Sorry to all you folks who have heard all this before but we have to remember new people are joining all the time and this will be new to them.
A long time ago there was an Australian woman called Claire Weekes who was studying to be a doctor. She began to experience anxiety disorder, panic attacks and all the other bad feelings we know about. I'm sure many medical students suffer from anxiety but Weekes wasn't just any medical student: she developed a method that allowed her to recover from anxiety disorder. Then she wrote a book about her method so others could benefit and she devoted her medical career to help people recover using her method.
Since she wrote that book untold thousands have used her method to recover and if you check out the reader reviews on Amazon you'll see several hundred people have left reviews and 90% of them rate it excellent or very good. The book by the way is called 'Self help for your nerves' in the U.K. and 'Hope and help for your nerves' in the U.S. She wrote many other books but that first one is the one to go for. You will recognise yourself in its pages, its like she knows you and has written it for you personally. It explains why you are experiencing anxiety, its limitations and a road to recovery.
If you experience stress and worry for a long period your nervous system eventually becomes over sensitised and makes this known to you by sending you a variety of symptoms, many of which mimic real organic illness. These include stomach complaints, panic attacks, exaggerated fear of dying, palpitations, shimmering visual disturbances, body paind including chest pain and breathlessness to name but a few. We wonder what's hit us and rush to consult Doctor Google who suggests all sorts of terminal illnesses and so kore fear is generated which causes more anxiety which causes more feat and so on in a vicious circle. Even when doctors reassure us after medical tests that we are in good physical health we don't believe them and demand more tests. Sensitised nerves also exaggerate our normal fears ten-fold so the normal concern about dying becomes an obsession that death is imminent.
Claire Weekes tells us the first thing to do is to stop worrying about illnesses we don't have and concentrate on the illness we do have: Anxiety Disorder. So her first impetitive is to FACE what the problem and instead of fighting it to accept it for the time being instead. Fighting it only causes more fear and stress whereas if we can learn to Accept the symptoms with a minimum of fear we stop bombarding our nerves with anxiety and give them a chance to desensitise and recover. So ACCEPTANCE is her second imperitive for recovery. She explains that although anxiety can frighten us half to death it can't kill us, disable us or send us insane. Anxiety is just a bully pretending it can do those things so it is a fraud, a fake and a confidence trickster. So why fear something that is fake, far better to accept it and get on with your life knowing that by accepting it without further fear you are hastening your recovery.
I will not explain the two further imperitives which are explained fully in her book. But I commend her book to you even though it was written before some of you were born and Claire Weekes passed to life beyond some years ago, it has stood the test of time.
Claire Weekes was a wizard when it comes to guiding people to recovery through self help and her teachings continue their good work far beyond the boundaries of her native Australia. She was indeed the true Wizard of Oz and her method will surely help you along the Yellow Brick Road to Recovery.
severe health anxiety - on the road to recovery! 
Finally got the claire weekes book
