Allow yourself to feel everything

[Carl87]

In order to be Anxiety-Free, you have to be willing to endure months of feeling uncomfortable, and this is AFTER your initial suffering of the fear/worry phase. Anxiety disorders - The way they works is:

1. A thought, circumstance or situation causes discomfort.

2. You fear that discomfort and begin questioning the discomfort and thought/circumstance/situation, creating more Anxiety. This makes you worry more, causing more thoughts and more anxiety. A visciois circle that we can all so easily fall into when we don’t understand it.

3. The ‘What is happening to me?’ , ‘Why is this thing not going away?’ stage. More anxiousness.

4. Frustration grows, anger , followed by sadness of your condition , then maybe even depression as a result of it.

5. You may get given medication by your doctor because that will get rid of it (it doesn’t, it temporarily calms you, but doesn’t cure you). The reality is that little GP’s actually know much at all about Mental Health. They give you a booklet and send you on your way. So not helpful at all.

So what now? You’ve tried everything right? There’s no hope left at all for you? Wrong.

This is where knowledge and understanding comes in. Once you know and understand Anxiety and your body, something miraculous happens, you fear less. And with fearing less, eases your symptoms, and when you understand Anxiety symptoms and sensations are 100% completely and utterly harmless, you lose even more fear. You learn to ACCEPT and ALLOW every single aspect of your Anxiety. The disturbing thoughts, worrisome catastrophe’s you’ve conjured up in your head. It isn’t the real you. You are not Anxiety. You are far stronger, superior and smarter than anxiety. Is it easy? No, it’s not easy, it’s horrible , uncomfortable and frustrating. But by allowing it ALL, what are you doing? You are curing yourself. Walk towards your fears, not avoid them. Don’t distract yourself , don’t do anything to stop feeling uncomfortable , it won’t be forever.

Your brains fear response is called the Amygdala, you’ve conditioned this to react inappropriately due to your fears and it’s formed a fixed neural pathway in the brain, that’s the bad news. The good news however, is that you can retrain your brain to unlearn these conditioned fears , creating a new , non anxious pathway which leads you back to peace. This isn’t going to be overnight, you must endure it reacting many times over a period of many months , on and off, before it FINALLY and eventually concludes that there is no need to keep flooding you with such adrenaline (anxiety). And it stops sending the signals to you. You must have patience and trust the process , don’t fear it . Let it be there, feel that jolt in your stomach , feel detached from the world , it won’t last.

Anxiety is our bodies protection mechanism and it doesn’t know it’s not supposed to give you this anxiety. You must show it that there’s nothing to fear and that’s a trick. It’s false, and when you realise and understand this , you will be free once more. Recovery lies within all of us if we just let these energy surges be there without making them go away. Let the surges be there, they will lessen and lessen as time goes by until they eventually stop.

Stop looking for the constant reassurance that you’ll be ok. You are ok, you always have been. You just have an overactive Amygdala. It will bow down once more given enough time. Please trust me as I’ve been through this process and know full well how difficult, but completely possible it is.

[Forestina]

Thank you. It helps me understand the struggle I face and why doing something three or four times isn't making it any easier.

It's just that I seem to be setting myself up for a fail bit in a sense it can't be as it is about acceptance.

Tutoring children on their own homes is very intensive and I currently face the obstacles of getting there on traffic, not having brain fog or scaring them and then getting back home. All of which seem insurmountable at the moment however much I try to move forward and break it into manageable bits.

[Agora1]

Carl87 I absolutely and positively agree with everything you said. Once we can understand, accept and practice that, we are home free. Never allowing Anxiety to take control again.

Thanks for the great post.

[Jbro78]

Great post. Thanks for the reminder. Ive been practicing acceptance and floating for almost 8 months now. Great to have reminders. It's a tough road but I'm already feeling stronger. Practicing masterly inactivity as Claire weekes says. You are right. It takes time.