Have you ever noticed that the more you avoid panic-provoking situations, the more panic controls your life, the more you run from panic, the faster it seems to chase you, the harder you try to control intrusive thoughts or feelings, the more they stick around?
To handle panic/anxiety and all the associated symptoms, you need to do the opposite to what your instinct is telling you to do. If you stop fighting or running from panic/anxiety, it will disappear. When you have fearful thoughts and/or feelings let them come and don't do anything to control them or push them away. Let yourself have a full-blown panic attack. This might sound crazy but tell yourself to increase your heart rate, to become dizzy and try to produce all your horrible physical symptoms. Cure from anxiety is a paradox. The less you do to get better, the better you will feel.
When you become afraid of symptoms you keep keep them going. The more fearful you become, the stronger the thoughts/feelings grow. By removing your fear, you starve your panic/anxiety and it fades away. It only survives because you are resisting it. Examples of resistance that I see frequently on this website (no offence intended - just trying to get the message home 🙂👍) include people complaining about their symptoms, asking if anyone has similar symptoms, continually searching for answers as to why they feel like they do or constantly seeking reassurance. This is not accepting and the completely the wrong approach/attitude you need to recover.
If you attempt to stop the symptoms or try to fight them, you are simply supporting and prolonging them. If you practice some kind of relaxation technique and then anxiously wait for it to reduce your symptoms, you will be disappointed. As I have mentioned in other posts, techniques will not conquer panic/anxiety, your attitude will.
When you are controlled by panic/anxiety, you are run by your negative thoughts such as "I can't feel this way, "I can't get anxious, because someone will notice, " "I can't handle this...." As you begin to gain the upper hand, you will notice that your attitude becomes more positive. The little voice in your head starts saying "It's OK, if is only anxiety, " "It's OK to feel this way," " I can be anxious and still do my job," "I can manage these symptoms."
You take full control by letting go of control and invite all the symptoms to come and do their worst. Invite your heart to beat faster, Make yourself feel dizzy, invite those scary thoughts, see if you can faint, be sick or tie your stomach in knots. They only feel bad but cannot harm you. It is only a surge in energy and completely natural and expected under the circumstances (just your fear/flight response being a bit trigger happy) but have become afraid of it.
By allowing all the symptoms to be there and doing nothing about them, you are developing the attitude that will eventually see you cross the finishing line. Your complete willingness to embrace the symptoms will gradually reduce the power of the symptoms and will disappear. The more you practice acceptance of the symptoms, the more skilled you will become until it is ingrained into your psyche and be second nature. Automatic if you like.
Don't be disappointed by setbacks because once your new attitude is in place, your entire perspective will have shifted. You no longer fear the symptoms and accepting and increasing anxiety is the object, rather than fighting to be free of it all. Panic comes when you try to control your anxiety and fail. If you are not trying to control your symptoms, it is much harder to experience a sense of failure. And when you don't think "I am failing right now," panic usually won't set in.
To win over panic/anxiety, you stop fighting it. To rid yourself of panic/anxiety you let it exist. To conquer panic, you stop resisting it. Take that leap of faith.
Beevee
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Beevee
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Beevee, I know everyone isn't the same .. but about how long until your symptoms leave after you've decided to do what you say? I've been trying my hardest.. staying off this site and going out and doing things and telling myself it all anxiety and being ok with it as best I can. But it's so hard to accept when symptoms continue and new ones even arise! Any advice ?
Yes i totally hear ya. I try my ultimate best then some new symptom arises and there goes my mind racing and dwelling...so tired of it. It is hard. I have been doing better than a few months ago...but it's still kicking my butt!! I am at least eating and sleeping again...my anxiety got so bad a few months ago i lost 17 lbs, kept collapsing in public, and was an insomniac for two months...so I am thankful to God that at least that got better! 🙄I still can't work, but slowly I will get there. Best of luck. We are all in this together.
Hi Charityjones, even when you are fully accepting, symptoms will still linger for a while and the reason why sufferers can fall back into the quicksand. Keep the faith and keep practising acceptance and allow all the symptoms to wash over you. As with anything, the more you practice,, the better you become and you will begin to lose respect of your fears. You will get to a point where the symptoms may still be raging within but you just won't care about them so much. In some ways, it is like separating yourself from the symptoms or floating above the crap and carrying on with your day. This is what I mean about being ok about not feeling ok which is what acceptance is all about. Just resign yourself to the fact that it is anxiety making you feel lousy and fill your day with stuff you did before anxiety took over. Do it even if you feel rubbish. You may not realise it but by doing normal things, you are sending messages to your brain that there is no threat and your fight/flight response will start to calm itself down. However, it does take time so don't be too impressed if the symptoms persist for a while.
No one said acceptance is easy. It isbloody hard at first, especially when the anxiety is burning strong inside. However, if you keep practicing acceptance, even in the face of adversity, and carry on with your day, your resilience to cope with the feelings will strengthen, bit by bit until they no longer matter. As I always say, acceptance and cure doesn't happen over night. It is a gradual process and will include setbacks but made easier if you truly understand and believe that the thoughts and feelings are completely harmless, which they are.
