Anxiety symptoms can be frightening and people often think something strange and unusual is happening to them.
They couldn't be more wrong. Their mind, body and nervous system are just reacting in perfectly normal and predictable ways to the stress they've been subjected to.
Nerves can withstand months, even years, of worry, over-work and constant anxiety. But eventually they can take no more and start to protest. What's so surprising about that?
At this point your nervous system begins to play up and you can experience panic attacks, agoraphobia, depersonalisation, the feeling that death is imminent, something terrible is going to happen and all the symptoms of health and social anxiety.
All this is the normal response of your body to levels of stress it can tolerate no longer. People hope the bad feelings will go away as quickly as they came: maybe a good night's sleep will do it and everything will go back to normal in the morning. But it doesn't. Days pass into weeks and weeks into months and it's still there.
What's happened is that your nervous system has become over sensitised by too much stress and the fear hormones you generate in reaction to the symptoms maintain your nerves in this sensitive state.
But just as the response to too much over-work and worry is entirely normal and predictable so is the way to recover.
Instead of trying to cure all the terrible symptoms you should focus on the cause: the over sensitisation of your nervous system. If you can stop churning out fear hormones like cortisol and adrenaline every time you get a bad thought or feeling then after a while your nerves begin to recover. And eventually, as sure as eggs are eggs, all the bad symptoms disperse and you will feel normal once again.
More easily said than done. So how do you stop responding to panic attacks, agoraphobia and other symptomd calmly and without fear?
You could go onto anti-anxiety medications which will quickly bring respite. Nothing wrong with that if you've a job to hold down and a family to maintain. But when you stop the medication the old problems usually come back.
Or you could go for one-to-one talking therapy which has brought recovery to many.
Or you could read one of the many self-help recovery books written by people who know what they're talking about. I've heard favourable feedback about a book called 'Dare' though I've never read it myself - and many people have returned to good mental health practicing the Acceptance method described in the books of Claire Weekes.
Do remember: what has happened to you is not some rare and strange affliction. It's a perfectly normal reaction experienced by millions. The answer to your problems lies somewhere in this forum. Search and you will find the road to recovery. Then it's down to you to do something to bring it about through practice and perseverance.
