Long story short. My anxiety started 20 years ago. A year and a half ago I discovered Claire Weekes. I read her book and gave it a shot. I asked a few questions of Jeff and Beevee. I watched that Anxiety guys YouTube videos which I highly recommend. And I also watched Wonderbro on YouTube. It’s a year and a half later and I feel like a different person. I’m on the road to recovery for sure. I still take Effexor. But my main focus is that I don’t care about my symptoms.
Long story short, try if you can to just accept all your symptoms. Don’t try and make them go away. Let them go away while you are still in the situation. It won’t happen overnight. I still deal with my symptoms and I’m still making mistakes where I’m taking them too seriously. But the first step for me was to let them be there. If you feel like you are going to faint, who cares. You feel nauseous, feeling of unreality, heart palpitations, numbness in your hands or feet, twitching eye, negative thoughts, weird thoughts, tightness in your neck etc etc. The symptoms don’t matter. And you have to feel them over and over again until your brain realizes it doesn’t need to send you adrenaline anymore.
There’s no trick. If you are still obsessed with whatever you are putting into your body ie tea, iron, magnesium, vitamins, caffeine etc. You are not there yet. There’s no quick fix. Unfortunately. But I’d say the first step is just simply to stop obsessing about your symptoms. They are a bluff. A ridiculously bad poker hand. But the problem is when you are in the midst of a particular symptom is feels soooooo real. But it’s not. It might take 5 minutes to go away. Sometimes my feeling of unreality takes days. That’s my main symptom if I had one. But I could care less. That’s when I try to do the opposite and rather than hide I make a conscious effort to do something.
Also, everyone is different so stop trying to compare your symptoms with others, if you can. It’s really hard. Claire weekes says in her book, and I’m paraphrasing, that you don’t have to meet each day as if it’s this huge thing you have to overcome. Face the symptoms. Don’t laugh at them, don’t attack them, don’t question them and definitely don’t fear them. They are normal. A normal reaction to fear. Go to work. Play with your kids, go to dinner, and if you have an attack, symptoms, just let them be there. And if they last for a while, just carry on. Eventually they will leave. But don’t try and make them leave. I think that’s big. Or at least it is for me.
The symptoms don’t matter.
Good luck!
And thanks to beevee and Jeff!
From Claire Weekes Hope and Help for Your Nerves
