Once upon a time there was an Australian woman called Claire Weekes who was studying to be a doctor. She began to experience anxiety disorder, panic attacks and all the other bad feelings we are all familiar with. I'm sure many medical students suffer from anxiety but Weekes wasn't just any medical student: she developed a method that allowed her to recover from anxiety disorder. Then she wrote a book about her method so others could benefit and devoted her medical career to helping people recover using her method.
Since she wrote that book millions* have used her method to recover: if you check the reader reviews on Amazon you'll see several hundred people have left comments and 90% of them rate it either excellent or very good.
The book is called 'Self help for your nerves' in the U.K. and 'Hope and help for your nerves' in the U.S. She wrote many other books but that first one is the one that says it all. You will recognise yourself in its pages, its like she knows you and has written it specially for you. It explains why you are experiencing anxiety, brings reassurance and offers a road to recovery.
She taught that if you experience stress and worry for a long period your nervous system eventually becomes over sensitised and makes this known to you by producing a variety of symptoms, many of which mimic physical illness. These include stomach upsets, panic attacks, exaggerated fear of dying, palpitations, shimmering visual disturbances, chest pain and breathlessness to name but a few.
We wonder what's hit us and rush to consult Doctor Google who suggests all sorts of terminal illnesses - and so more fear is generated which causes more anxiety which causes more fear and so on in a vicious circle. Even when doctors reassure us after medical tests that we are in good physical health we don't believe them and tell ourselves "they must have missed something".
Claire Weekes tells us to stop worrying about illnesses we don't have and to concentrate on the illness we do have: Anxiety Disorder. So her first imperitive is to FACE the problem and instead of fighting it to accept it for the time being instead. Fighting it only causes more stress and strain. Whereas if we can learn to accept the symptoms without fear for the moment we'll stop bombarding our nerves with fear hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol and give them a chance to desensitise and recover.
So ACCEPTANCE is her second imperitive for recovery. She explains that although anxiety can frighten us half to death it can't kill us, disable us or send us insane. Anxiety is just a bully pretending it can do those things. So why fear something that is a confidence trick: far better to accept it for the time being without further fear so hastening recovery.
I won't explain Claire Weekes' two further imperitives which are explained fully in her book. But I commend her book to you even though it was written before many here were born and Doctor Weekes passed to life beyond some years ago. It has withstood the test of time.
Claire Weekes was indeed a wizard when it comes to guiding people towards recovery through self help and her teachings continue their good work far beyond the boundaries of her native Australia. She was a true Wizard of Oz and her teachings will surely guide you along the Yellow Brick Road to Recovery.
*David Barlow, Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Boston University.
Dr Claire Weekes - FACE, ACCEPT, FLOAT, LET TIME PASS
