A Blog set up for Anxiety Sufferers

Again sorry for the late post……..

Today I thought I would do something a little bit different and make it where others can partcipate and share there own tips on what has really helped them. I would say educating myself was by far the most important thing that helped me, understanding why I felt the way I did, helped take all the fear and worry out of it and opened up the door for me to begin my recovery. I no longer spent each day worrying and trying to fix how I felt, this in turn helped my mind and body have the breaks it needed to heal. But there were a few things along the way that helped me and without going into loads of detail on each one here are just a few.

Exercise and keeping busy – I have mentioned it before but I took up exercise and it really helped. It burnt of all the excess adrenalin for a while and when I came back from a workout I felt great. The adrenalin would eventually build back up as my body created it faster than a normal body, due to years of over worrying. But it made me realise that all that was wrong with me was not mental in anyway, the exhausted body and feelings of detachment was just adrenalin on tired nerves and a tired mind.

Getting out of bed when I woke – I used to feel a little spaced out when I woke and would start to go monitor how I felt, sort of go through the day in my head, feel that ‘Oh here we go again’ start to the day. I found just waking and getting out of bed and being active in other simple things made a difference. Just going down and making breakfast, living my life how I should do and not sitting around moping and feeling sorry for myself.

Moving towards my feelings of anticipation - An anxious mind will have us believing all sorts of things that never actually happen. I would be one minute avoiding a situation in case I felt bad and the next I was not going to let anxiety to win and say I was going. I learnt that when I felt this way, it was far better to just go without thinking about it, just move right into the middle of whatever was having me question it. This attitude probably saved me from a life of avoidance. When I just went I can honestly say sometimes I still felt apprehensive and other times nothing and I have never felt so happy and proud of myself afterwards. Each time just unmasked a little more of the truth behind how I felt and my confidence just grew and grew, I could do anything and go anywhere, it was just my anxious mind that was trying to trick me into believing otherwise. You begin to no longer question or worry about places and situations as you have been there many times before, there is no ‘unknown’ left. This is not to say I run around doing this and that, I just continued to build it up slowly.

Never being impressed by how I felt at any particular time - Too many people use the word setback when really they are just going through the usual up and down stage that anxiety brings. Just as someone with depression can have good and bad days, so can someone from suffering with anxiety, it’s all part and parcel of it. A lot will come on here and say ‘I have cracked it, I have not felt anxious for a few days now, I am free’. I always worry about these posts as when they do have the next anxious moment they will let it throw them into total despair and feel sorry for themselves, wonder and question why, try to scramble their way back to how they felt the week before. Don’t get me wrong it took me a long time to build an attitude of being positive however I felt. Reacting to how you feel day by day or week by week just has you monitoring and fighting how you feel. Good or bad try and smile and get on, the good days will be back as night is day, but don’t try to force them.

Accepting all the oddness as part of me – I suffered pretty badly with D.P and feelings of detachment. One of the hardest things I learnt to do was accept these feelings as part of me, but in time I did. At one time I was trapped in this hell because I spent every waking minute monitoring how I felt, trying everything to fix it, make it better, I became more and more locked in my own mind. I then began to live with it, accept the strangeness as part of me, be it in a conversation or just walking down the road, I no longer let it impress me so much. I almost thought of it as being drunk, I accepted the feelings of drunkenness without a second thought because I understood them. Once I began to understand these feelings of detachment, it became easier to learn to accept them, even though it was tough at times. But again this is what saved me, I began to monitor myself less and less, the world around me began to again take my attention and little by little I felt more and more normal. Seeing someone who was grieving is the same thing, when you get that vacant stare out of them, like they are not really there. This is because they have not been able to think of anything else but the person they have lost, they have had no time for the outside world and have become trapped in themselves and can’t seem to properly connect, but in time they begin to come to terms with it and they take more and more interest in other things and the world around them and normality returns, that is exactly what I had to learn to do.

There are a few more that I will share with you later, but these were my own top 5.

Please feel free to share anything that has helped you, it would be good to list a few from others.

For more help with anxiety visit www.anxietynomore.co.uk

For more information about my book ‘At last a life’ visit

www.anxietynomore.co.uk/the_book.html

Firstly I am back from the Isle of Wight, certain promises on accommadation and hours were not kept and it was not what I expected, so I thought it best to return and thanks to Candie for holding fort while I have been away. So as I have not posted in a while I decided to jump straight in.

One thing I think a lot of people are guilty of is trying to change or suppress how they feel. This I feel needs expanding on as in many cases it can come almost automatically. To find out if you fall into this category ask yourself these questions:

1. Do you spend any of your day trying to change how you feel?

2. Do you ever avoid something that may bring these feelings on?

3. Is your whole day consumed with getting better?

4. Do you only see a life without anxiety as something you must achieve?

5. Do you have a mental battle with yourself during the week, going round in circles trying to figure it all out?

If the answer is yes to any of the above then you are still trying to change or supress how you feel. Let’s start with each question and expand on it.

1. Do you spend your day trying to change how you feel?

This is a very common habit to get into, one I certainly fell for. We have tired and worn nerves that make our skin feel tingly, tense and we can become irritable. We also have a tired worn out mind that makes thinking slow and we feel odd and spaced out. None of these you can change by fighting against them, just allow and give them space. I was once walking into town and doing the usual, trying to control and suppress how I felt, I must control this, keep it under wraps, make it better.

I then went into a shop to pay for something and realised I had lost my wallet that had quite a sum of money in it. I was frantic trying to find it, I checked all my pockets, traced my last steps and went back to work devastated. I realised for the half hour when I was looking for this money that it became more important than how I felt and that I felt quite normal for this period, like my attention had switched from me and I was no longer concerned with how I felt, but more with the money I had lost.

That episode taught me that I needed to learn to switch from me and stop trying to control or suppress how I felt, it was not important and was only leading me to feel more detached than ever. I needed outward things to take up my attention and not waste so much time on me

Question 2: Do you ever avoid things that bring these feelings on?

Another classic and we can become masters at this. I always felt it was better to not feel these symptoms and would avoid situations that would bring them on. I used to make excuse after excuse to fit in with not feeling this way. Of course in time I realised this could not bring me home, it was o.k to feel anxious, this is where my progress will come from. So I no longer hid away. In the past I felt detached and anxious in social situations so avoided them, well no more, if I felt odd/anxious then so be it. 

I would avoid going into crowded places in case I felt overwhelmed. This changed and I went towards them with a ’so what’ attitude. I would feel a little overwhelmed as expected and feel the need to escape, but I never did, I would not be bluffed into running away from a feeling. My life that was becoming narrower and narrower was now beginning to broaden and I realised more was less, the more anxiety I felt, the less it came in the future, to lose my fear I had to feel it and see it through and really see it for what it was, unmask the bogey man that was holding me back. Everytime I felt anxious or overwhlemed it had a peak and would always die down, if I had not gone towards and through these feelings I would have never found this out. This realisation broadened my life and I began to build up my confidence to do more and more.

Question 3: Is your whole day consumed with getting better?

Another trap I fell into, I would almost watch my progress daily, getting excited at the good days, thinking ‘that’s it I am fine’, then getting really down about the bad. I would always be tuning in to how I felt, it was a daily ritual. Again I lost this habit by moving away from the subject. I stopped reading up on the subject, stopped trying to find the next elusive eureka moment. I realised I needed to get back to living again and I almost dropped the subject and trusted that the knowledge I had built up was enough, that I would never lose what I had learnt and I no longer had to spend my day trying to find new answers. This really did help me. 

I have said it before but I hate forums for this very reason. I have seen people post 15 times a day for years on end, their anxiety consumes them, they think of nothing else. They can never really hope to move away and start living again, the subject almost becomes them and they think and talk of little else. This is why it is important to take time outs, to build up hobbies and interests. The subject is in my life, but at a normal manageable level and the reason I cannot answer personal emails on my main site. I truly would be answering people 24 hours a day, it would become impossible and again the subject would become my day/week, I would never get a break. Through the blog I can help people at a level I am comfortable with and have a life outside of the subject.

Question 4: Do you see a life without anxiety as something you must achieve?

This is a very important point. People who chase the dream of being anxiety free can tend to put a lot of pressure on themselves to do so and their days can be full of ups and downs and disappointments. Again they can begin to over search for that magic cure or sentence, always believing they have missed something. My real progress came when I stopped trying to get better, I came to the conclusion that it was o.k to feel this way. My attitude towards how I felt changed and that is very important. Don’t see anxiety as the big green monster trying to consume you. Learn to be o.k with how you feel, don’t see it as something you must be rid of before you can be happy again, don’t give it that respect and learn to live alongside it.

Question 5: Do you have a mental battle with yourself each week going around in circles trying to figure it all out?

Well I was certainly guilty of this one. My mind became so tired and led to feelings of detachment, feeling spaced out and not with it. I always thought I had to fix it. My battle was twofold, one trying to make myself feel better and the other trying to find the long term solution. Looking back I can’t believe I ever thought I could do this, as all I was doing was tiring my fragile mind further. In time it almost became automatic, like I could not think of anything else, the subject really had become me and rather than being able to try and think of a solution, I just thought about it, my mind no longer had the resilience to try and figure how to help myself.

I ended up with a deeply fatigued mind and to reverse this process I  just had to step back and allow it to over think, to process obsessive thoughts and thinking, without being alarmed by it, I just really had to go with it until it found it’s resilience and clear thinking again. I certainly was not going to try and fix it, as this had brought this over fatigued mind on in the first place.

