Anxiety is not something you can get rid of forcefully, avoid, control or suppress. Trying to do anything about it just keeps all that nervous/negative energy trapped within you. Trying to control it, trying to rid yourself of it, trying to think and feel differently has the opposite effect.
To free yourself from anxiety, you must allow it to come willingly and completely surrender to it all. By giving up trying to control anxiety, you eventually regain control and peace of mind and body will return.
You cannot be free from anxiety if you are not prepared to feel it all and let it go. This is why it hangs around like an unwanted guest. It wants to leave you but you won’t let it.
Resisting the symptoms is the reason why people stay stuck in the anxiety cycle. By learning to give up the struggle to find relief and allowing yourself to feel the way you do (and not trying to fix yourself), breaks the anxiety fear-adrenalin-fear cycle.
Acceptance creates the time and space for your tired mind and body to recover. Sensitised nerves that are responsible for all those anxious thoughts and feelings are able to de-sensitise after being subjected to prolonged stress and fear.
Recovery doesn’t happen overnight as there is likely to be so much anxious and fearful energy that needs to be released. In all likelihood, your anxiety might feel more intense for a while when you are fully allowing it instead of suppressing or avoiding etc.
I learned that the release of this energy was a very good thing because it meant my mind and body was finding its own way back to it's normal peaceful default setting. Thoughts and feelings no longer being hugely distorted by anxiety, laced with fear and not based on reality.
Learning to accept takes time because our natural instinct to fear and discomfort is to fight, suppress, avoid or control the thoughts and feelings. It requires a modicum of patience and keeping faith in the recovery process and for peace to find you. Time is the healer.
Written by
Beevee
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My story. I suspect my anxiety developed over a period of time with a combination of stressors including the untimely deaths of two friends, one from cancer, raising a young family, all of which made me question my own mortality. Would I be around to see my children grow up? I developed various symptoms such as blurred vision, muscle tension in my shoulders and jaw, lumps in throat, bowel trouble, heart palpitations brain zaps [they were showstoppers] etc etc. I had lots of medical tests because I thought it might be something really bad lurking but all the results were negative. I still felt odd and out of sorts and convinced there was something seriously wrong with me so kept going back to the doctor. My wife had to go away to see her sister for a couple of weeks so I was responsible for looking after our 4 young children.
The writing was on the wall by this time because I just felt completely overwhelmed and unable to cope. I suffered panic attacks but had no idea what was happening to me at the time and stressed me out even more.
My nerves were in tatters and went back to the doctor who said I was "asymptomatic" and prescibed citralopram. I had no idea what they were but thought they would be like taking paracetamol and be back to normal in a couple of days! They sent me into a downward spiral because they made me feel so much worse. I tried 2 or 3 other SSRIs over the course of a few months but they all made me feel terrible. I remember being out with friends one evening and thought my head was going to explode. It felt like a pressure cooker and so stressed out.
Around this time one of my wife's friends lent me a book by Dr Claire Weekes. Hope and Help for your Nerves but my anxiety was so bad, I had panic attacks reading it, especially the parts about love in relationships and how anxiety can make you doubt. Well, that just tipped me right over the edge.
My anxiety started off as health anxiety, morphed into relationship anxiety and then GAD. It was constant. I bumped along the bottom for a good few months trying my best to be normal but it just wasn't happening. I was struggling very badly at work trying to hide how I was feeling. It was very tough, as you will probably know. I kept reading Dr Weekes, making notes, going to therapists, having acupuncture, trying hypnosis but still very little respite. My exercise regime went into overdrive because I felt relaxed afterwards and some much needed breathing space. Somewhere amongst all of this, I decided to flush away all my medication but kept some diazapam to help me sleep but only in case of emergency!
Nights were horrendous. Racing thoughts and spent many nights lying awake all night, full of fear and doom. I bought Essential Help for your Nerves and also came across a website called anxietynomore.co.uk while trying to figure out what acceptance truly meant and where i might be going wrong. I felt tgat I would never recover and that only very brave people could manage it [anxiety talking!].
I was signed off from work but took myself back after 4 months because I was still extremely anxious. Being home made no difference whatsoever so I knew that work wasn't really the problem and that anxiety loves avoidance but was still searching for the cause and not completely acceoting!
I visited that website many times looking for assurance and learning from other sufferers and those that had recovered. This site is all about acceptance being key to recovery with lots of helpful information and doubled down on practising acceptance and letting go.
