Stop fighting your anxiety, it only makes things worse. Instead, surrender to it, run up the white flag, accept it for the time being: do the exact opposite of what you've been doing until now.
Ask yourself, did fighting make you feel better? Did it cure you of panicky feelings, palpitations, upset stomach, derealisation, agoraphobia, feelings of doom, chest pain and all the other symptoms in the Doctor Google guide to anxiety disorder?
On the contrary, all that extra adrenaline your body released as a result of the extra stress and strain of fighting only made your nervous system more sensitised still.
If you're digging yourself into a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. So stop fighting - stop checking your pulse every 5 minutes, stop testing to see if you can walk round the store without feeling dizzy, stop checking that phantom ache or pain to see if it's gone away yet. Instead learn to co-exist with all the fake symptoms, accept them without reservation (for the moment) and acknowledge they're going to be around for some time yet - but you've made important changes in how you deal with them.
Practice Acceptance and stop flooding your nervous system with fear hormone and eventually and inevitably those nerves will lose their sensitivity. And you will be free at last! Free at last! Free at last!
"I find that some patients complain , 'I have accepted the churning in my stomach but it is still there. So what am I to do now?' But how could they have really accepted it if they still complain about it?
"I try to make them understand that they must be prepared to let their stomachs churn...only by so doing would they be truly accepting. In this way, and only in this way, would they reach the stage when it would matter no longer whether their stomachs churned or not. Then freed from the stimulous of tension and anxiety, their adrenalin-releasing nerves would gradually calm down and the churning would automatically lessen and finally cease."
Doctor Claire Weekes, 'Self help for your nerves', 23rd. reprinting, 1986.
Written by
Jeff1943
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Hello Jeff. I love this! Reading the direct quote from Dr. Claire Weekes’ book reminds me that there are still many symptoms I have not truly accepted. I also think it’s important to note that once you’ve accepted a symptom, it’s very common for more to keep coming up. ACCEPT THOSE TOO! Your anxiety will continuously find ways to physically manifest itself until you’ve accepted that the phantom pains you feel are not real. It’s a lot easier and cheaper to do that then to worry or wonder if what you have could be X,Y, or Z.
So true what you say, TrustnGod. By framing our mind to accept all the symptoms, time and again if need be, we stem the flow of fear hormone and our nervous system returns to peaceful mode.
How can we move from ‘putting up with’ to true acceptance? Is time the healer here? I don’t feel I have fully accepted the anxiety and it’s symptoms...therefore the frustration and worry that I will not get better. How do we move past the 24/7 inner commentary and frustration to fix anxiety?
IWO96, true acceptance is a state of mind that we cultivate based on belief without reservation that it will lead to recovery. We acknowledge that our symptoms are nervous not physical in origin and can therefore do us no lasting harm, consequently we have nothing to fear.
We also acknowledge that we must let time pass and not expect (and keep checking for) early benefit, it will come in its own time.
To begin with we may only be able to hold the viewpoint of acceptance for a few minutes but we can build on this, this is known as 'glimpsing'.
I can't really explain it better than that but the person who conveys the answer to your question best must be Claire Weekes herself in her first book ''Self help for your nerves" also titled ''Hope and help for your nerves' available new or used from Amazon and Ebay.
As she was the person who devised Acceptance nobody can explain it better than her.
I just love these comments and your original post but my problem is that I am always planning for some future time when I will try to get rid of the anxiety? I bargain with myself that i will accept it for as long as I can, but my get out clause is that I will eventually do the old rituals/OCD comp[ulsions to get rid of the awful anxiety? So I am playing a waiting game? Hoping the anxiety may go away so I don't need to do my OCD compulsions, but always with the proviso that when the anxiety gets too bad I can perform the old rituals to finally get rid of the anxiety (if time has not made it pass?) So I am always hopeful time will heal and the anxiety will lessen as the scientific theory goes......anxiety can only go up so far before dropping???? Well, mine just does not sem to drop???? So, if it doesn't, I have my back up plan?? Am I just cheating and defeating the whole process of recovery? I have once held back from performing OCD compulsions for 6 painful weeks but eventually just had to do them as felt they would never go away????? So i had to get rid of them as I couldn't tolerate not knowing however long these awful feelings would last. They overshadow my whole life and do not leave my mind for a minute.... 6 weeks of this was just terrible? how much more was I expected to stand??? How long do you have to tolerate such intense and real feelings of total fear /anxiety and physical pain where you feel your head is going to explode with distress? I could not contemplate longer than the 6 wqeeks I did, and that was only due to 4 of them being out of the country so I was actually physically unable to relieve the anxiety??? I expect the answer to be you just have to go on and live with the intense unrest??? It just seems impossible for me however hard i try and however much I know to tolerate the feelings??? Thank you x
Let's be clear, bergh, when I say Acceptance I am talking about Acceptance as a path to complete recovery. That's why I always add "for the time being" or "for the moment" after using the word Acceptance.