In time my thinking did become clear and flexible once again and I did not make the same mistake again and did not go down the ‘think my way better route’ I felt how I felt and that was it, trying to think my way better and figure it all out were just going to tire my mind further and this was something I would not do. I would not try to ‘not’ think about the subject, through habit I would and sometimes I needed to remind myself of something, but the 24 hour battle with myself was over.

Hopefully there is a strong message in there and it helps people in some way

Paul

For more help and information on anxiety visit www.anxietynomore.co.uk

For more information about my book ‘At last a life’ visit

www.anxietynomore.co.uk/the_book.html

Hi all, Well todays post will be a little shorter than normal, but will cover an important point.

A lot of people complain, especially when waking that they feel very self aware, that they seem to be wired in to how they feel. They don’t know if to try and push these feelings away and ignore them or go over them and try to control them in some way, using sayings or actions.

I also used to get confused in the early days and would almost try and talk myself out of how I felt when waking , as though I had to piece the jigsaw together. I would start with a few sayings like ’It’s o.k to feel this way’ , ‘It’s just a habit, your mind is tired’ or think ‘o.k get up, get busy, ignore how you feel’  and so I would run around all day trying to force forgetfulness, but these 2 approaches never worked, surely I was doing the right things here. But as usual if it did not help, then I surely was not. 

So I would continue to be very self aware, feel unreal, nauseas on waking and throughout my day, why? Then it hit me, I was ruminating over how I felt, trying to make it better, mentally tiring myself further, I was cluttering my already cluttered mind up. Also by running away, I was tensing myself against how I felt, I must not think about these feelings, get busy, this was mentally and physically tiring in itself.

What I had to do is say ‘So what if  you wake conscious of the lump in my throat, the self awareness, the feelings of unreality, it is o.k to be conscious of it’ I did not have to run around trying to push it into the background or try and talk it better, going through different sayings to ease it, to sort it out before getting on with my day. This was only tiring me out further and saying it was important NOT to feel this way. It was not important NOT to feel this way, in fact it was fine. I was allowed to feel self aware, I was allowed to feel nauseas on waking, feel odd and unreal. Everything I did before said it was not, my old attitude was, ’I have to change this, I have to wake clearly, I must surppress these feelings, ignore them. This was all wrong, no wonder I was feeling more tired and cluttered than ever, once again it was all about allowing. This new attitude helped me so much and was a major factor in moving me forward and made the day a lot easier.

I have done the post on when people wake as this used to be my problem at times. I used to almost expect to wake feeling self aware, nauseas, unreal. I spent so much time trying to fix it, until I realised it was fine to wake feeling this way, expect it if you wish, but be fine with it, lock stock and barrel.

I did this short post as it has come up a few times recently. So for those who it is relevant I hope this helps. 

Just to let people know I wont be around as much in a months time as I am doing some voluntry work away from home in the summer. I will leave some posts that Candie will place up each month, so the blog will not be affected.

The main site will be run by my mother until I get back, although I will have some internet access in case of any problems. So nothing will be affected, it just means I wont be able to reply on here for a while. If you need anything Candie will be running things until I get back, which should be around 2/3 months. I will do one last post before I go though sometime next month.

Paul

For more help and information on anxiety visit www.anxietynomore.co.uk

Sorry the post is a day late, but better late than never

Secondly the blog has been very busy this month, an amazing amount of posts. One reason maybe is because I added a few posts and reply’s into the book and made reference to the blog. So to all the new people, welcome and I hope it is helping. Todays post comes as I have seen the words ‘I don’t believe I will ever be better’ or ‘Can I really be recovered, I can never believe that’ phrases like that pop up often on here.

Many people have different symptoms and in this post I am just going to stick with the psychological symptoms, as that is what seems to bother people the most, like the oddness, the strange thoughts, the attention on oneself, the unreality, etc…A tired mind has been spoke about by me before, but let’s just clear this up in more detail for the last time.

All these symptoms above come from a tired mind, a mind that has been exhausted with worry, with deep thinking, with concern. These symptoms will not exist without a tired mind, FACT. I felt all these symptoms for years, I no longer feel them because my mind is no longer tired, that is the only difference, nothing else. Why are people coming back here and saying they are feeling better, that the symptoms have eased? Because their mind is still tired, but not as much, they have through understanding finally given it some breaks.

I saw a post last week saying ‘I still think this is more, I worry I am going to get carted off somewhere, I worry I am going crazy, I worry that….’ this person has not a hope in hell of reversing the process with this mind set, how much of a daily onslaught has this mind to go through? That is the exact onslaught mine went through and I know where it took me, I went over and over my condition, I worried the hell out of my day, thought so deeply I could hardly register what was going on around me, nothing would ever change in this state, in fact I got worse, which makes so much sense to me now, but then I just thought there was no way out. The only reason I got worse for years is because I did everything wrong, the only reason I am the person I am today is because I began to do things right.

To come through this stage we have to understand and believe that this is a tired mind and give it the breaks it needs.

The way I got through was to finally realise that this was the reason why I felt odd and distant, my mind raced, I had odd obsessive thoughts. This understanding had stopped me worrying daily and spending so much time trying to fix it, at last the mind had a small break. I then had to live alongside the way I felt, yuck it’s not great, but I had no choice, I stopped fighting the strangeness, I accepted my irrational thoughts as normal, I had to, my mind would only repair itself with a break, while it was tired and fatiqued it may continue to play a few tricks and that was fine, it was not reality.

I actually remember going swimming each week and all through the swim, questioning why I felt odd, worrying about my condition, why does everything seem so distant, ‘why does that clock on the wall look so odd’? ‘Why do the children laughing seem so strange?’ questioning, questioning and then starting again on the bus home ‘Why could everyone else enjoy themselves and I can’t? ‘I have to figure this out’. The week I had my new attitude and understanding I said to myself, ‘No more questioning, I will take all the oddness and strangeness with me this time, it’s just my tired mind, it really does not matter how I feel. The swim was still odd and strange, but not as bad, I for once had not pounded my already tired mind. The silly thoughts no longer filled me with dread or fear as I understood them, so they could ramble away, I never had them before the tired mind, so they were not important.

It made sense now, I had hit on something here. I actually felt elated and could not wait to keep going this way. I was put to the test many times, up and down, weeks of freedom, then bham worse than ever, but the same attitude ‘Paul, take it with you, live alongside it until it passes’. I went everywhere like this, I would visit a stately home with my partner and feel odd and not with it, look at something and have to read the description twice, but I no longer questioned why, it was just my tired mind, in time I would be able to take everything in. In fact once I accepted it as part of me, it was also nowhere near as bad or scarey.

I had finally been able to live with how I felt, I had accepted this was me for the time being, as horrid as it was at times. But improvements began to spur me on. I began to feel more and more involved in the world around me, I began to think less and less of ‘me’, I took up new hobbies and began to fill my week up with other things instead of sitting around doing nothing, but worrying about the state I was in. The tired mind made so much sense, it was not built to take all this stress and strain, all this worry and deep thinking, no wonder it began to take it’s revenge, it wanted a break, a much needed break and it would once again become flexible. So to all those who wonder if they can get better, without the tired mind, these symptoms can’t exist. I and others who have recovered are not special or chosen, everyone can make it, it just takes and understanding and patience. So when you feel like this symptoms of a tired mind there is nothing to fix, just allowing yourself to feel this way gives the mind the break it needs, it’s just like stopping walking when your legs are tired.

Just to add something to the post above for everyone as to not get confused. The thoughts through a tired mind tend to be those that stick, the obsessive ones, which is the symptoms of a tired mind. The scary thoughts tend to come with the anxious state, as I have said anxiety needing a release and manifesting itself into scary thoughts, again of no importance. Scary thoughts that tend to stick are a combination of anxiety (excess adrenalin) finding a release and the tired mind, again of no importance, pay them no mind, just move on with you day no matter how much they seem to bite. I tended to have few scary thoughts, more just obsessive, where I coould just not seem to switch it off, going over something trivial and not seeming to shake it off, I soon learnt to let it ramble and not get involved.

In the next post I will cover the physical symptoms, but I hope this helps for now. Also a quick note to finish, everyone who was around last year will know I and another member here did a 10k charity run at the start of April for anxietycare. Well this year I am starting some voluntry work at my local hospice and will be doing it for them this year. As I did last year I will post some pics up after the event, for now though I need to get back into shape, the bad snow has put me way behind.

Paul

For more help visit www.anxietynomore.co.uk

For more information about my book ‘At last a life’ visit

www.anxietynomore.co.uk/the_book.html

Hi Everyone, Well I did promise a post before christmas and on that theme I just want to wish everyone a good christmas. It is never my favourite time of year, I am just an old bah humbug I guess But seriously, a big MERRY CHRISTMAS to everyone and a happy new year. I truly hope 2010 will be a new start for so many, one that brings so much more hope and hapiness.

I won’t go on too much this month and wanted to just post a couple of things. One was what Emmanule posted earlier in a thread.

Between Paul David and Jim, my two “mentors,” they suffered for 10 and 12 years respectively. I don’t know how long Paul’s road to recovery was, but Jim’s was 2 years. After 10 solid years of anxiety so bad he even hallucinated!

In answer to the above I would go with a couple of years myself. So many people believe that I saw the light and within a few days I was fine. It was never like that, I did though decide that me fighting to get better was a waste of time, it had never worked and only sent me deeper into the condition. I now know I was looking for an answer that was never there. I always felt that one day I would find something, be it a tablet or a sentence that would make it all go away.