It took me some time to understand the concept of acceptance, especially when my anxious mind was playing havoc. I made lots of mistakes along the way because I still wasn't fully accepting all the symptoms. The scary thoughts were the most troublesome.
Things were rough for quite some time but I persevered, blindly most of the time because I only had the books and website for support.
There were many setbacks but the more I faced those fears, the more I started to see that my anxiety was a bluff and my visits to the website started to taper off because I no longer needed that assurance.
I was now flying solo. I carried on making my life bigger than my anxiety and slowly I started to improve. Recovery was so gradual, I didn't notice the improvements happening. The symptoms just faded, the most troublesome ones probably being the last. There was a period where i would still feel apprehensive on waking but that soon disappeared once I was up and about. Anxiety held no fear and i just forgot about it.
There was no one day when I thought I was recovered, no euphoria that I was free at last. The slide back to normality was literally seamless.
I've probably missed out lots but over time, the memories of all the suffering have faded too.
Dr Weekes was absolutely right in everything she wrote and that time is the healer. This is why I keep going on about her teachings [not on commission unfortunately 🤣] and will continue to do so simply because I know acceptance works and why.
Thank you Agora1. I'm just a regular bloke that worried too much about stuff at a difficult time and it eventually got the better of me and such an easy trap to fall in to. Fortunately Dr Weekes fell into my lap providing a map that showed me how to navigate my way out of the anxiety maze. I sought help too from anxietynomore website too, clinging on to every word written by those who had recovered and then went my own way. I too put them on a pedestal!
I'm not joking when I say ANYONE can recover. We all have it within us and just need to realise that anxiety and all that comes with it is one HUGE bluff, ready to deceive you at every turn. It makes you believe you cannot recover, that there is no way out.
One of the most important things I learnt was that it was the battle to get rid of anxiety is the reason it doesn't go away! I just resigned myself to whatever came and put it all down to anxiety while carrying on with living. Easier said than done but it is very possible.
For the more tricky anxious thoughts that resonated with me, it took a leap of faith to accept them because they felt so real and kept coming up [they must be true 😱😱😱!!] I thought I would need to leave home [avoid] to stop feeling anxious. That never happened.☺️
I appreciate you sharing Beevee! That is amazing that you were able to work it all out without a therapist! I feel like the validation from them, especially when you are new to a diagnosis and getting help. Yes, acceptance is the way I believe. Those were some intense physical symptoms you had too. I think that I can work on accepting my physical stuff.☮️
You're welcome. I learnt an awful lot about the condition through Dr Weekes, Paul David [anxietynomore.co.uk] and contributors to his blog and pieced it all together, along with trial and error! The errors were all attributable to not completely accepting all the symptoms, placing too much belief in the content of those anxious thoughts. Acceptance of symptoms is most definitely the way forward as I have explained so many times because you stop adding more stress, keeping those nerves sensitised and delaying recovery so the symptoms keep coming up.
Or as Jeff1943 reminded me, acceptance is also called masterly inactivity towards all symptoms. Turning all those What ifs into so what!?
I did try a couple of therapists but to be honest, they weren't much help. One advised me to leave my job and see a marriage guidance counsellor. The other had me on my hands and knees howling like a dog to exorcise the anxiety. I kid you not.
I might get shot for this but the best therapists are those who have walked in our shoes and know how to overcome anxiety but they are few and far between. I walked out of some sessions with more worries because I unloaded all my current fears [there were lots], neither of us knowing that they were all fictitious and just a figment of my overly anxious brain! They all felt real... very scary and demanded attention!
Wow you describe a very similar story to my own which is giving me a lot of hope whilst still in the midst of this retched thing.
Picked my boy up from school earlier and the dial on my symptoms went up to 10 Max... Was totally spaced out.
Instead of getting upset, angry etc I just said to myself ...is that it , is that all you got and continued laughing and joking with my son.
It's definitely helping excepting I've got this at the moment. I sense things getting better already knowing this can be beaten.
Why though can't the doctors tell me what I've been reading on here. All I've done for the last few months is have countless blood tests and misdiagnosis.
