I will continue my post from yesterday sharing with you all I have learnt about anxiety disorder over the past 40 years. I notice that many on this forum have a fear that taking medications leads to addiction. I believe this, once again, is over sensitised nerves magnifying ten fold the natural reluctance to rely on meds into obsessional fear. If for the moment life has become unbearable andyou have work or family responsibilities that must be maintained there is nothing wrong in taking meds prescribed by your doc to enable you to have a short holiday from the bad feelings.
But to recover using the Acceptance method you need to be feeling the bad symptoms which you can't do on meds. Accepting the symptoms of anxiety forthe time being without fear in order to allow your over sensitised nerves to recover is a method devised by Doctor Claire Weekes when she was a young woman. She herself suffered from anxiety disorder and worked out the Acceptance method to cure herself. Later she set out her road plan for recovery in her first book titled 'Self help with your nerves' in the U.K. and 'Hope and help with your nerves' in the U.S. Her second book 'Release from nervous suffering' deals more with agrophobia. Her method involves four parts.
1. FACE - by this she means that once your doc has told you your symptoms are not physical you must accept the diagnosis and Face the fact that your problem is anxiety.
2. ACCEPTANCE - the key to recovery is to temporarily accept the bad symptoms thereby not adding more fear and tension to already stressed nerves.
3. FLOAT - this is a strange term but what Claire Weekes means by it is to get off your couch during the daytime and carry on with your normal routine despite feeling c**p by switching on to a sort of 'automatic pilot' mode and floating through your daily chores. This is something people surprise themselves that they can achieve.
4. LET TIME PASS - no quick fix, no magic wand, it takes time, practice and persistance and gradually because you're no longer heaping more and more anxiety onto your sensitised nerves they return to their normal state and you recover.
Claire Weekes makes the point that while many will never experience anxiety disorder again some may be troubled by it again years hence but she still considers her method a cure because having restored yourself to good health once you will know how to do it again.
This is just s very brief summary and you really do need to read her book which is fairly short and written in everyday language, before long you will think that she has written it specifically for you and your problems. Her books are available new or used on Amazon and as an e-book download.
So now you know what's happened to you and you have an escape plan, so no more bewilderment and fear you're going to die, go blind or have a stroke. You won't. You now have the knowledge and life is nothing without knowledge, so the key to recovery is in your hands.