A friend of mine who I run with has just had an operation on his knee and cannot run for a few months, the doctor has told him it will take a few months to heal and he will feel pain for quite a long time. He accepts this and just gets on with his day with the pain there. Imagine if he spent weeks looking for answer to make the pain go away tomorrow, every day searching in his mind, googling, looking for a doctor that can make it better instantly, fighting to control the pain, thinking and obsessing about it. He is trying the impossible and will have to just accept that only time will heal it, he has accepted that it will be part of him for a while and will give it as much time as it needs.

That’s exactly the point I got to, I finally admitted defeat and that anxiety would be a part of me for a while and that I would give my mind and body as much time as it needed to get better. The above has been said many times before, but I just wanted to reinforce the message as it seems some people still refuse to allow themselves to feel the way they do. I used to wake up and monitor how I felt and then spend all my day trying to do something about it. I finally accepted that when I woke I would feel tired and anxious, that my mind would probably race, that I would feel odd and detached for most of the day, I would not ignore it or pretend to like it, but for once I was not going to try and do anything about it, I still felt awful all day, but for the first time I had given my body and mind a much needed rest, if it would have been able to speak it would have said ‘Thank you so much for that Paul, I have been crying out for that break for so long, did you ever think I could heal myself when you worried and stressed so much, I mean you are wanting me recover from stress induced symptoms and then stressing about them, I mean come on I maybe the best healing system in the world, but even I am not that good! Your mind would also like to say thank you for the break, it was so, so very tired and this is why you found thinking so hard, why your mind raced, you felt a little detached, it was being worked beyond breaking point, it just needed a day off.

I always say to people the day we admit to ourself and accept that this may be part of us for a while, is the day we will begin to move forward. People who refuse to believe this or don’t want to are the ones that stay stuck in the cycle of trying to rid themselves of something that needs to be left alone, they are in such a rush to get better and so many posts start with ‘How do I get rid of this feeling or that symptom?’, They spend all week trying and getting nowhere, because they should be doing the exact opposite and leaving it alone, stop picking at the scab and the scab will heal.

Emmanual finished with this statement below: Again this has all been said many times and I want to now begin to move forward towards other things, but I wanted to post about it for the last time in a different way, so I can really push home the message.

The common thread to those who recover is simply this: STOP CARING ABOUT THE SYMPTOMS. Recovery HAS to occur when we give our body rest. Now most of us follow the following pattern:

The point for me in recovery was this:

When I reached a “good enough” stage (a stage I could have lived at for the rest of my life, even if not 100%) I truly stopped caring about any and all symptoms. Even when they changed drastically (which was the scary part). And things really cooked from there.

God Bless

I would also agree with the above and I never woke up recovered, it just crept up on me. I got to a stage where I no longer really cared, how I began to feel was far more bearable and it just became automatic to just get on with my day and pay very little respect to how I felt, this was the final stage of me being the person I am today. I can honestly say I never went for recovery, progress was enough for me, I never put any pressure on myself to feel 100% better, I was just so happy I had come so far. Many people never believe that they will feel better, they are so impressed by how they feel at this given time.

Many have said ‘I just feel I will never feel like me again’ , My reply is always ‘Yes and I bet you could never imagine feeling like this before anxiety came along’. You only have to read about the people on here who have come so far, I remember loads of names who come back to post positive story’s and they have 2 things in common, 1. They all felt like they were in a hole they would never recover from 2. The real progression took patience, nothing came overnight. One thing that really helped me was a far better understanding of why I felt like I did and this is basically why I believe the blog helps so much, it gives people that understanding. It was far easier for me to dismiss how I felt once I understood why. This leads me to the next part of this post and the initial title.

Someone who landed on my site said this, which I think is so very true.

I went from one doctor to another, getting nowhere, they just pushed pills on me, I was a wreck, I did not want pills, I thought my brain was rotting away, that I was going crazy, why could they not at least give me some sort of explanation? All I ever wanted to hear was ‘ Listen mate, you are going through something very difficult, but it’s a natural process that the brain goes through due to stress/anxiety/trauma and although it’s very unpleasant it is totally normal in the circumstances, so try not to be over impressed by it, your body is just a little over worked at the minute’ How simple, but yet effective that would have been! All I ever wanted was a small explanation and some reassurance, if I had, I would not have spent some much wasted time stressing and worrying over how I felt….

I am on the fence when it comes to doctors on the subject, they receive all the flak, as they are the first people we see when we feel this way and if the doctor does not understand, then it must be serious. Firstly they deal with so many illnesses we can’t expect them to be experts on anxiety, it truly is a subject in itself. But they should be able to send you somewhere that can help, even if it is just somewhere that can give the explanation above. How hard would this be? The one thing that surpises me the most is that my own doctor says it is by far the biggest complaint he has to deal with, so why not just put a little more time learning about how to help or pushing for a resource that can? I don’t want to be to critical here, but it would save so many people so much suffering, just a few words of comfort would help so much and put many people’s mind at rest. I am not saying that people never find help away from the internet, but it does seem like looking for a neddle in a haystack at times. I never had the internet to help me, but at least it now gives people a chance to help themselves and has become most sufferers lifeline, hopefully in time this will change and the help and information will be within reach for everyone!

Paul

For more help with anxiety visit www.anxietynomore.co.uk

For more information about my book ‘At last a life’ visit

www.anxietynomore.co.uk/the_book.html

Hi everyone, Firstly welcome to all the new people who have posted recently, it’s great to see it busy and people helping and supporting others. Again me and Candie try and keep it as spam free as possible and moderate it so it is a nice, helpful place to come.

I am also thinking of changing the look of the blog, it is a bit dated. If I can do this without losing all the old post then I will, if not then I will keep it the same as there is a lot of helpful infoformation that I would not like to lose.

To todays post:

The title above came about because of an email I received a couple of weeks ago that I would like to share.

To me it is a very simple, but strong message.

Subject = Thanks for a new perspective.

After trying everything to try and “cure” my anxiety, I now realize that I need to just allow it to try and stop me living. It never will! Thanks so much for sharing your personal struggle. It helps to know that there is a light to look forward to.

Just that small sentance sums up so much of what I try and get across. Rather than try and force his way everywhere and fight to cure himself, he has decided to see if anxiety can really stop him doing things, he has taken away the need to ‘cure’ himself before he thinks he can live again, no longer spending pointleess hours each day trying to ‘fix’ how he was feeling. A lot of people think recovery lies in these feelings not being around, but recovery lies in them no longer mattering and the only way to get to this stage is to go through them.

Many people will come on here and say ‘Oh I thought I was o.k, but I feel awful today, what am I doing wrong?

‘I thought I had come through this, but I have had a dreadful week’

‘I feel so lost and anxious today and don’t know why, I felt great last week’

Can we now say that these feelings do ‘really matter’ to these people? The answer is ‘Yes’ and this is the attitude we need to change. I can tell you I went through all this, great one week, bad the next, good weeks, bad weeks, but I never complained. It was awful at times and frustrating and got me down, but I had total faith that this was the process that I needed to go through. Many people refuse to accept this and keep looking for outside things to make it better, that one magic sentence that will make it all go away. I can tell you I completely stopped looking for anything to ‘make it go away’ I realised that this was not where the answer would come from.

I write this blog to help people along, to give them that extra bit of advice, that much needed boost, but I certainly don’t want this to be a crutch for people for the rest of their life. I want people to eventually trust themselves that they now have everything they need to move forward on their own and to begin living again. At first life is shakey, odd, full of ups and downs, but be prepared for this and as the email says, let anxiety try and stop you living, ‘It won’t’. Things may not always go as you would like, but that’s fine also, it’s all part of integrating back into normal living.

At one time I falsely thought that I could think my way better, that I needed to hide away until I had finally ’sorted this this thing out’ What I really needed to do was just live alongside it and stop letting it have such an affect on me, to change my attitude and live alongside it without letting it control my life for me. Instead of letting it stop me living, live and try and let it stop me, just as the person in the email put it.

Just to finish many people ask me how long it took me to recover, how I knew..etc. There was no one day where I woke up and everything was great. I just got better and better, layer by layer. I had built up such an insulation by just living my life that I stopped getting such a strong reaction to everyday normal things. I stopped worrying about the way I was feeling enough for my nerves to right themselves. I had stopped the deep thinking, trying to make it all go away enough for my mind to become flexible, to be able to think clearly once more. I had basically reversed all the the habits that had took me into such a hole, but it took time and a few tears along the way. It was not all plain sailing. I had to go ‘through’ it all. To stay when I felt like escaping, to not be impressed when I felt odd and not with it, to carry on with my day when I just felt like hiding away, to stay in a conversation when I felt no part of it. Too basically go against all my instincts and understand and accept anxiety was going to be a part of me for a while and to stop making it my daily aim to get better.

I hope that helps some people

For more help and advice with anxiety visit www.anxietynomore.co.uk

For more information about my book ‘At last a life’ visit

www.anxietynomore.co.uk/the_book.html

Hi everyone, Todays post is about something I went through and overcame. This was to a degree social anxiety, an anxiety that I felt when I would speak to people. I would get an almost instant reaction of anxiety on meeting people, I would avoid eye contact, the world would seem unreal and because my mind would go blank, I would stutter or ramble my way through and look for a way to escape. No matter how hard I tried, this part of my anxiety would stick around, I never seemed to move forward. As I was never happy with this I refuse to be stuck in this cycle.

