Every day new people arrive here: they are bewildered, frightened, desperate for escape from the anxiety that now blights their lives. They want an instant solution, a quick fix, a magic wand that will banish the beast with one wave.
If you are overwhelmed by anxiety then it is right to ask your doctor for medications, they bring relief allowing us to continue with family and work responsibilities. But when you stop the meds the beast could still be there waiting.
There are alternatives, methods of self help that bring recovery by changing our perception of our anxiety. First we must understand the enemy. Our nervous system governs our body and all our senses but if we subject it to worry, stress and attention for too long it becomes over sensitive. In this state it starts to play mind games with us: it tricks us into thinking we have some major illness, it sends us panic attacks and all kinds of bad feelings. We suspect some debilitating physical disease, sensitised nerves are very good at mimicing real physical illness.
But what you are suffering is not real physical illness, it's your overworked nervous system misfiring and only running on three cylinders. There is reassurance in knowing that anxiety can't kill, can't disable, can't send you crazy. It's power is limited. So now you know what your up against you're ready to start the fight back. Only that's the last thing you should do, fighting only produces more tension and strain. Instead, experience tells us to do the opposite to fighting: we should simply accept all the symptoms of anxiety for the moment and do so calmly and with the minimum of fear. Let the waves of panic and pain and palpitations come, let them wash over you and past you. They have met their match because you now understand their little game.
By denying the bad feelings fear we deny them the very thing they thrive on and by accepting instead of fighting our nervous system begins to convalesce and recover. But it must be utter acceptance, not just putting-up-with. Now you understand how anxiety works you need feel bewildered no longer, you know you are going to recover, life will not be like this for long.
If you search for the book 'Self help with your nerves' by Claire Weekes on amazon.co.uk or 'Hope and help for your nerves' by the same author on amazon.com you will find the book that first set out the Acceptance Method which with practice allows everybody to recover no longer how long or how badly you have suffered. First go to the reader reviews of which there are several hundred and note how 95% rate the book Very Good or Excellent.
Reading a book may be the last thing you feel like doing right now. But this book is special. It's all about you.
Bought a Claire Weekes book. 
