Every day, new people appear on this forum suffering from anxiety. They are fearful, worried and bewildered about what's happening to them and just want to flick a switch that will take them back to normal. Well, the only quick fixes are medications prescribed by a doctor: there's nothing wrong with taking medications if the bad feelings are overwhelming and you have family or work responsibilities that can't be neglected. But nobody wants to take tablets for the rest of their life and there are self help techniques that in the fullness of time will bring recovery.
The first thing you must do is to go see your doctor who may run a test or two to make sure it really is 'only' nerves. That will bring you some reassurance, you will at least know for certain what you're dealing with. You see, anxiety disorder is very good at mimicing physical illnesses and we're all hypochondriacs of course☺ The other thing that anxiety disorder does is make the smallest of problems seem ten times more formidable. To avoid problems we can end up not wanting to leave the house (agrophobia) or developing feelings of unreality where we feel 'we're not here'. Anxiety also causes stomach upset, dizziness, pains and visual disturbances.
The next thing is to understand exactly what's happening to you to overcome the bewilderment. If you go through a period of stress and worry for too long your nervous system decides it's had enough and starts to complain. It becomes over-sensitised and in this state fires off panic attacks, fear of impending doom and all kinds of aches and pains. The good news is that none of these unpleasant feelings are life threatening and can't cripple you or send you crazy. Over-sensitised nervous systems don't have the power to do that but through their power to imitate real physical illness they can still frighten us half to death. But only half☺
Once people new to anxiety disorders understand what's happening to them and the limitations of sensitised nerves they should be reassured and that's a good place to start your recovery which I am now going to outline according to my own experience and what I believe.
At this point I must apologise to regular visitors to this forum who have all heard what follows from me time and time again ad nauseum. But I'm writing this mainly for newbies who are unaware of my repetitive postings.
The road to recovery that I always recommend is set outvin a book by Doctor Claire Weekes titled 'Sekf help with your nerves' or titled 'Hope and help for your nerves' in the U.S. both titles available from Amazon. When she was studying to be a doctor as a young woman Claire Weekes exoerienced anxiety disorder herself and she developed a method which helped her to recover. Later she set out that method in the book I mention so others could benefit and over the many years untold thousands throughout the world have used her method to recover. Here is a brief 4 point outline of her method but I recommend you read her book if you're serious about using self help to effect your recovery.
1. FACE - don't fool yourself that by ignoring the symptoms they will go away, face the fact that you do have anxiety disorder. Also, if your doctor, who went to medical school for 5 years, tells you it's anxiety disorder believe him/her implicitly and put all ideas of a physical origin (heart attack, cancer etc) right out of your mind.
2. ACCEPT - stop fighting the bad feelings as fighting only causes more tension and fear and your overstressed nervous system needs LESS of that not MORE. So instead of fighting and constantly testing yourself for the bad feelings simply accept them for the time being. By accepting I mean letting the bad feelings come and although they make you feel uncomortable just carry on as normal with the least amount of fear - after all you now know these symptoms aren't for real, they are fakes and frauds that can't do you any real damage. You see, for too long you've been caught up in a vicious circle of fear causing more symptoms causing more fear causing more symptoms etc. By refusing to be bullied and fearful through Acceptance you break this viscious circle giving your over sensitised nervous system a chance to recover.
3. FLOAT - by this Claire Weekes meant switching onto automatic pilot and whilst practicing Acceptance to get on about our daily business. If you suffer from agrophobia and think your legs will turn to jelly if you leave your house, well go for a walk anyway and you will find that jelly legs will still get you there and back, just float along to your destination and float home again.
4. LET TIME PASS - don't expect Acceptance to bring an instant cure, you spent time getting into your present state so be patient and let your over-sensitised nervous system recover at its own rate as it surely will.
So that's the story and it offers you the chance to take control of your life and your recovery which no matter how tired, frightened and bewildered you are well able to do. The late Doctor Weekes (she died at a good age after a lifetime if healing) used to say that anybody and everybody can recover through the Acceptance method regardless of how long you have suffered or how bad you may feel. So I say again, take control of your life once more and join us on the Yellow Brick Road to Recovery. Bon voyage!
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Jeff1943
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Thank you Jeff.. i am struggling allot even after 28 years of dealing with this. I need to be told that I am not going crazy and this is life and not a dream.
Gill1970, putting the acceptance method into practice isn't easy, it takes a lot of practice, persistance and patience, not to mention constantly rereading Weekes' first book and then maybe all the others. But in the end it always works if only we can maintain the persistance.
Some people recover this way and are fine for the rest of their lives. But others experience reoccurances, specially if it's an inherited tendency. But Weekes always considered someone cured if they recovered once using her acceptance method - she reasoned that if you learned how to do it once then if it returned years later you knew how to rid yourself of it again.
I know that's what i have been telling myself. I have gotten through this meant times in the past but this is a doozy and i am having a heck of a time this time. It's paralyzing me this time. It's been years since it had been this bad.
I appreciate the help I am so lost. I need a grip and i will try and read the books from Dr Weaks.
Jeff no matter how often us "regulars" read your posts they are a good reminder when life puts an annoying hand on our heads and musses up our hair. When a situation presents itself that induces stress or panic, it is good to have these techniques so ingrained they become second nature (much like a pilot faced with a mid air emergency).