The best way to overcome any symptom starts with an understanding, there is nothing worse that being bewildered about how you feel, buried under symtoms not knowing why you feel this way and with no idea on how to move forward.

So back to me and why I felt this way.

Going back to when I first felt racked with anxiety. I truly found it hard to even speak and shook so much I avoided talking to people, I had it down to an art form of how to avoid talking and if I had to, to plan the conversation and escape as quickly as possible. This went on for years and even after educating myself on the subject and progressing so much, this part of my anxiety never improved. I understood that I had built up a habit, an automatic response where my mind would say ‘Person here, oh no, I will feel awful’ so my body would flood me with adrenalin and trust me this is why your mind goes blank and you feel unreal, its just a shot of excess adrenalin. I would then go through the ritual of trying to control or escape. I would then go home feeling this was me forever, bewildered and fed up that no matter how hard I tried, I would never progress, nothing was working.

What did I do?

Well as I said above, I first had to understand that this was now an automatic reaction , this I could not control. So the next time I would not wait and worry that I may feel like this when talking to someone, I knew I would, I could not just switch this off or control it, so it was now fine, no slumping of the shoulders, scrambling to escape, trying to control it. What I needed to do is learn how to stay in the conversation while feeling odd and unreal. And before I go on, this instant feeling of feeling odd and unreal, your mind going blank is just a flood of adrenalin, nothing more and is not harmful in anyway and always passes. So the next time I went out, I expected to feel a rush of adrenalin, my mind may go blank and I may feel unreal, but now it was fine. This time I would not obsereve myself, I would stay in the conversation with these feelings, I had to retrain my mind not to see this as a problem and while I kept running away and avoiding, it always would be.

To be honest the very understanding that it was an automatic reaction and my feelings were just due to a rush of adrenalin, made me fear the way I felt far less, it no longer seemed important and the feelings were not as strong. And as they were no longer getting so much respect from me, the feelings calmed far quicker. Again I had hit on something here, it was my perception of how I felt that brought on such a reaction, the need to run away and control.

I would not even say I practiced anything, I just went into conversation with a new understanding and attitude. I would still sometimes feel odd and lost for words, but this time I would not run away, I would stay in the situation and within seconds these moments of strangeness would pass and I would just feel a sligh disconnection, something I saw as just slight adrenalin that was of little importance. I carried on in this vein and my minds new automatic response was not ‘Oh no its someone I may have to talk to, I will feel awful’ it was ‘Hey so what, I can now cope, I understand these feeling’ and the rush of adrenalin would be no where near as strong, I was finally breaking the cycle.

There was a few times where the old fight or flight would come in, the need to get away, but I smiled and it and stayed put. I went on to be totally free of this part of my anxiety by a better understanding, no gimmicks or rituals. This was how I overcame most of my anxiety to be the person I am today, by a better understanding. I did not want to rely on coping behaviours, that was never going to be me. I was never going to settle for this being me forever and you don’t have to either, don’t be bluffed by a feeling, thinking it to be far worse than it is. I once thought I would never be able to talk freely again, I saw the oddness as a sign that I would never escape, that I had, had this condition for so long that this was going to be forever, nothing could have been furthur from the truth.

I hope the above helps people.

Paul

For more information and help with anxiety visit www.anxietynomore.co.uk

For more information about my book ‘At last a life’ visit

www.anxietynomore.co.uk/the_book.html

Well I hope everyone is o.k. I was reading through many posts this morning, as its a while since I checked in. Firstly welcome to anyone who is new, it’s always great to see people join the great community we have here. On reading through I did see a common problem and decided to shelve this months post until next month, as I thought this would be more helpful at this time.

I try and write this blog through my own journey and my own pitfalls and sort of do it like a story book of the hurdles I faced and overcame. One point that is very important and I have tried to get through before and that Scarlet has touched on, is the need to live your life with anxiety. Again and again I see people trying to rid themselves of it, going around reminding themselves of little phrases, watching their progress, wondering why the anxiety is still around, they think ‘I must be doing something wrong’, they become bewildered and end up going round in circles, sometimes on the verge of tears as they seem to be the only one that is stuck with this condition.

Firstly I want to pull up some great advice by Victor in the last thread. Many times I read someones comment on here and think ‘Yes they have fully got the message’ and Victors below is one of them.

Brian,You said “I spend every day just thinking about ways to look at this website and acceptance, trying to figure out what I am doing wrong.”

I find myself doing this at times too, even within the past week. Read Scarlet’s reply to me from July 4th, it has helped me a lot.

What I want to tell you is that thinking about it, trying to figure it all out will not help. You have to just BE. I know it is very difficult, trust me. I am the master of creating habits and have always been a worrier, even before I began “suffering”. I have found that trying to focus on the present is the best thing to do, Paul said in his book something along the lines of “If I was going to cook, then I would focus on cooking, not think about anxiety” I have applied this and what scarlet says the past week and it has helped tremendously. Out of habit anxiety will cross your mind, but you have to just let it go and do not fear it. It takes time to break the habit.

Paul said something, I am not sure if it was in the book or a blog, but he said that he did not even know recovery was possible. I think a lot of us get so caught up in recovering, we forget to just live which is how you recover. You say you go out with your friends, that is great! I do too. But I have wasted several activities with my friends thinking about anxiety the whole time, while not even getting one anxious thought!! What a waste of thinking that was! Hope that helps, and if I could help more please just ask.

Victor is totally correct. Don’t go around questioning anxiety all the time, it is like having a broken leg and questioing it all day, trying to find ways to rid yourself of the pain, question why it hurts and going into a situation and just thinking about your leg and not being interested in the world around you. Well we don’t do this because we understand we have a broken leg and that we will feel pain, there is no reason to walk around trying to figure it all out or try and rid ourselves of this pain.

Well its the same attitude with anxiety. Many people wonder why Mr X has finally got it and is improving and I am stuck, well its all about his attitude. You will not recover while you walk around all day trying to rid yourself of how you feel, you are just focusing and worrying about ‘you’ again. I used to go out every Friday and usually feel a lot of anxiety symptoms. I would almost watch for them coming and then spend all night mentally trying to ‘right’ myself. I would say ‘It’s o.k to feel this way’ , ‘Try and act normal’ , ‘My mind is just tired’ this would go on all night and I would just about get through. One day the penny dropped, all I was doing was dreading the night and waiting for the anxiety to descend. I was focsuing on me as soon as I got into the bar and then having a mental battle with myself using coping behaviours. Nothing ever improved, so I decided the next time I would just go out, no second guessing how it would go, no coping behaviours and mental dialouge. Well the difference was amazing, yes of course anxiety crossed my mind many times, it was bound to out of habit, but I kept going from the conversation to me, instead of just me all night, It was like my mind was for once trying to integrate back into the world, I for once had given myself a chance to be part of what was going on around me. It did not go perfect, but so much better and if I kept practicing it would then start to become me and that’s exactly what happened. People put too much importance on things going perfect, if they have any anxiety at all then they think they have failed. I never looked at it like that, I never expected or demanded anything. If things went great then fine, if I had a tough night then that was fine also.

There is no need to label a bad day as a setback. Accept that everyday is not going to go great, the more you allow this attitude to be you, the more you allow yourself to not focus on you and how you are feeling. In my early days I would wake and check in how I was feeling, my shoulders would drop as I felt bad. I would step out of bed and question how I was feeling all the way to work. I would then start with loads of phrases to try and control it or make it go away. This would not work so I would go home and feel sorry for myself, maybe go out drinking to escape and go through the whole process again, feeling more and more detached from the world around me. Well of course I would feel this way, it makes perfect sense now. But what if I woke and just accepted the day for what it was, that would surely go better. No questioning, no worrying, no internal dialogue, what if I just lived along side how I felt, maybe that would work. Well it sure did, but it was a process, I still had up and down days, but I allowed this, I did not have a bad day and start questioning everything all over again, I just allowed it to be, I was more interested in just living now and not ‘me’. Being so interested in me had got me nowhere over the years, it was time to change.

I also need breaks from the subject as the site has grown so big I spend a lot of time involved in the subject and also need time outs. I don’t want the subject to be the only focus in my life, as it’s not healthy. I do as much as I feel comfortable with doing and have many other interests. So don’t let it become your life, have some time outs, find other hobbys. The blog should be a learning tool where you can gather information that will help you understand far more and erase a lot of fears. Many people have come here in the past and recovered and they moved on, they wanted to live again and did not feel the need to come here anymore, they wanted to put it behind them and move on.

Below is Brians statement

“I spend every day just thinking about ways to look at this website and acceptance, trying to figure out what I am doing wrong.”

What he means is I have spent all day trying to rid myself of anxiety and its still there, well its the very focusing and trying to rid himself that has caused the problem. I don’t mean rush around and trying not to think of anxiety, you will from time to time through habit, but that’s fine, don’t see it as a problem. My focus would shift to me many times into my recovery, I would have some truly testing days with my symptoms, but I stopped caring, it was all part of the process. It’s the bad days that has others questioning it all again, running back to the blog to see what they have missed, becoming bewildered, wondering and worrying why this damn thing has not left them.

I do hope that message has helped.

For more help and information on anxiety visit www.anxietynomore.co.uk

For more information about my book ‘At last a life’ visit

www.anxietynomore.co.uk/the_book.html

Hello everyone, here is this months post. I thought long and hard about what to write and again used what I have read on here and what I feel holds people back from stepping from improvement to the next level.

