I have seen the enemy and it is us.

[Jeff1943]

Those of us who experience anxiety disorder are often our own worse enemies. Symptoms that in our hearts we know to be anxiety we believe are life threatening. When doctors tell us for the umpteenth time following countless tests and scans that the problem is anxiety we don't believe them. Small daily problems well within our capability to overcome are seen as insummountable obstacles - specially if we are presented with more than one at any given time.

That's the nature of anxiety, making us always fear the worse scenario and exaggerating our perception of problems ten fold. So we must always stay on our guard to prevent anxiety, a most successful confidence trickster, from misleading us and causing unnecessary worry.

Anxiety feeds on fear, tension and stress and we are often only too willing to feed the beast. But the beast is a toothless tiger: it may make us feel dreadful but it can't kill us, can't disable us and can't send us crazy. It can also be banished by simply accepting our anxiety for the time being without fear and treating it as an irritation that isn't going to stop us getting on with our lives.

The more we learn and understand about anxiety and its limitations the more we lose our fear of it. I say that knowing how bad some peoples' symptoms of anxiety are.

On this forum we meet like-minded people and can share our symptoms, our experiences and our remedies. There are thousands of others out there who must face their problems alone. We are the lucky ones.

[Agora1]

Wise words Jeff1943....if only I had realized this many years ago, I could have saved myself from dying a thousand deaths everyday because I didn't realize the answer was within me. Thanks for all the positive messages you send. Have a good evening!

[Vbee in reply to Agora1]

A thousand deaths every day

That is such an insightful description of how it feels. But crazy that it is so unnecessary.

😎

[Pat9 in reply to Agora1]

thank you for for this Jeff it always helps to be brought back to the truth X

[Vbee]

Nailed it!

[Bonareri]

Me I know its anxiety, but nowadays have been feeling like loosing control I try to imagine things that are so scaring, am not able to settle or calm am wondering and asking GOD why me,why can't I be happy like my friends, am always worried for what a waits me the next minute, am always sad ,depressed of my worries let's help each other anxiety is an enemy in our mind.

[NemoAbella in reply to Bonareri]

I feel the same way...sigh...

[Bonareri in reply to NemoAbella]

How do we pull ourselves out of this mess?

[NemoAbella in reply to Bonareri]

Maybe acceptance, and Ignoring the new gift given. Sigh...at night I can easily say acceptance and just ignore...but every morning were my attack is in full swing, I automatically asked, can I still go back with my own self? Why me? Why between my 2 siblings why me? Why me who got the anxious side of my grandma, then my mind think at the brighter side, maybe the man upstairs gave this to me instead of my siblings bcoz he knew I am more stronger than my siblings...sigh..but still...it is really really hard...I wanna cry everyday...sigh

[Betha]

Very good! It is almost like you can't stop thinking! It is terrible. I have stomach issues but have had 3 tests. My next appointment is the 26th of June with a stomach doctor. We will see!

[Jeff1943]

Bonareri, NemoAbella and Betha - I strongly advise you that there is nothing to be gained by asking "Why me?" and hoping there is a quick fix magic wand that with one wave will take you back to the way you were before anxiety struck. You can ask "Why me?" one hundred times a day for the rest of your lives and I give you my personal guarantee it won't cure you.

But there is a cure but it takes practice and persistance and I allude to it in my posting. I'm talking about the Acceptance method for recovery from anxiety disorder devised many years ago by the late Doctor Claire Weekes and explained in her first book 'Self help with your nerves' (U.K. version) and 'Hope and help with your nerves' (U.S. version) it's the same book and is available from Amazon. This book has allowed untold thousands to recover and is held in very high regard by many of the people on this forum.

Bonareri, NemoAbella and Betha - regardless of any inherited tendency to anxiety or not and no matter how long you have suffered and how badly you most certainly can recover. For some reason you have gone through a period of stress and worry and finally your nervous system rebels and becomes over sensitised. In this state it starts to play tricks on you, you feel anxious and depressed, small problems appear immense and we begin to experience symptoms of physical illness which are fake because they are caused by glitches in your nervous system and NOT by real organic illness.

The stomach is the organ most often affected (are you listening Betha) but this ability of anxiety to mimic real illnesses can affect any organ in the body including the heart, the chest, vision, you name it. People start to imagine they have cancer, impending heart attack and all kinds of terminal illnesses. They have palpitations, bowel problems, stomach ache, visual disturbances and chest pain and breathlessness to name but a few. And they can't understand it when the results of tests and scans come back showing nothing is wrong. Well, the reason is that you don't have any of these physical illnesses, you're being tricked by your sensitised nervous system that has become overloaded by fear.

The way to recover according to Claire Weekes' method is to stop fighting the symptoms, stop obsessing about them, because this only causes morefear and tension which is what keeps your nerves sensitised. Instead of fighting you should temporarily ACCEPT the symptoms with the minimum of fear you can, after all these symptoms are fake abd fraudulent no matter how real they feel to you they are not life tbreatening, they can't disable you and they can't send you crazy. So stop frightening yourself half to death and just Accept these symptoms without fear and because you are jo longer feeding your nervous system with fear they begin to recover, they cease to be oversensitised, and when that happens then in the fullness of time you will regain your quiet mind once more and you will feel normal once again.

That then is the short version, the longer version is to read Claire Weekes's book mentioned above, you will soon recognise yourself in its pages and itwill resolve your bewilderment and will direct you along the Yellow Brick Road to recovery.

[sandii100 in reply to Jeff1943]

I've read two of her books and feel good and positive when reading them. It's very tough to accept though. I wish I could believe it when I tell myself 'I accept these anxious thoughts and feelings'

[Jeff1943 in reply to sandii100]

Sandii, acceptance does take a lot of practice and persistance to perfect, to begin with if you can 'glimpse' acceptance for just half a minute that's a good start. The rest will come with time. When you get the bad feelings and thoughts imagine every muscle in your body going limp, imagine there's a muscle in your brain and imagine that going limp too, let the anxious feelings rush by you like great waves crashing past a rock on the shore, they cause a lot of disturbance but they cannot harm the rock or you. The power of anxiety is limited, it gives the impression that it is going to destroy us but it can't because after all's said and done anxiety only exists as a blip in our overloaded nervous system. Good luck on your journey to recovery.