Anxiety disorder, let's start at the beginning.

[Jeff1943]

Let's start at the beginning. Maybe you inherited a tendency towards high anxiety. Maybe not, maybe your nerves have just been over-sensitised by too much stress. Too much over work, disappointment, loss, grief, toxic relationships, worry about friends or family.

Finally, your nervous system decides it's had enough and it becomes over sensitive. In this state small worries and problems become exaggerated ten fold. This can take many forms but a common one is health anxiety. A headache must be a brain tumour. Muscular tension in the chest must mean your heart is failing. A stomach ache must be cancer. Even the reassurance of medical tests and doctors leaves us thinking "what if they've missed something?"

We've all been there but we're all still here to tell the tale. Because health anxiety cannot kill you, cannot disable you and cannot send you crazy.

Without help you can easily get into a vicious circle of symptoms causing fear causing more anxiety causing more symptoms causing more fear and so on. Anxiety feeds on fear. The second fear that we add to the flash of first fear, that is.

You can recover from anxiety disorder (formerly called hypochondria) no matter how long or how deeply you have suffered. That's right, you can recover - health anxiety doesn't have to be a life sentence.

I'm not a medical practitioner so I can't instruct you what to do. But I can tell you what helped me to recover and what has helped many others. Many years ago a doctor called Claire Weekes experienced anxiety disorder. She gradually devised a method which allowed her to recover. Doctor Weekes then wrote a book describing her method titled "Hope and help for your nerves".

She said that first of all we should stop fighting the symptoms of anxiety. Fighting creates stress and strain: the last thing sensitised nervous systems need more of! Instead, she advocated "accepting" all the symptoms of health anxiety for the time being knowing full well they are imposters and can't truly harm us. Accept them without adding second fear to the flash of first fear. Accept them completely by agreeing to co-exist with them for the moment.

She summed up her method as: Face. Accept. Float. Let time pass.

It has been said* that over the past 50 years tens of millions of people have recovered using her protocols. She was even nominated for a Nobel Prize.

Her book is still in print and available new or pre-owned from Amazon or Ebay. It's quite simply life changing.

*David Barlow, Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, Boston University. Source: "Claire Weekes- the woman who cracked the anxiety code", Judith Hoare, 2019.

[Miss-P74]

thanks Jeff. I hope you are well

[Agora1]

Thanks Jeff for your wise words. Help and Hope is out there but we must take

that first step in believing that or we stay stagnant in fear. xx

[Tinkynutbug]

Again Thank you for the reminder i’ll pull out my book now.

God bless you hope your well.

[Jeff1943]

Have you read her book? Are you judging it unread? The few lines I wrote outlining her method are not sufficient to practice her version of acceptance.

There are of course other remedies than Weekes', I hope you find respite and recovery from one of these before too long.

[Cat33]

Thank you Jeff your words are always such a big comfort

Claire Weekes has been such a help in my life I can't recommend her highly enough to anyone suffering from anxiety

All the very best

[Rosa2019]

I carry around my copy of Hope and Help for your Nerves by Claire Weekes like it’s a lifesaver. It is simply the best book on anxiety I have ever read. Three of her books, including this one are available reissued in audible form. I think the best thing about this book is that you don’t feel alone in your plight. She offers case studies that make it clear that this affliction is much more common than generally known.

[Krn210]

Thank you for the wise words Jeff