Thank you all for sharing your stories especially you Beevee
Not sure why that is but things could be improving. I think CBT is a form of acceptance, looking at problems from a different viewpoint. Acceptance is about developing a different viewpoint [attitude] towards the symptoms from one of fear and bewilderment to "I know what this is, I know it feels scary, but its superficial and I'm going to carry on despite what my anxious brain might be telling me. There is no better way than feeling the fear and doing it anyway but with that relaxed attitude instead of tensing up for the onslaught.By asking if that is all its got, you are on the road to losing your fear of the symptoms. The more you go about your day and pass through fear, the more you will see that anxiety is a confidence trickster, a kitten posing as a lion, making it easier to accept the thoughts and feelings and letting it all go.
Hi again,Had to see the doctor last Friday and because I haven't been sleeping more than 3 hours a night I was prescribed Mirtazapine 15mg which is for insomnia/anxiety. I've managed to sleep again but It's been wiping me out even more than before. Been told this side effect can last a week, but it's going to be hard for me to tell because me anxiety already gave me a spaced out feeling.
I'm back in work on Thursday and scared I'm still going to be feeling like this.
I know you can't tell me what I should do but do you think taking this pill as a sleeping aid is a good idea for now.
Hi. I was prescribed zopiclone to help me sleep but decided to use it sparingly [break glass in emergency 🙄] on the basis that I knew I had to accept whatever anxiety threw at me. If I slept, then fine, if I didn't sleep, so what?! I just let it all be there. There is no harm if it helps you sleep or take the edge of things but again my philosophy was that I never needed to take sleeping tablets before anxiety so why now? I just didn't want to rely on medication as a crutch because the only way to overcome anxiety is to face and accept it all, lock, stock and barrel.
Very wise words.As I've hardly slept in weeks I have taken some and they have helped me sleep but I don't want to rely on them long term. The mg they've put me on are for sedative purposes so hoping I can deal with things correctly.
I have been struggling the last few days, no relief from the brain fog. I used to get an hour or two in the evening with a clear head. I've been telling myself except all the time but hitting a wall at the moment.
I go back to work on Thursday very nervous but perhaps it's what I need.
As you say Beevee, our natural instinct is to fight the symptoms of anxiety and if that doesn't work to fight even harder.
Huge mistake. Fighting only causes more stress and strain, more anxiety hormones, when what we need is less.
Acceptance is what Claire Weekes called 'masterly inactivity. Once we understand that we have begun our walk along the Yellow Brick Road that leads to recovery.
Thank you, Beevee. I'm reading Claire Weekes now and am really practicing what she says. It isn't easy and some days it seems to change hour by hour. Letting time pass is the scariest part because I've been miserable so long. I just want to feel better, but having an understanding of what is going on and the tools of facing, accepting, and floating are helping. It takes a lot of work for me right now because I've just started. I do have moments of discouragement so your post is timely. Thank you!
Great post , I needed to read this as my depression anxiety been going on so long there no end in sight but need to accept this is me now not forever. Thank you 🙏
I believe everything you have written in this post. It has been reinforced in books I have read and in therapy. It is tough to do.
Still, it is good to be reminded in a clear and concise way. I once told my doctor that sometimes I feel like a boxer who is being beaten and takes a knee to stop the onslaught and clear his head. In those few seconds he has to decide whether to continue or give up. I have thus far chosen to continue the fight and hope I always will. I know there is a way to win, I don't always believe I have what it takes.
Thanks for what you have posted. It was a good thing to do.
Thank you. Firstly, you do have it in you to recover. Everyone is capable of recovery when they understand how.
Being brutally honest, its a learned behaviour [unwittingly in most cases] which means it can be unlearned.
Your cornerman just needs to tell the champion to lower the gloves and take that beating. Doing this draws the sting and paves the way for not caring how many punches you take or the ferocity. Despite all that, you will win the contest and little chance of a rematch.
Fighting, inasmuch as facing the world every day despite anxiety and depression doing its level best to derail you is absolutely the right attitude to take. Making your life bigger than anxiety. Just don't buy into all the crap it wants you to believe and learn to observe and let go.
For anyone who is lying on the canvas being counted out, do not worry. The referee will never reach 10.
Totally spot-on post and a good reminder of how to recover and mirrors my experience and you're right, it takes time and perseverance but we all have it within us.
Hi! I don't agree with any of it, and I hope you won't flood my posts with advice or I will feel obliged to leave the community.
Frank, not sure if you know how this works but if you don't like something or don't agree, you don't have to tell everyone or announce your impending departure. You just move on to something you do like.
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