People who encounter anxiety disorder for the first time don't know what's hit them. One day they're O.K., the next they have panic attacks, chest pains, visual disturbances, dizziness, stomach pain, diahrea (never could spell that) and muscle pains to name just a few of the symptoms. They soon become convinced that they are about to have a heart attack or stroke, or they have some form of cancer or a wasting disease. Many become convinced that death is imminent. So they seek medical advice and undergo all sorts of scans and blood tests - only to be told there is nothing physically or organically wrong. But they still have the bad feelings, the racing heart, the hot flushes, the strange thoughts. So they are bewildered and start to believe the doctors have overlooked something.
If any of this strikes a chord with you here's what you need to know. Yes, it's important to see your doctor to rule out physical causes but when all the tests come back fine you must accept them and accept that it's all anxiety driven. What happens is that after a period of stress and worry or working too hard our nervous system that extends throughout our body becomes over sensitised and in this state everything becomes magnified ten fold. Small worries normally resolved with ease are seen as enormous problems, our normal antipathy to dying can become a major obsession - and our sensitised nerves start to mimic and mirror all kinds of genuine organic illness. You've no idea how good frazzled nerves are at simulating real illness, just look at the list above and that's just for starters.
Once you understand how jangled nerves start playing tricks on your tired mind it should bring some reassurance and end your bewilderment - you're not going to die or have a stroke or a heart attack or lose your mind. That feeling of unreality, that you're not really 'there', and all the other symptoms are fakes, they are frauds, confidence tricksters and are caused by blips, glitches and short circuits in your over sensitised nerves. Anxiety can take many forms but it is always anxiety. It's a real shape shifter.
The problem is, everytime some symptom strikes you react to it with fear and fear is what fuels sensitive nerves. We enter a viscious circle of anxiety causing symptoms which cause more anxiety which causes more symptoms ans so on. Thus we become our own worse enemies and perpetuate by our reactions the bad feelings we hate.
There is only one way out and everybody can do it. Everybody can recover and over the years hundreds of thousands have. You have to Accept the bad feelings for the moment knowing them to be paper tigers, they are fake and fraudulent and are not life threatening, neither can they damage your body. You have to frame your mind to utterly Accept the bad feelings without fear. A tall order I know, and to begin with you may only be able to Accept the bad feelings for a few seconds or a few minutes, this us called 'glimpsing', but with practice and persistance will learn to Accept without fear. Nobody said this was going to be a quick fix.
The thing is, because you are willing to temporarily put upvwith the symptoms and not add fresh fear every time, your sensitised nervous system begins to recover as you're no longer thrashing it with fear and tension every five minutes. And eventually your nerves return to their normal state and guess what, you already have I'm sure, all those bad feelings and strange feelings and obsessions and aches and dizziness fadescto nothing and you can reclaim your life again.
So stay off that bed in the daytime, continue with your work in the normal way, even though you feel like s**t you can do it, don't let the toothless tiger win. When the bad feelings come they are like waves that break against a rock and flow past it but despite the crashing of the wave against the rock, the rock endures. YOU are that rock.
Perhaps all this is enough to get your tired head round at the moment so I will leave the rest for another day. But make no mistake EVERYBODY can recover with practice and persistance and you too can join that happy band on the Yellow Brick Road to recovery.