Many people get stuck at a certain level, where they feel they have come so far, but can’t quite break through to where they want to be. This happened to me, I felt able to do things a lot easier and my anxiety and come down to a manageable level, but I seemed unable to move any further forward. Being me I was never happy with this, I wanted to move towards feeling totally free, to move to another level.

What I did understand is that I was trying to manage my anxiety and was using a lot of safety behaviours to do so. A list of these would include, avoiding certain social situations ‘I may feel bad, overwhelmed’ I won’t go there’. ‘What if so and so is there and I have to speak with them’. I would play pool with friends and afterwards we would all sit around drinking and I would sit there feeling a bit odd/anxious and hardly involving myself in the conversations, more nodding and smiling when I thought I should. I may walk around town and if I saw someone I knew, it would be ‘Oh, no I will feel uncomfortable, odd if he sees me and wants to talk, I will turn my head’. In fact avoiding eye contact and conversation was probably the main one for me.

I once went to a theme park and wondered if I would feel o.k going on a ride, something I had done a 1000 times before, but I feel vulnerable and overwhelmed now, what when the bar comes down I may feel trapped, overwhelmed, maybe I should play it safe and stay here’. A lot of places I was going to or invited to, involved conversations like this and I used safety behaviours almost on a daily basis, play it safe Paul, stick to what you know, if you don’t have to talk you wont feel bad, if you avoid that social situation, you wont feel uncomfortable or be in a situation you don’t want to be.

Well of course to move forward I would not do so while I thought and acted like this, I had to drop these behaviours and learn new ones. So let’s take the first one.

What I did understand is that I was trying to manage my anxiety and was using a lot of safety behaviours to do so. A list of these would include avoiding certain social situations ‘I may feel bad, overwhelmed’ I wont go there. ‘What if so and so is there and I have to speak with them’.

I decided that I wanted to feel uncomfortable, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I knew to feel normal I may have to feel uncomfortable and from now on if I saw someone I would no longer run away. I will go against my instinct and actually approach them. The very action of not pulling away and instead moving towards, tells your body and mind, it’s o.k, there is nothing to be bothered about and I found it went far better than I thought it would. What happened is before as soon as I had no choice but to talk, I automatically went into ‘Oh no, lets get this over with’ what chance did I have with this attitude? I also noticed instead of listening to what the person was saying, I would be straight ‘on me’ I was only bothered about how I was doing, hoping they would scurry off soon, keep smiling, acting your way through, they may go soon, was my attitude. So I did the opposite and actively went towards conversations, not pulling away or avoiding eye contact, how I felt no longer mattered was the key. I am not saying it went great every time, but it got so much easier and I had finally broken a behaviour, one that had built up through instinct.

O.k on to the next

I once went to a theme park and wondered if I would feel o.k on a ride, something I had done a 1000 times before, but I feel vulnerable and overwhelmed now, what when the bar comes down I may feel trapped, overwhelmed, maybe I should play it safe and stay here’. There were other occasions when I may have said this also.

Again I decided this was a road I was not going down. I knew felt a bit on edge and vulnerable because I feel anxiety in normal everyday life, its not harmful and never will be and I am not getting into avoidance behaviour and creating false problems. Lets be honest here, it is always a fear about feeling overwhelmed and never a situation, we could do all these things easily before. So I had to strip away the fact that it was a situation and deal with me.

I did nothing earth shattering, I just went towards what I had been avoiding before, I understood that fear may rise, but what I found out is that it always cut out, it always had a peak, as if to say ‘Paul would you like to run or stay (fight or flight). I found this point was always the key point and I wanted to ride my fears out, it was only adrenalin, so come if you wish, I no longer care. When adrenalin comes, you may feel butterflies, a little shaking, your heart may beat a little, its just your body’s way of asking if you would like to fight or flight, then it would be ‘well you have stayed, so I will now cut off and let you get on’. Your body can only produce so much adrenalin at one time, that is a medical fact, its not harmful and will always calm.

I am not saying its easy to go against your instinct to run, but I trusted in how my body worked and responded. Many a time I would feel overwhelmed, but still go towards it and mostly say ‘Is that it?’ as nothing would really happen, fear would rise a little and then drop to nothing. The feeling of achievement was wonderful and it gave me so much confidence for the next time, things just became so much easier, until it came to the point where I felt no apprehension and I had my life back, I no longer relied on safety behaviours to get through my day.

These were just my main safety behaviours, I had other smaller ones that I would pick on and say ‘Paul your using that as a safety behaviour, do this no longer’. Others may have their own safety behaviours and not really realise they do until they read this, some maybe obvious, others not so. I am not saying go out tomorrow and banish them all, just work towards doing so, one at once or small steps is fine, just acknowledge and try to change these behaviours that hold you back in the long run.

I will try and come back and advise further on this and apologise for not being around as much recently. I just always seem to have something to keep me busy. The main site is having a massive overhaul and a big tidy up and this is taking up all my time at the moment.

I hope there is something in there that helps many people.

For more help and advice on anxiety, visit www.anxietynomore.co.uk

For more information about my book ‘At last a life’ visit

www.anxietynomore.co.uk/the_book.html

Hi Everyone, I know I have been a bit quiter than usual recently in replying to posts as I am just on with other things at the moment, but trust me the blog is as important to me as when I first set it up. Just seeing over 500 replys to the last post tells me how important the place is for people and how fast it is growing. Also as people learn more about the subject they are able to advise and there have been some great reply’s and advice recently by a lot of people. That is always how I want the blog to be, I want plenty of people offering advice and support and then it can almost run itself and also be a positive place for people to come. Again it is well moderated to keep people from spamming or spoiling it and a lot of credit goes to Candie who looks after that side with me and has had to work a bit harder due to me being busy recently.

Well on to todays post, this post came through me reading a lot of posts and also it is quite a common question I get asked. It has been covered before in different ways, but I want to use my own case history to get the point across as I don’t want to move on to another subject until I feel people have grasped the message.

I will start by saying a lot of my symptoms calmed, but one thing that still bothered me was that my attention seemed to be on me 24/7. If I was in a conversation I may find it hard to chat easily as all my attention was on me and I seemed to have to place words in a sentence and not talk freely. I would go out and feel lost in my own little world and not with the surroundings around me. I would just want to go through the day without ‘anxiety’ being my subject for the day, I just felt clogged up with it all.

Firstly as people may know we have been so concerened about how we have felt for so long, then of course our attention is going to be on us, we care so much how we feel, we tune it, we worry about how we feel, try to fix it, it becomes a habit to think about ‘us’.

What I tried to do was forget about it all, push it to one side. Well as I realised this was all wrong, habit would have me thinking about me again, nothing was surer and as soon as it did I would feel defeated, thinking that if I could not just forget about it, nothing could help and my attention would always be on me. I would always feel clogged up and not have the freedom just to talk freely and feel mentally free. I would then mentally fight for another way out, what if I do this or that and of course this made me feel worse as I was back to ‘me’ again.

What I wanted to do was ‘forget about me’, not worry, not become obsessed by how I was feeling, not to try and fix it. That was the answer, but I had my attention on me, so how could I? The answer was staring me in the face ‘If the attention wanted to be on me then I had to let it’ This is where I had been going wrong, I had fought this feeling, this normal habit that was bound to be there in the circumstances. So from then on when I felt the attention on me and detached from my surroundings or clogged up, I allowed it to be, there was no fighting, fixing or worrying. It was o.k and I should expect it, I had been thinking about me for so long it was never going to be any other way.

What happened when I tried the new approach was that my attention was on me most of the day, but would lift from time to time, I would then not try and grasp at these free moments, I expected them to be fleeting, I was changing a habit here. These fleeting moments became longer and longer and once I had allowed my attention to be on me, it did not feel so bad after all. I may do well for weeks and then I was back on me for a couple of days, I had to remember this was fine and not think the damn feelings were back. The advice above cured me of this particular habit, but it took a while to do so. Once I had ‘dropped’ it as a problem, it no longer became a problem.

This is why it pains me to hear someone say I felt so great last week and now I don’t, what have I done wrong? what can I do? They are trying to scramble back to how they felt the previous week instead of allowing themselves to go through the process. As Kashwan said in an earlier post;

Even when I feel the worst I keep foscused on whaever I am doing, try and get into the habit of not paying the anxiety symptoms any respect, the habit grows as time will show you.

This is someone who struggled a few months ago, but now gives great advice, the penny has dropped with him and although he still has bad days he expects them, there not a real problem, he understands that memory and habit may drag him back from time to time, but he does not despair, worry or fight, he just carrys on with what he is doing, he refuses to be dragged back into self pity and trying to fix how he feels, he sees it as part of the process.

Anyway I hope that helps people, I usually hang around when I first put the post up and make sure everyone has understood what I am trying to get across. For everyone that can relate to it I hope it has been helpful.

Paul

For more help with anxiety visit www.anxietynomore.co.uk

For more information about my book ‘At last a life’ visit

www.anxietynomore.co.uk/the_book.html

O.k as promised here is todays post and something I wanted to cover as it is something I felt for a long while even into my recovery and sometimes beyond.

Feeling trapped in your own mind is an unpleasant feeling and one many people with anxiety suffer with. I could give a list of why this is but in my opinion the main cause is the pondless thinking about ‘us’. If you think about the average person walking down the street, they will be thinking about the meal on Saturday, then the meeting at work later in the day, meeting friends for lunch, everything is outward, where as anxiety sufferes think mainly of themselves and how they are feeling, everything is inward, which causes many of the feelings of being trapped in your own mind.

