Anxiety, I laugh in your face because you are an imposter. You make us think we have cancer when it's nothing of the sort. You make us think we have heart failure when our hearts are good and strong. You make us think we are about to die when we have decades of healthy life ahead. And when doctors tell us all is well you sow seeds of doubt in our minds.
Anxiety, for all your bluff and bluster and the bad feelings you give to me and my friends here you are really a Big Nothing. You cannot kill us, you cannot cripple us and you can't make us lose our minds. I have nothing but contempt for you and your bullying ways. Anxiety, I laugh in your face.
I think of all the good times, good jobs, good relationships that you have soured with your mean and spiteful ways. But you have a weak spot - and I know your secret!
Anxiety, you may be my nemesis but I am yours. I know your Achilles Heel, I know how to destroy you and as time passes more and more of my friends here come to know it too. All we have to do is stop fighting you and accept for the time being all the bad feelings and strange thoughts you hurl against us with less and less fear as each day goes by. Fear is food and drink to you, it provides you with the sustenance you need to attack us. When we deny you our fear you soon weaken and die.
Anxiety, I despise you for your tricks and your treachery, you are really a Big Nothing. You don't show up on X-rays and scans; even with the most powerful microscope in the world you are nowhere to be seen. Why then should we fear a Nothing?
Anxiety, you are a Nothing and a Nobody and I laugh in your face
Written by
Jeff1943
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Sleeplessme, sixty years ago a doctor suffering from anxiety attack discovered a method that led to her recovery.
Instead of fighting and fearing anxiety we can end its reign of terror by accepting it for the time being. Fighting causes more tension and stress. Is it any wonder that nobody recovers from anxiety disorder by fighting it?
Instead accept it, agree to co-exist with it and we stop generating the fear hormones that keep our nerves in a state of over sensitivity. As we stop frightening ourselves half to death every five minutes our nerves return to normal and we regain our quiet mind.
That's the short version. The doctor with anxiety disorder shared her method with the world in her first book: 'Self help for your nerves' aka 'Hope and help for your nerves' by Claire Weekes available new or used for the price of a burger on Amazon and Ebay and elsewhere.
I hope it brings respite and recovery to you as it has to millions worldwide.
The more we fight it the more up tight we get and this releases more fear hormones which keep our nervous system over sensitised causing the distressing symptoms.
Jeff-how in this world do we learn to stop fighting it and co-exist with it when it has us half out of our minds? Hands shaking, can't breathe, thoughts scattered all over the place, and the feeling that your heart is going to beat out of your chest! HOW??! I CAN'T co-exist with this monster!!😥
Yes you can. All you do is accept for the short term those terrible symptoms. Accept. Do nothing. Run up the white flag. Surrender to those symptoms. After all, you know without shadow of doubt that they are not some organic illness, they are your nervous system having a hissy fit because you"ve been subjecting them to too much fear hormone.
Don't worry about breathlessness. It is an involuntary function: that means it isn't up to you to keep breathing, some part if your brain does it for you. You couldn't stop breathing for more than a couple of minutes if you tried.
Don't worry about your heart beating out of your chest. It is the largest muscle in your body and the toughest too. If I cut the heart out of a living person and placed it on the table it would continue to beat for a very long time. Amazing!
So your heart's going nowhere. I take it you've had a once over from a doctor who says that physically you're fine.
Downandout, you don't have to accept these symptoms all at once, just frame your mind to accept and if you manage to accept it for a few seconds, you've made a good start you can build on.
Acceptance doesn't mean the annoying symptoms are going to stop any time soon, it means you can function despite them because you fear them less and know they do not put you in harm's way. I have known people with panic attack to give an excellent business presentation because they accepted and 'floated' through it.
Claire Weekes also called Acceptance 'masterly inactivity'. You achieve everything by doing nothing. You don't add second fear to the flash of first fear. And don't look for signs of improvement today or tomorrow: you spent a long time getting into this state, allow a little longer to get out of it.
Here's the complete strategy in six words:
Face. Accept. Float. Let time pass.
Meanwhile here's how to self-help some natural tranquillisation. Breathe in slowly through your nose. Release it slowly through pursed lips. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. This releases natural tranquillisers that will help calm you while you carry on Accepting.
Try it. Will you try it? And join all the others with anxiety disorder travelling hopefully along the Yellow Brick Road to Recovery!
Thank you so much Jeff for your response. Yes-the breathing-that is one of the first techniques my therapist taught me.It doesn't really work for me. And it's not like the panic attack goes away quickly. It might go away,,, but the anxiety stays with me for basically the whole day. It MIGHT start to calm down in the evening. The anxiety all day long makes me want to FREEZE in place. DO NOTHING. I find it SOOOO daunting to do ANYTHING in that state of anxiety. My anxiety is less during the day when I am working, but on the weekends, I WAKE UP to the panic. I think it's because I'm trying to get my house ready for a move, and the list of things to do is ENDLESS. Yesterday I worked through the panic and anxiety ( with the help of xanax) for 4 hours in here. But STILL with 1/2 xanax, it doesn't take all the anxiety away. Today I was supposed to put a lot of work in too. Did NOTHING. I just couldn't face it.😞 A friend on here recommended "Calm" with magnesium. She said it helped her. I found it in pill form on Amazon and get it on Tuesday. I am HOPINGGGG that this works-even a little bit.
Downandabout, I can see you are still looking for some magic wand or magic bullet solution which once waved or fired will instantly cure you forever. If such an instant solution existed we would have all taken it long ago and there would be no reason for forums like this.