I hesitate putting a timeframe on recovery because I'm not entirely certain because my recovery was slow as I made plenty of mistakes along the way and lots of setbacks. My guess is that it took several months for my nerves to settle to the extent that I felt my reactions to stressful situation were normal. on the plus side, it gave me more time to practice acceptance. Once you know the way out of the hole you dug yourself, you won't fear falling back in. Take fear out of the equation and anxiety can't exist. You only way to do this is to feel everything that anxiety has to throw at you and carry on by floating past it all (being ok about not feeling ok). Your brain eventually gets the message that there is nothing to fear and your scary thoughts and feelings disappear.
I agree with you wholeheartedly and have myself been practicing this. I feel much better since I try not to be afraid of the symptoms. The thing is it takes time to get there. All of us go through googling our symptoms, seeing multiple specialists, seeking reassurance, etc.
This advice could apply to a number of diseases. Nevertheless pharmacitucal intervention, research and medical guidance need to be part of the mix. Acceptance of symptoms should not be an option with so many people suffering with This disease which needs to be identified as such and taken seriously by the medical profession.
Anxiety is not a disease, may be an illness at best (nervous illness) but not a disease. It is a natural bodily reaction designed to protect us from danger that has become over used and self inflicted. There is no outside force in operation, we do it to ourselves.
The cause of anxiety/panic is usually a traumatic event(s), stress or series of stressors, constant worry. All of these have an impact on the nervous system that controls your mood and emotions, like fear, guilt, disgrace. Emotions are magnified tenfold and the byproduct of this is anxiety and all the symptoms you are experiencing. However, anxiety sufferers take it to a whole new level by adding more fear by worrying about the anxiety symptoms or, in other words fearing the symptoms of fear. The nerves that control the release of adrenalin (your fear/flight response) have become sensitised to the extent that the smallest thing can trigger panic or anxiety. This is how other fears build up, many unique to sufferers and all due to a lack of understanding of the condition.
I agree that the medical profession, in general, don't really understand the condition and too quick to prescribe anti-depressants. I'm not against meds being used, they just didn't work for me and followed the teachings of Dr Claire Weekes who explained how to overcome the condition by stepping out of the way of myself and letting my mind and body heal naturally. By following this method, I lost all fear of the symptoms. They still hung around for a while but didn't bother me so much.
Recovery is a process and does take time. I went through every stage including googling symptoms and seeking reassurance all the time but things only started clicking into place when I truly understood what was happening to me and why. This knowledge takes away a lot of the fear and made it easier to accept all the symptoms and not react to them which leads to recovery.
What about the physical symptoms caused by anxiety and make you so miserable how do you deal with those when it is so hard if you are in pain caused by anxiety to just not fear it??
Hi. This is an awesome post. Thank you for bringing it to light. This is absolutely true and Ifeel great that I have put it to the test and it works! 🙂
My family has four generation of victims of anxiety. For some it was triggered by trauma but for many it simply presented itself without emotional intervention at different times in their lives. Doctors follow symptoms to rule out illnesses they are qualified to investigate. At on time there was no fabromialgia or fatigue syndromes only continued research
Brought about results. Grin and bear it is not the answer.
Grinning and bearing it implies a sufferer is not accepting it but fighting it, putting up with anxiety. Fighting or just putting up with it just keeps you in the anxiety cycle. If there is no underlying medical problem, acceptance will cure. It worked for me and countless others.
Anxiety can manifest itself even where there has been no trauma. Nerves that control the emotions for us (as opposed to those that control movement of limbs etc and not related to the anxiety condition) can be sensitised by any number of reasons, People holding down stressful jobs can become nervously ill and feel tense but if they don't fear the symptoms and/or feel sorry for themselves, they carry on or take a break until they feel better. Even positive stress, experienced by performers, for example, can lead to anxiety. Regardless of the type of stress, (positive or negative) if you fear the symptoms caused by the stress, the nervous system becomes sensitised and people enter the fear-adrenalin-fear cycle which manifests itself as anxiety. Sensitised nerves do not get the chance to recover because sufferers constantly beat themselves with the anxiety stick trying to figure it all out, trying to push the feelings away, trying to control it, trying to rid themselves of the feelings. This is why the anxiety sticks around because they don't give their nerves the chance to recover. It isn't some method or technique that is relied upon to find cure, it is the natural healing powers of the body that brings peace, just like a cut on your hand or a broken bone heals by itself with minimal intervention other than rest. Anxiety sufferers don't let their mind or body rest because they are continually trying to find a way out, trying to find the elusive cure which keeps the anxiety fully topped up.
If the medical professionals knew the answers, why are there dozens of SSRIs on the market? They aren't even sure what works or what doesn't. Great if they do but in my opinion, Meds just mask the symptoms and if the sufferer has yet to develop the right attitude to cope with the feelings and still lives in fear of them, they leave the door wide open for anxiety to return. Fear is the root cause of all anxiety related conditions. Period. Lose the fear and recovery is inevitable.
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