I spent years thinking about me, worrying and trying to figure a way out of the way I felt, but this had the opposite effect and I began to feel more and more trapped and isolated. Of course I would feel trapped in my own mind, it makes sense to me now as I never let anything else in, the deep thinking about the way I felt and how to escape had sent me down a path where ‘anxiety’ had become me, I was so used to worrying and thinking that this became a habit, like a needle stuck in a record.

So what I needed to do was change this process and let other things into my day, live in the present and stop worrying about me, the past and the future, it was time to escape from my own mind, to unlock some doors and begin to live again. So I had to begin teach myself to live in the present. If I had to cook, then I would cook, I would not cook and worry about me anymore. If I went to the shop to buy some groceries then that is what I would do, I would not spend the whole walk thinking about how to escape from my anxiety. Of course the habit to think about me was there, I felt as though my mind was on me most of the day, but that was fine, that was a habit, this would thaw in time as long as I continued to practice this way.

Anyone who knows me will know I am not a big fan of forums, I really dislike them because again I think people become reliant on them, logging in everyday to talk and read about anxiety, day in day out and to be fair I see the same names there years later. I am anxiety free now but I am involved so much in the subject I do need to take a break from time to time, I need to have other things in my life and I make a conscious effort to play sport, to socialise, to go out riding my bike and other things. My week has many a focus and feels fresh and not bogged down with one subject.

So anxiety or not just try and add other things into your week, try not to worry so much, anxiety has a habit of making us think the worst and on finding an outlet things get magnified. Trust me once you take the anxiety away then you find it hard to worry, the need is just not there. This taught me a lot once I began to really make strides into my recovery. Before I would be in worry mode and think everything needed to be sorted out, worry about what people thought, worry about meeting someone, worry about how I was feeling, the whole cycle. But into my recovery I would have some really good weeks, almost anxiety free and the need to worry would not be there, I would smile at some of things that had me worrying the month before. The trick then was to realise that my anxiety magnified things and the next time anxiety reared its head I would just let everything go, it was not going to have me worrying, going over things trying to make things right, my anxiety was no longer going to send me down the road of worry, making me feel awful, the worrys were false anyway, caused by my anxiety needing an outlet. In time I actually became a master in letting things go, the more you practice the easier things get.

Feeling free of my own mind was a gradual process, it came in layers, the worry slowed, my mind became clearer and I felt alive again, free of myself. Below is a list of things that helped me overcome this feeling and what caused me to feel this way in the first place.

What caused it:

The deep thinking about my condition

Worrying about everything and anything

Not adding other things into my day, having no other focus but me

Things that helped me:

Getting out and socialising more, finding new hobbies, in my case it was redescovering my love for sport. In the early days I had to drag the old worrying me there, but I went for a swim, went cycling and just stopped sitting at home brooding about my situation. I trusted that in time my mind would regain its flexability, would welcome plenty of other things to focus on, become more flexible and in time it did. I would wake up and think about it being a nice day and about my bike ride, I would stop off for a drink and a sandwich, before I would wake up and think ‘Anxiety and how am I going to get rid of it’ to feel more real I had live more real was my motto.

Just living for that day. The first time I went running I was thinking how great I would feel, how my anxiety would improve and almost watching how I felt when I got back and being disapointed if I did not. Again I was doing things wrong, I was running to fix my anxiety and again doing two things at once, running and thinking about me, instead of just being in the present and running. So the next time I went I thought I don’t care how I feel when I get back, if I feel great then brilliant, if not then o.k, that is not why I am running anymore and the run was far better. I would lose myself in what was around me, the fields, the birds, the run itself and I enjoyed the run so much better. Before if I was doing a task and the curtain of dread and anxiety fell, I would go on autopilot with the task I was doing and concentrate on me again and why I felt so bad and try and fix it, but I knew in time this was wrong and the next time the cloud of anxiety fell, I let it and just carried on with the task in hand there was nothing to fix. And again in time I stopped worrying about me so much and I became more involved in what was around me, I was bothering less and less about me. This took time but the rewards were great.

You will find many people who have recovered from anxiety no longer come on this blog, there are many like this as they now just want to go out and live again, they don’t feel the need to drown themselves in the subject. I tell a lot of people who visit here that the blog is a great place to educate yourself and not feel so alone, but take some time out from it, go out and do things, have another focus and maybe just come back for a read from time to time.

Anyway I hope people got something out of the above. Just to let everyone know I will be doing the 10k run for the charity Anxietycare two weeks on Sunday with Mike from this blog. I am just about up to full fitness and am really looking forward to it. Just to say thank you to everyone who has sponsored me, you all know who you are. I can’t tell you how thankful I am and I promise to post all the pics of the day up on here afterwards.

Paul

For more help with anxiety visit www.anxietynomore.co.uk

For more information about my book ‘At last a life’ visit

www.anxietynomore.co.uk/the_book.html

Hi Everyone, Well just a couple of things before I start. If anyone has been waiting for my book for a while now I am so sorry for the delay. I was let down by the printers on delivery and then the snow came last week and I was unable to get to the post office. All books have now gone, so again if anyone has been waiting I apologise.

Secondly I am going to stick to a post at the start of each month. I never want to just write for the sake of writing, I always want something to say that I think will help. Also I don’t think bombarding people with information helps anyway, its good to have some time outs.

O.k on to todays post.

A lady got in touch with me last week who I knew from a couple of years ago. She sent me a lovely email saying how well she was doing and now realised what really held her back in the old days, and this was that she realised she wanted to get better before she lived her life and not go out and live it while she had anxiety.

The point is she was right.

The whole point of this post today is to stop seeing anxiety as the enemy, don’t wait or demand to feel well before doing something you want to do. There was someone who posted on here recently called Trey who said he had just about recovered and in his own words.

I finally “got it” and realized what everyone has been saying and I let everything go. I did what ever a normal person would do who didnt have anxiety I travelled, hung out with friends ,anything no matter how bad I felt. I do feel normal again after years of anxiety and dp.

What he has done is go towards his feelings of dread and not let them stop him living his life, not only that but he kept faith that this would work in the long run. Too many think ‘Well I have been there today and I still feel bad, I just need to get rid of these damn feelings, that’s the only way I can get on with my life again’. The trouble is, this is why so many stay in a cycle, anxiety will always be the enemy if you spend your time trying to get rid of it, as it always has your fear and respect to feed on. Let me show you how the anxiety loop works in many cases.

Feel awful – spend all day trying to rid yourself of these symptoms- feel awful – worry about how long this will go on – feel awful – avoidence – feel awful – feel a failure – feel awful -get frustrated – feel awful – fight – feel awful – again start to google – stay bewildered.

The way to break this loop is to not see anxiety as the enemy and truly allow yourself to feel this way.

So then it goes

Feel awful – nothing, there is no avoidence as you are going everywhere at will – pride that you did not let anxiety rule your life – there is no going round in circles trying to rid yourself of the way you feel as you have allowed yourself to feel anything – there is no worry as you no longer care how you feel – the anxiety loop is begining to break here. You have done nothing to keep your anxiety going, you may still feel symptoms and that’s fine, but there has been a lack of worry and fear added to the mix. If it there was an anxiety shop and someone came in and said ‘I have anxiety mate, not sure why but it has been there a few years now, how come?’

I would say

‘Do you worry about it?’

‘Well yes I do, I want it to go away’

‘Do you go towards or try to avoid these feelings? ‘

Well I mainly avoid them as I don’t want to feel them’

Do you try and figure a way out of this or just get on with your day?’

Well I try and figure a way out, its tiring and I do go around in circles, but I have to get rid of these feelings don’t I?’

Have you ever thought about allowing yourself to feel like this, good or bad, this will stop the worry cycle, the tuning in, the fighting to ‘rid’ yourself, in fact it will break up this loop you are stuck in’

‘Actually no I have never thought of doing that’

‘Well you should as this is why its been around for a few years, you have been stuck in a loop of trying to not feel this way’.

This is the day a light went on for me, I have tried so hard to get rid of the way I feel and worry about it and the only result is to feel worse, why don’t I just give up and allow myself to feel this way. I need to do what someone would do, who did not suffer anxiety. The average guy in the street is not going around worrying all day, if he did he would feel awful and drained, no wonder I feel the way I do and seem to be getting worse not better, my body is just not having the chance to recover.

Never have the attitude of ‘I am not going out, I feel awful, what I need to do is get rid of these feelings then I will have my life back’ The only way to have that life back is to totally ‘embrace’ how you feel and feel every symptom at will.

I felt awful for weeks into my own recovery, but I had for once broken the loop. Don’t get me wrong I had some testing days. I remember going out to a quiz each week and sitting there feeling dreadful and just wanting to go home. I would feel apprehensive at times and nearly go home, but I never did. I knew this was anxiety testing me. The total KEY point for me that night, was the point where I wanted to go home. That was the point when I just bought another drink and strayed, anxiety had lost my respect, I had said ‘Do what you want, I no longer care, I am in charge from now on’. In time I actually loved it trying to test me, It was ‘Yes we have been here before and I always win, I am staying, so do whatever you want’. Before this, at the first point of feeling uncomfortable I would go home, feel sorry for myself, try and mentally find a way out of this hell, when ironically I had just left the very place that would have helped me move forward. Instead I had given my feelings loads of respect, run away from how I felt and anxiety had won again.

