I thought it might be helpful to post a few more lines about Acceptance to try and get the point across to those struggling with anxiety. There are all sorts of therapies out there with varying degrees of effectivenes which you may find useful, however, you will still be left with things as they are in the now. Acceptance has to happen to overcome your fears, otherwise, you leave the door open for fear to return, which it will, if you still fear it coming back.
To recover from anxiety you have to be fully accepting of your reality as it is. If your mind feels as if something terrible is about to happen, you must be ok with it. If you understand how anxiety plays its tricks, you will know that you are not in any danger and that nothing terrible will happen to you. The trick is to simply welcome those negative thoughts and feelings and not allow them to stop you doing anything. Make friends! In fact, you have a choice because they can't actually stop you, unless you make that choice. No matter how awful it feels, recognise anxiety for what it is; it is our body's primitive, automatic, natural response that prepares you to fight" or "flee" from perceived attack, harm or threat to your survival. It cannot harm you, it is there to protect you and just doing its job, albeit slightly misguided because of continuous use.
Basically, the simple message to cure yourself is to "do nothing" about the thoughts and feelings. Don't fight them. If they scare you, so what? Be scared. It's fine. If your mind starts to wrestle as to whether or not you properly accept the situation, allow it to do that too. Just give up the fight. Anxiety is not about fighting. You need a bit of determination to succeed but you don't fight it. Fighting it is a big no no.
It is easy to get bogged down in trying to work out if you're accepting "properly." Your mind just creates more stress around the issue of acceptance.
After picking up Dr Claire Weekes' book for the first time, I really didn't know if I was fully accepting. It's a simple concept that can be hard to grasp, especially when you are in the thick of it. Over time, I learned that the thoughts and feelings just weren't real and couldn't actually hurt me. With this knowledge I carried on living my life and took the anxiety with me and waited to see how things went.
Today, I found an old notepad with some entries I made whilst struggling with anxiety. I think a therapist suggested I keep a diary and managed to keep it up for a few months (never kept a diary before or since!). Clearly, my mind and body was in complete turmoil. I didn't know if I was coming or going, everything was scary, everything upset me, lots of small things made me feel very irritable, I was full of doubt too and trying too hard to understand the concept of acceptance which was becoming something of a technique because I was overthinking it. Trying to do something about my anxiety was getting me nowhere, fast.
I learned that Acceptance is just an attitude of living with things as they are, resigning myself to it, rather than fighting with myself to make things change. That change comes naturally so long as you are prepared to be ok about not feeling ok.
Stop striving to change the way things are at the moment, stop evaluating whether it is good or bad, stop battling, stop trying to rid yourself of "it" and just be whatever you are and where ever you are. Recovery will come by just "being" and observing and being aware but not trying to change anything. Worrying about it all (fear, thinly disguised) will not heal the worry problem. All that negative energy that has built up through worry and introspection needs to escape so just let it do it without looking at each symptom as good or bad and accept it all.
