekes) which does all the damage.
It is important to remember that these thoughts simply wouldn’t attract all the attention you are currently giving them if it wasn’t for the anxiety which, in motoring terms, is akin to bolting a twin-turbo to a 1 litre engine! It makes a huge difference to performance and the reason why all those thoughts have the ability to shock.
I had thousands upon thousands of intrusive thoughts. Anxiety is very clever because it will pick on things that resonate with you, personal things, perhaps which you cannot help think may be true so you engage with the thought and worry about it. Once you think you have it buttoned down, it moves on to another subject. The content of those thoughts does not matter one bit. It is anxiety that is generating those scary thoughts. Not you. Think of it as negative energy that is being released in the shape of those thoughts. Recovery is all about letting that energy escape and not standing in the way by suppressing it in any way. This is the minds way of repairing itself naturally but we just keep things going because we stress over the thoughts ( by adding second fear). When you stop adding more fear to the thoughts, they eventually wither away to nothing. They disappear without trace.
I had anxious thoughts about my health, my wife, my job and lots of other things. They all disappeared when I stopped trying to do something about them. I let them come, I let them shock me and did nothing to stop any of it.
Hopefully this helps but happy to help further if I can.
Thanks so much for your prompt response. I've almost finished reading "At last a life" on your recommendation, it has been quite an eye opener. It's actually funny in a way when I read other peoples experiences like yours and how similar they have been to mine. Here I was thinking that no one understood what this was like and my experience was unique, probably my anxiety talking again.
Thanks for the advice above. I think what is a tough one to accept is that this will take time and practise as you have said. I had a tougher week and realise that this is part of the journey and I still have a long ways to go. I can identify with the "first" and "second shock" concept as all my intrusive thoughts follow this pattern. I feel as though my second shock is starting to weaken which is progress but I it still needs work. The idea that I can not control my thoughts has been an important realisation as I would constantly beat myself for having a host of intrusive thoughts. One lesson I have learnt is that my mind is one creative beast with no end to the ideas it can spit out. I do struggle still with deep thinking and constant self monitoring (V8 Twin Turbo in motoring terms), I am still learning how to stop doing this in excess but I suppose this comes with practice too. The good news is, I am now catching myself doing it, which was something I could never do. You are so right about it picking on things that resonate with us, the things we value most.
I see you mention Dr Claire Weekes - which book of hers would you recommend?
I can't thank you enough for taking the time to write these posts and for supporting so many people. I stumbled upon your page when I was in a bad place and I truly believe it helped me out the hole I was in. I believe in paying it forward and will try to help as many as I can when I am recovered through my experience. I will take you up on that further help when it is needed!
A quote that resonates with me and I think fits in this healing process: "Courage is not acting in the absence of fear but rather acting in its presence."
It’s one hell of an experience to go though but think I’m much better for it. Certainly a lot wiser, depending on who you ask 🤣
The great thing about acceptance is that you will always have the tools at your disposal should you ever need them again. Somehow, I doubt you will because you will probably be far better equipped to manage any stress or stressors that may have caused you to fall into an continuous state of anxiousness and will not allow yourself to fall to those same depths again. Acceptance is a wonderful thing.
The book I bought was called Essential Help for Your Nerves but the title may differ in South Africa. In my opinion, probably the best book ever published and the complete A to Z. It’s over 50 years old and some of the content is dated but the principles don’t change. I struggled with the acceptance bit for a while but Paul David’s website and book helped enormously and in a way that I could relate to and apply to my life i.e. feel the fear and do it any way! These are the only two points of reference I used and ditched everything else [e.g. medication, counselling, hypnotherapy and anything else I did to try and make myself feel better].
My attitude was that I never did any of that stuff before I developed inappropriate levels of anxiety so why now? I only changed my attitude towards the symptoms and nothing else. I take pride in telling people that I still eat the same stuff, love sweet tea [too embarrassed to tell you how many tea spoons I take ] and drink coffee more than ever. The only way to overcome anxiety is to keep doing things that trigger it and shy away from nothing! I gave anxiety the middle finger and simply carried on which was pretty horrendous at times but gradually got easier. The old me was still there, lurking beneath the sea of symptoms, and just waiting to bob up to the surface by learning to accept instead of fighting. Fighting just keeps you holding on to the sea bed. Let go.
You will by now have come across one of the best quotes which Paul has in his book.
“ You won’t get better until you stop trying to get better.“
If you understand what that means, you are well on the road to full recovery.
The other one I like is “It will be alright in the end and if it’s not alright, it’s not the end.” No idea who said it but it’s true. Time is the great healer in all of this and have faith in the process. There were times that I felt I had to take a leap of faith, mostly around accepting the thoughts that really frightened the life out of me and believed them (.editor’s note: they are not true). It’s easy to lose heart when you don’t know if you are accepting or not seeing any improvement but so long as you are practising and continue to put one foot in front of the other, all will be become well, bit by bit.
Happy to help in any way I can and just paying forward which I think is a natural thing to do.
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What do you do to manage anxiety?