I knew to get through I had to not care if I felt anxiety or not and this is the point I got to, by not avoiding and running away I had unmasked it as just a feeling, my body no longer had apprehension about going anywhere, my nerves had settled as I had not bombarded them with worry and self pity. My mind had began to clear without the daily onslaught it used to get. My confidence had come back, I had proved I could do anything and that I was in charge and not my anxiety. I was begining to take charge again and the old me was returning, by living like the avearge man in the street, I was begining to become the average man in the street, I was getting my life back.

I hope that helps people to understand a little more and I do try to add my own real life situations, as I think people can relate in this way more than just writing down information.

Also thanks for everyone who has sponsored me on the post below, I am up to over £200 now and its all down to the generous people who have sponsored me. I have also decided to not drink until after the event in April as I do need to lose a stone or more before the race and be totally primed by the time it comes around.

Paul

For more help with anxiety visit www.anxietynomore.co.uk

For more information about my book ‘At last a life’ visit

www.anxietynomore.co.uk/the_book.html

Hi everyone as promised I said I would do a question and answer section. hopefully it will help everyone and not just those who asked the intial question. Excuse the text in the post where there are no spaces where there should be, it happened when I copied and pasted it in and I have had little success fixing it.

1. In regards to your next post ideas, here’s something I would have wanted to know about you during recovery: When you say, “whatever” to a thought or feeling, do you feel confident when you say it each time or is it a matter of just saying it even if you feel like you’re treading water to stay afloat at that moment?

This was one question I wanted to answer as I got stuck the same way and I did actually do a post on this a while back on this. I think certain people get hung up with accepting how they are, this should be a whatever attitude and NOT a need to keep reminding yourself to accept how you feel, as you once again start battling with yourself and again it becomes a ‘Do’. I think someone mentioned they had to keep reminding themselves to accept how they were. There is no need to do this and as some people may know it loses its force in time. Accepting is all about not doing ‘Not fighting, not worrying, not filling yourself with self pity. Giving your body a break, its never a ‘Do’, so please don’t feel the need to walk around telling yourself daily you must accept this. I put it more as laying all your tools down and accepting this is you for the time being, its more of an ‘attitude’ that just becomes second nature. Its not about putting pressure on yourself to make a word make you feel better and then getting frustrated that it has not, you are putting your faith in a word, again its just an attitude born through practice of not caring. There is a world of difference between feeling awful and just carrying on with your day, than saying ‘whatever’ and then getting frustrated that you still feel awful, do you see the difference. Its like having flu, we know we can do nothing about it, so we just get on with our day even though we feel awful, we don’t battle to feel right, worry and obsess about it, because we understand it, it’s the same with anxiety.

2. Did you keep getting tripped up with fighting? Was it really gradual that you starting getting better at accepting or did you “give up fighting” fairly quickly and then have to keep working at recovery from there? This was something I got stuck in because I knew no better than to fight in my early days, I fought this condition to the point where it consumed me, I thought of nothing else but getting better, which in turn made me worse. I gradually got better and stopping fighting, which was not only my instinct, but my habit and at times it was not easy, but like every habit it does change. Habits are just as they say ‘habit’ and any habit will become your new one. And as I learnt about anxiety I knew that it was a waste of time fighting anymore, this was just having the opposite effect. A lot of conclusions I came to were that if something was making me feel worse, then why not try the opposite, fighting how I felt daily made me feel worse, so what if I tried the opposite and just let ‘come what may’ and it worked. I felt just a little bit better that first day, it was like a weight taken off my shoulders, today I did not for once have to ‘try’ to get better. Just that slight improvement made me understand this was the way to go. If you find yourself fighting, then forgive yourself and move on. Recovery is never plain sailing. but there is no need to make it complicated. I don’t want people to go around thinking ‘Am I doing things right’ as there really is nothing to do, its just about living along side how you feel, if you truly do this then you are not fighting. Lets say I woke up tomorrow racked with anxiety again, I would feel awful there is no doubt, but I would not let it concern me too much. I would just get up and drag myself through the day; there is nothing I could do to make it go away so I would not try to. I would just get on the best I could, you see there would be no fighting of the condition and I have not done anything spectacular there at all.

3. I have been doing great, but I stumble when confronted with the reality that people do suffer from bouts of major depression and with these thoughts come rushes of fear and then I get caught up in a swirl of anxiety and low mood. How would you move toward these feelings appropriately in order to face them head on?

Again this was asked in a different way before. This is the cycle of anxiety, an initial thought ‘maybe I will suffer with depression’ this thought on a sensitised body will set off the anxiety, which is just adrenalin on sensitised nerves, this brings feelings of fear and you may feel down that you feel awful again. Firstly understanding that this is the cycle can help, just understanding why you get such an exaggerated response to a thought can be a comfort. If I understand your question, then the initial thought of developing depression is the answer, to desensitise to a thought you need to allow yourself to let the depression come if it wants, give in to the initial thought and say ‘If I become depressed, then so be it’. This thought then won’t have the same effect, as you have allowed yourself to feel this way, there is no recoil from the thought, which is why you feel the reaction to it. Never recoil from any thought.

Someone asked ‘Did you ever worry the anxiety may come back?’. Can you imagine if I had this thought daily, the worry, the stress, the watching. I understood enough about anxiety to not have these fears anyway ,but if that intial thought would have come, I would have just paid it no mind, if my anxiety wants to come back, then let it, there is nothing I can do anyway, would have been my attitude. Again anxiety is a condition, not an illness. As I said your attitude should be ‘If it wants to come back, let it’ just give in to the thought / fear. You have allowed it to come back if it wishes, but do you see with this statement the fear and worry has now gone, the thought has nothing to feed on. You can ask any ex-sufferer and they will all tell you they could never suffer again. People who recover understand what got them their in the first place and what got them home, they are far less vulnerable than someone who has never suffered before.

4. Hey Paul, new post sounds like its going to be really interesting. Something I was meaning to ask you was if you ever worried about if your anxiety was other illnesses instead. I have more or less got past this myself(after a lot of worrying) but I know there is a lot of people that still find it hard to move past these what ifs and thought it would be good for them to know about your experiences with these thoughts.

Yes I did, I thought I had something else. To be honest it was years before I even realised I had anxiety. No doctor ever mentioned that word. I just thought I was going crazy. I actually thought, I have no idea why I feel this way, but it will go, I don’t know when, but everything goes in the end. Well it did not and that was the time that I expected to be carted off somewhere, I was getting worse not better. When the D.P hit that was the worst time, I thought I was going crazy and would end up somewhere, with so little information it was a very scary time and the anxious body does not take a lot to scare it. When I did finally get some answers or at least have a name for my condition I did put my faith in that this is what I had and nothing else. Although I felt crazy, awful, anxious, spaced out I could always do my job, I could figure things out as before, so it was like ‘I am under there somewhere’. Also don’t forget the anxious body does make us think the worst, but it’s still up to us what we believe to be true. And I knew deep down that it was anxiety and that I had developed D.P, the only thing I wanted to do now was understand these conditions and once I read up on both, they described me exactly, I trusted that this was what I had and I just wanted to learn more about each one, so I could one day set myself free. 5. “What does it feel like to be fully recovered” and “How do you know”?

This question I have been asked more times than any other. The feeling of full recovery is really special, but something I truly never aimed for. I just wanted to feel better and I think that helped me. I was not desperate to recover; just feeling better was great, it kept opening new doors. But feeling better was up and down, it would go like this……feeling better, then having bad days, feeling great, feeling awful, feeling really good, feeling awful. It was up and down until the good days were really good and the bad days were not too bad. I may have had a really bad couple of days or so, but I had been there many times before, so I did not let them bother me. I had so much faith that I would soon be back to feeling great again. Full recovery was strange as I thought I had just about recovered before. But I do remember the day when I could just chat freely without reverting back to me, without feeling as though I had to place each word in a sentence. I said to my mother ‘I just know this is it, full recovery’ she asked how and I said well you know when people say they think they maybe in love, but they are not sure, but others say if your in love ‘You just know’ that was what it was like. Before I thought I had recovered as I had so many good days, but now I knew, it went to another level, total freedom. I never thought about anxiety unless I worked with it anymore and then it was just like any other subject, it no longer bothered me. My mind was so clear and my nerves had healed, they were no longer sensitised and did not feel rushes of fear for very little reason. I was not racked with feelings of anxiousness and not constantly irritable. My mind was no longer tired through fear and worry, the deep thinking about my condition, no longer tired it further, it had regained its flexibility and felt so clear. It was like the whole subject was behind me. One thing though was it felt odd to feel free again, just like being let out of prison and it took a while to readjust to feeling normal, anxiety had been part of my life for so long it was only natural.

6. Paul – did you ever in a set-back start to tire of this whole process? If that makes any sense. I just feel fed up and weary at the moment with all of this anxiety business and I have moments when I feel like I am sliding quickly back to the very beginning three years ago.