God forbid that anybody should be told they're going to have to "accept" their bad feelings for life. This is simply not true. Do not fall for such misinformation.
I don't believe in waiting for anxiety to go away. If nothing changes why on Earth should it go away? And I'm not familiar with OCD compulsions but ask yourself: Have they resulted in your complete recovery?
I say again that Claire Weekes' mantra of 'Face - Accept- Float - Let time pass' can cure you no matter how long or how deeply you have suffered. Just as it has for tens of millions of people since Doctor Weekes first published her Acceptance method in 1962. Tens of millions? That's what Doctor David Barlow wrote recently and he's Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Psychiatry at Boston University.
Bergh, When you say "you accept it for as long as you can" I don't think you're talking about accepting it at all. I think you're just "putting up with it" which is quite different to Acceptance as Weekes talks about it.
If ever you decide to free yourself of anxiety once and for all using Acceptance you really need to read Weekes' first book described in my last reply to this post. My overview given on this forum is not sufficient, you have to hear it from the horse's mouth. Some people try applying Acceptance without reading the book but it's like trying to use a mobile phone/cellphone for the first time without reading any instructions.
The great thing about Acceptance, bergh, is that it replaces fear. And it's your normal response of fear when confronted with your symptoms that is keeping your nervous system in its over sensitised state. Once you stop pumping out fear hormones your nervous system starts to recover from over sensitivity.
You can't fear and accept something at the same time. So once you have framed your mind to Acceptance then the fear subsides and disappears.
Why not try it? Don't expect same day results, you have to practice with perseverance never asking 'When will I be free of it?' Acceptance is simple but it's not necessarily easy. Though it's a lot easier than putting up with anxiety ad infinitum.
Thank you so much.....and having ruminated over this!!!! for over a day, I have a clearer understanding of what you are saying now! I need to recognise the difference between fully "accepting" and "tolerating/putting up with" ?? They are different things. I have always presumed just "putting up with" should eventually subside/get better whereas I think you are saying to truly accept is to accept the feeling will not change into my idea of an acceptable thought ( and no doubt feeding into my OCD ideas of acceptable)This is truly gobsmacking as us Mancunians say! i need to really accept this and understand its power. Thank you. Thank you so much. I will respond again after more thought and time to digest and really accept your message.
Here's my best description of what Acceptance means when used according to Doctor Weekes' method:
"I don't like this feeling and these symptoms and troublesome ideas but I am not going to fight them. I am going to let them come and accept their presence FOR THE TIME BEING.
" I am not going to start checking myself every five minutes to see if there is any improvement. I accept that my illness will continue for some indetermined time to come.
"But I know full well that these distressing symptoms are not real physical illness and are caused by over sensitization of my nervous system. I know that by accepting the symptoms I am cutting off the supply of fear hormone that is keeping my nerves sensitised.
"Ideally I will cultivate a state of mind where my belief in acceptance is so complete that I will carry on with my day as normal. It may be a day filled with anxiety, it may be free of anxiety. Quite frankly I'm not bothered one way or the other as I know that given time ("let time pass") acceptance will free me of my symptoms and I will regain my quiet mind.
"So I agree to co-exist with my anxieties without obsessing about them but without trying to block out the symptoms which I know I must Face and pass through."
But for the best explanation read Weekes' first book, don't rely on YouTube snippits of her talking, you want the recovery plan set out in full by its creator."
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