I think you will eventually find that only the long slog of therapy or self help methods (like Claire Weekes' "Hope and help for your nerves") will bring respite or recovery.
I commend this book to you as it will bring understanding, reassurance and a road plan based on Acceptance that will in the fullness of time bring you to respite and then recovery. It is available for a few dollars on Amazon and Ebay.
Downandout, whatever it was/is that has caused your high anxiety have you neutralised it so that it stresses you no more? The usual culprits are over work, toxic relationships, disappointment, grief, money worries and guilt etc.
If any of these causes still affect you then you must neutralise them completely and you must be ruthless if necessary. I wish you happy days ahead!
Grief, and also the feeling that I will NEVER get out of this place I'm living in because preparing it to be shown is so damn hard, and I won't accept help. The grief over my dog is only a month old. VERY HARD to cope. But the panic started long before she passed away, so it's not only that. Thank you Jeff
Thank you both, Agora and Jeff, so much. Right now you're both angels. And I'm really not myself calling people angels 😂 I wish I'd found this place much sooner xx
Great idea, Hb2003, you don't have to say the words out loud but within the confines of your mind tell anxiety its days are numbered as you have the measure of it now, you know it's a fraud, it's power is limited, bark worse than its bite, and you will end its reign of terror. Maybe add a few four letter words when addressing anxiety if you are so inclined. Yes, Hb2003, I like it.
This is the complete opposite of what I have learned in therapy. I go to a therapy called IFS. In this therapy I am taught to work with anxiety. Recognize what its role in my life has been. I acknowledge my feelings of anxiety. I am grateful for what it has done for me in my life.
I accept all the parts of me. I don't laugh in anxieties face etc.
IFS has given me a strong sense of self. Who I am and why I " tick" the way I do.
I'm happy your way has worked for you. Just wanted to share a different look.
The main post just says don't be afraid of anxiety, its power to harm us is limited.
In my replies I refer to Claire Weekes' Acceptance method that has helped millions recover* over the past 60 years.
*Professor David Barlow, Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Boston University on the back cover of 'Claire Weekes: the woman who cracked the anxiety code' (2020).' Doctor Weekes was nominated for a Nobel Prize for her lifetime contribution to psychiatry.
There are many paths to recovery. Some of them build on Claire Weekes' teachings and some have a different approach entirely.
But I was interested to learn that IFS teaches the complete opposite of Weekes' method.
The core of Weekes' imperatives is the idea of accepting our anxiety in the short term because fighting it causes more tension and stress which produces the fear hormones which keep our nerves over sensitive.
If IFS teaches the complete opposite of this then it must cure by creating more tension through fighting it rather than accepting it causing greater release of the fear or 'fight or flight' hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline that cause nervous sensitivity.
My understanding of IFS is sketchy but I thought it teaches an even greater degree of acceptance than Weekes and relates this acceptance to multiple aspects of our mental make-up.
It's a very difficult therapy. I learned to feel my emotions, where it shows up in my body. How it presents itself. What it looks like and feels like.
It's an odd concept I have to say. I had no idea what was going on in the sessions for quite some time. But I persisted with it and eventually it started to make sense.
Part of the therapy is to trace these emotions back to my first memory of where it came from. When it shows up, why it shows up. It followed a pattern throughout my whole life.
It wasn't until IFS took me to the root of my anxiety that I began to learn how to live my life with it.
Agree, there are many ways for us to work through our problems. I have done EMDR and I do traditional talk therapy along with IFS. I also meditate, read a lot of self help and exercise
I think my confusion with your post is when you wrote things like denying anxiety to depower it.... I know how to destroy you.
In IFS we accept all parts of ourselves. Looking at why each plays a roll in our life. We never talk negative about our parts.
I don't find it causes more fight or flight response. It gives me a greater understanding that all parts of me have been at work for a long time. In working with them we can cohabitate.
Thank you for responding. It's interesting to compare different therapies.
The goal is we all find something that works for us.
Thank you for taking the time to describe your experience with IFS. I don't usually go for easy solutions but so many people were extolling the benefits of taking magnesium citrate tablets. As I still get a little wake-up anxiety I tried it having no great expectations. To my surprise it has had a remarkable effect: no more early morning anxiety. Too good to be true, possibly the placebo effect.
Jeff-if it's ok with admin., I really think you need to post this very often on here. I think that every one of us should be able to read what you wrote. Hopefully it can change a lot of people's perspectives.
Thank you, Downandout, I do repeat it once a year. After we've cut anxiety down to size and realised its power is limited we then need to accept it for the short term so that our fear of it is reduced and we stop generating too much fear hormone which keeps our nervous system over sensitive.
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xx
And it's not like the panic attack goes away quickly. It might go away,,, but the anxiety stays with me for basically the whole day. It MIGHT start to calm down in the evening. The anxiety all day long makes me want to FREEZE in place. DO NOTHING. I find it SOOOO daunting to do ANYTHING in that state of anxiety. My anxiety is less during the day when I am working, but on the weekends, I WAKE UP to the panic. I think it's because I'm trying to get my house ready for a move, and the list of things to do is ENDLESS. Yesterday I worked through the panic and anxiety ( with the help of xanax) for 4 hours in here. But STILL with 1/2 xanax, it doesn't take all the anxiety away. Today I was supposed to put a lot of work in too. Did NOTHING. I just couldn't face it.😞 A friend on here recommended "Calm" with magnesium. She said it helped her. I found it in pill form on Amazon and get it on Tuesday. I am HOPINGGGG that this works-even a little bit.
