If you're experiencing anxiety and depletion, you need understanding, reassurance and a road plan for recovery.
I assure you that they do exist. Untold thousands have experienced what you are experiencing, your feelings and symptoms are not peculiar to you alone.
First it helps to understand how you got into this state. A certain amount of anxiety is good for us, it spurs us on in our endeavours. But if we are subject to too many big problems we reach anxiety overload and our nervous system starts to complain. Those 'big problems' can include over work, worry, loss, disappointment, toxic relationships, guilt, the list is endless.
When our nerves reach anxiety overload they become over-sensitised. In this state they exaggerate all our problems and worries ten-fold. We may experience health anxiety, derealisation, agoraphobia, social anxiety and feelings of iminent doom amongst others. For example, muscular tension in the chest or missed heartbeats due to anxiety 'must be a heart attack on the way'. Always the worst case scenario! And because we worry about our symptoms of anxiety we can become depressed about the way we feel.
The reassurance comes from knowing that none of the symptoms or bad feelings our over-sensitive nerves inflict on us can really harm us. They cannot kill us, they cannot disable us, they cannot make us lose our mind. They are sham symptoms and worries caused by nervous exhaustion and over sensitisation of our nerves. See your doctor and go for tests by all means but when the result comes back "O.K." do not think the doctors "must have missed something". Accept the reassurance these professionals give.
The road to recovery requires some simple changes in our attitude towards the bad feelings and symptoms. You should stop fighting them for a start. Fighting only causes more stress and tension. You don't need more of that, you need less. So stop fighting your illness: the sooner the better.
Then you should accept all the bad feelings and symptoms for the time being. Accept them utterly for the moment. You need to break the vicious circle of symptoms causing fear causing more nervous sensitisation causing more symptoms causing more fear. And so on ad infinitum. So I say again: utterly accept the bad feelings knowing full well they are fake symptoms created by a nervous system on the blink.
When you learn to accept, to co-exist with your symptoms of anxiety, you stop producing the fear hormones on which sensitive nerves thrive. As acceptance replaces fear our nerves return to normal mode and our troubles resolve. We have completed our journey along the Yellow Brick Road to recovery.
The Acceptance method for recovery from anxiety and depletion (depression) was set out many years ago by Doctor Claire Weekes in her inspirational self help book titled 'Self help for your nerves'*. This remarkable woman helped millions to recover according to one famous Boston psychiatrist. Her book is available on Amazon and EBay new or used. Many people past and present on this forum have found it the cornerstone of their recovery.
You are not going to feel like this forever. All troubles pass but we must help them on their way. I commend Doctor Weekes' book to you in the sincere belief that what it has done for untold thousands of fellow sufferers it can do for you.
*also published under the title "Hope and Help for your nerves".
