The more you allow yourselves to think and feel the way you do without supression, without searching for peace and the less respect you give the symptoms, the stronger and more resilient you become. The less you use your minds to try and solve an insolvable problem (because that is what intrusive thoughts are) over and over again, the more flexible your mind will become and peace will return.Doing nothing about the symptoms goes against the natural instinct to fix the problem, to fight it. It’s like an itch you want to scratch to relieve yourself and feel comfortable. Our normal response is to avoid pain and discomfort, to avoid feelings, to feel good. However, if you strive to find comfort from the physical and mental symptoms of anxiety, you are unwittingly keeping yourselves stuck in the anxiety cycle. Therefore, the trick is to change your reaction to the symptoms of anxiety.
I learnt that fighting or battling with the thoughts and feelings was the wrong thing to do and the road to recovery lay in doing the exact opposite by letting it all go and throwing away all my coping tools. Not fighting meant I gave up striving to be the person I used to be or to feel a certain way, stopping trying to work it all out. In effect, this was a battle with myself, a battle I couldn’t win and a battle that was completely draining my emotional reserves (depression) so I gave up the fight.
By giving up the fight / letting it all happen without resistance led to my mind and body returning to its relaxed state which is the default setting. I had to train myself to stop searching for relaxation and for relaxation to come to me. I gave up the battle to feel better, stopped trying to work it all out which was completely draining and got me nowhere. I then learned that doing the opposite and doing nothing about the symptoms was the right way to improve matters. If doing nothing was the normal human response, things would have been so much easier!
If you truly accept the way you currently think and feel and live alongside anxiety without question and without fighting, you will recover. Stop trying to change the way you feel, avoiding the pain and discomfort and accept that this is how it’s going to be for a while and be ok about not feeling ok.
To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.
Acceptance works. Time is the healer. What you waiting for?