I had a full blown panic episode on friday when driving to our weekender. There had been a serious accident (car into a tree) and there were ambulances, fire brigade, tow truck, police, forensic crash unit, traffic wardens and a 2 kilometre traffic jam that was alternately letting 20 cars in either direction through. I was stuck for 30 minutes and practiced all these claire weekes stages over and over (along with some distracting methods - listing boys and girls names using the alphabet, adding up the numbers on licence plates etc!).
However as we were moving to be let through finally the traffic controller put his hand up and turned his slow sign to stop at my car. I begged and pleaded to be let through but nope. Stuck at the very front. Unfortunately the 30 minutes of tension i had subjected myself to manifested itself in a sobbing heap (my poor 12 year old daughter is very patient!) as i watched the mangled car being dragged onto a tow truck and the police and firies sweep away the glass. To add insult to injury my normal "go to" of Dr Weekes soothing and reassuring voice was unavailable as we were in a section of road that had no wifi signal (a beautiful drive Cairns to Port Douglas but not alot of phone or radio signal!).
So with an ever darkening evening approaching and me in full panic mode i had to force my rational brain to engage as i still had 10 kilometres to drive. Gosh it was hard and when we were given the go signal my body was shaking like a leaf and my jaw muscles were so tense i could barely talk - i felt like when you get stuck outside in a snow storm and your whole body is shivering (except i was in the tropics!) and my foot on the accelerator was jerky. However, we did make it and the sense of relief was amazing and it was proved that our bodies are incredible - what we do to it and still it comes through for us.
The lesson for me is that while my trigger for anxiety is being stuck in my car in a traffic jam.....i survived!! How ironic!! All the things that i have told myself in the past that would happen if i was in a traffic jam.......didn't. Now i have proof that i can cope with this so this is also part of the lessons that Claire Weekes teaches - recovery lays on the other side... to get there you have to go through the fear not avoid it.
I think that, given that our responses to fear are very physiological, then we need to honour our bodies in return and care for them as best we can by providing great nutrition, lots of quality sleep, good exercise methods to suit our lives and some relaxation or meditation to give it some down time from everything we throw at it. Today i thank my body by giving it a rest from having to be on high alert because of some random thought created by me!!!
Hey Gill. I read your post from a few days ago and if i may be so impertinent to suggest that you go to go see your dr and discuss the influence that hormones have on your body. You (like me) are at the age where a perfect storm is created by menopause that creates the symptoms of anxiety. Chemically we can be helped by magnesium, omega 3 and vit b12 and vit b6 but have your blood tests and see if there is an imbalance in estrogen and progesterone and vit d etc. In addition the accompanying sleep deprivation from menopausal insomnia is sure to nudge you into anxiety spiral - i can always look back and see that i had a series of disturbed nights.
Can i also recommend a book by Barry McDonagh called DARE. He has taken the teachings of Claire Weekes and pit his own spin on them. I get great improvements after reading his technique D = diffuse the anxious thought "so what" instead of "what if". A = accept the anxious feeling but give it no importance. R = run towards it - ask for more anxiety, faster heart beat, tighter throat, dizzier head etc. E = engage in an activity that uses your entire focus thereby not allowing the anxious thought to dominate. Then REPEAT as required!!
You are right on the money. I had the Dr check my hormonal levels. I am 50% menaupausal. So they put me on hormones. However i do not feel any change from them. Its been about 3months.
My thyroid seems to be low as well. I just did testing for that to see if there is a problem.
Also started high blood pressure in October. So everything had hit all at once. I'm on blood pressure meds for that too.
Started doing exercise and eating better to lose weight.
Sooo that said I am trying to make changes. But the derealization has been beating me down. I want to do so much more. But I'm so much in my head. Need to feel in this world.
You and others have helped.
I will look for that book as well.
I really appreciate your support too.
It's helping me a lot
Thank you very much, Jeff. I greatly appreciate your effort and care to help others and sharing what's worked for you. God bless you.
I am now using the process of elimination. For me, I feed my own anxieties with just simply watching TV, or on the net, easy as that....I now have a good book or watch something fun, cooking, animals or simply comedy, that's it..No soaps, no medical stuff, only one born every minute of course ha ha, not missing that ever :-). I no longer look up symptoms or get sucked in by adverts saying about health...I am purely healing myself, I feel great already. I have been working on my eating/cooking fresh food as my apetite isn't great but i put it down to constant panic of losing my mind etc.., so hopefully I will enjoy food again. Socially I know that I have to introduce more people into my life, I know i have become a recluse. I have let go of some reminders of my past, ie, my mother past 17 years ago and I still have her stuff, long time huh?? I have it all there, just a case of working through it....
I can see you're taking control of your recovery, Mumof347, you have worked out a plan and you're putting it into practice. I have a feeling you are going to succeed and that better days lie ahead for you. You're an example to us all!
Thank you very much Jeff, you have said a lot of things I can relate to as I have been following your posts to others. You are very wise and have clearly experienced it yourself. I have realised just what I was doing every day for many years wasn't helping my recovery. It all makes sense, my doctor has put me on medication to get me well but I was doing the opposite, so I would never get out of the black hole I was in. Acceptance is one of the words I have seen you write I am sure
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Anxiety.. how do we get an anxiety disorder. Opinions?