Setbacks are the hardest things to make people believe in as they are always so impressed by how they feel at any certain time. I remember a couple of weeks back, 2 people saying on the blog ‘It’s back, I don’t know what I have done wrong, why do I feel like this again’. This came even though I tell people time and time again it will be up and down. Mine recovery was very up and down and I sometimes nearly gave in and thought, I need the quick fix, I can’t be bothered with this up and down affair anymore, but thankfully I held firm. What people need to do is go through setbacks enough times to understand it is part of the process and although not nice, a setback only has the power you give it. If you start questioning everything again and worrying that this dreadful thing is back, feel sorry for yourself, then you have given the setback all the fuel it needs to continue. Just have faith that they always pass, you don’t have to like how you feel, but just remember tomorrow could be the best day yet. One thing I promise you is that even on your hardest days, your progress is there in the background. I always seemed to come out of a setback far better than I went into one, you never lose what you have learnt and the progress you have made is never lost. 7. Paul – I Was doing so well these days and out of the blue I got this setback. When I do brain retraining, I feel the term I use to accept don’t have any weight, they feel meaningless when I say them to myself. For example, when I say to myself,” It’s only a bad habit”. Then automatically my mind will start questioning, what’s a habit, are you sure it’s a bad habit.” I don’t know what to do. I have tried with new sayings, the same happens. It’s so confusing, please advise.

Again you don’t have to have sayings, as you can put too much faith in them to make you feel better and as you say they can lose their effect. When you say ‘Its only a bad habit’ and then the other questions come, this again is adrenalin needing an outlet. You need to let the extra thoughts come if they wish, but let them burn themselves out. As you say, you let them frustrate you, as you became active in them, if you had not, they would not have bothered you. But more than anything I would drop the sayings, ‘just let come what may’. If your mind questions a question, then let it, but don’t get involved or let it frustrate you. Also don’t search around for a phrase to make you feel better, ‘That did not work, what about this saying’ ‘That did not work, Ill try this’ You see you are back in fight mode, you are not accepting, you are searching for something to make you feel better and having a mental battle with yourself to do so.

8. You mention a lot about not going in search of that magic tablet or secret cure etc and just letting recovery come to you. You also however recommend a few things such as exercise, avoiding alcohol, massage etc to help with recovery. How do you draw the line between the two and when do these things stop being just aids in our recovery and represent us searching for a quick fix ? I’ve thought a few times about trying meditation or something to help me relax, but then wonder if it might be a step to far and means that I am not accepting the way I feel.

This is a very good question and as I told people before I initially took up running because it helped with my anxiety. But the mistake I made was my whole run was taken up with ‘I will feel great when I get back’ ‘This will really help my anxiety’ my whole run was built around ‘ridding myself of anxiety’ which was the wrong attitude, if I came home not feeling great I would question why and try and run further, I needed to feel great, but as I say I had fallen into the trap of doing something to ‘rid’ myself of anxiety. So although I knew it helped me I just started to run for me, if it helped with anxiety then so be it, if it did not then that was fine, it was not going to be the reason I ran. So it does not matter what you do as long as you do it for your natural well being and don’t put yourself under pressure to feel good afterwards. Looking after myself really helped me and gave a new focus, but the day it helped me, is the day I did it for me.

I hope that helps people.For more help with anxiety visit www.anxietynomore.co.uk

I wanted to just wish everyone a happy Christmas and sign off for this year. The site and blog has grown so much in the last year, which proves how popular anxiety can be. I had someone write to me last week who suffered, he said ‘Paul I am a very fit scaffolder and feel weak for having anxiety, I kept it to myself for fear of ridicule with the people I work with. Once I read your book I began to improve and thought, why should I feel ashamed to let people know how I feel’ I told a workmate in confidence and could not believe it when he said that he suffered to a certain degree to’. This just shows how widespread the problem and the reason so many people come to the internet for answers and help. Hopefully in time the size of the problem will hit the medical world and there will be more qualified people to help, this would save so much suffering.

Secondly I still see people who want to be better today and not tomorrow, understandable, but all this desperation to be better can be a hindrance. Recovery is better coming to you, than you going searching for it. Understanding why you have a symptom is fine, it takes so much fear and worry out of the mix. But asking ‘How do I get rid of this feeling’ turns into searching for it. There is not a feeling or symptom that you should try to banish, go towards it, work along side it yes, but not spend your time trying to rid yourself of it, a lot of anxiety is just a tired mind and body working together, the last thing it wants is for you to fight against it. Someone once said, ‘I get it now, I never for one minute allowed myself to have anxiety’.

Again live along side anxiety and all the tricks it plays and recovery will come to you, you cannot force feeling good. It is far better to say ‘I felt anxious today, but its fine’ Than to say ‘I have spent all day trying to rid myself of anxiety’ which is what a lot of people do. With patience comes a belief that you will recover, when the seeds of doubt come, that’s when the fighting and self pity starts again. I always seem to take one step back and two forward in my own suffering, but even in my deepest days of setback believed one day I would be fine. One way to explain it is, say you were at the bottom of a mountain and looked at the summit and thought ‘Its just too far, I will never get there, there must be a quicker way’, or ‘Its a long way, but that’s fine I will just take it in stages and reach the summit in my own time’ The second was my attitude to my own recovery, it felt far away at times, but I knew I would get there, however long it took was not an issue. The first attitude I have heard from so many, they don’t want it to take time, they want it now, they go for shortcuts that never work, they want someone to come with the magic sentance to make it all go away, thinking, if someone just answers this then I will be fine, only to find it is never as simple as that.

In all my posts and reply’s I try and keep the blog a very positive place to be and also an honest place to be, I never pretend recovery is a smooth road or will come to you overnight, I will leave that to all the scam sites on the internet. People who think they are different and recovery comes to others and not them, it is not the case, its when that persons attitude changes enough to be able to live along side anxiety and not treat it as a monster trying to engulf them that the real change begins.

A lot of anxiety is habit, avoidence was mine, I knew the only way to change this was to go towards the feelings and places I was avoiding. I knew I would feel odd or dreadful at first, but this was the only way and I was right, aviodence only narrowed my life furthur, sent me deeper into the condition and I refused to let that happen. In time the places and feelings that I avoided so much were my saviour, this is when I began to de-sensitise, in time the places and feelings that filled me with apprehension became so much easier. What this did for me more than anything was give me an inner confidence that I could do anything and to not be bluffed by anxiety, a strange feeling. As Scarlet said in a reply to someone ‘It is like retraining your brain’ and she is right, if you train it to avoid, then you train it to see places and feelings as something to avoid, hence your life may get narrower. If you feel the fear and do it anyway, in time you train it to see life and places as normal. This is why I discussed in the last post as living your life with anxiety there and not letting it rule what you do and don’t do, to just live your life and try to be more interested in what is happening around you than how you feel.

To finish Candie sent me a pic of her and her partner David and the scan of their child of just 13 weeks. She would also welcome some names in case its a boy, so any suggestions would be good below. To view the pic just click here

I hope there is something above that maybe helps or people can relate to.

‘Have a lovely Christmas and a happy new year’

Paul

O.k I hope everyone enjoyed a bit of off topic in the last post, we did seem to go back on topic from time to time, but we shared some stories and some laughs and got to know more about each other. This was not just an off topic subject, it was also designed to give people a break and leads me to my next topic.

I know Scarlet has mentioned to others the need to take a break and I have mentioned it a lot in the past and in my book, but never have I put a post up about it, so I thought if I went into more detail it would make a good post and hopefully help people.

It is very important to take some time out from the subject of anxiety. Its great to finally find information that can help and very helpful to read it, but sometimes people can immerse themselves in the subject, google symptom after symptom, spend hours looking for the answers that will make it all go away. People who have been here a while know that last year I set up a forum and within a few weeks closed it down, not only did I take on too much, but I thought it was not helping people on here in the long run. I have never liked forums as they can become addictive and people spend far too time on them, telling people about their problems, helping others with theirs, reading about other peoples symptoms, day in day out and miss on out the vital time outs that we need. It is the same if someone is depressed and went on a forum hearing peoples storys of depression each day, it tends to just drags you down even furthur.

The mistake so many make is that they chase recovery and don’t let it come to them. In this I mean they will spend hours everyday looking up all their symptoms, spend hours looking for and chasing that elusive cure that will make a symptom go away instantly. I can’t tell you how much time I wasted trying to ‘rid’ myself of anxiety and not just live with anxiety there. I never considered just living and letting my body regain its balance, I fought with myself daily, I had to get rid of these feelings, why do I feel like this? , why am I not getting better? , will this ever go away? , what if I do this, will this help? , I never had a break from the subject, I made the mistake of trying to fight and think my way better, this was just like hitting a broken leg with a hammer, it would never recover.

It is also very important to put all symptoms under the umbrella of anxiety and don’t try to seperate and work on each one individually. Nothing saddens me more than people asking about advice here on a certain symptom and then asking about another the day after, then another symptom the week after. I just know they are going to go round in circles finding something else to worry about, something else to google. You don’t need to seperate each symptom, just see anxiety as one. Worrying about each symptom indivdually will create 20 different things to worry about, putting it all under the umbrella of anxiety, you can never have more than one.

There has been a lot of good advice recently about just living your life from people on here who have come through. I went from a person who did nothing but consume himself with how he felt, hide away from everything, spend my days feeling sorry for myself, to one who just said ‘Enoughs, enough’ the only way to feel normal again is to live as normal life as possible. Instead of feeling sorry for myself I would go for a swim, instead of worrying about how I felt I would get my bike out, instad of spending hours trying to figure a way out of this hell, I would take a walk, instead of hiding away I began to socialise again. Things were odd at first as I was changing a habit I had got into, but by living my life and not living it trying to rid myself of anxiety each day, I felt the old me returning, I began to feel more normal. My day had something else in it but immersing myself in how I felt, it had a break, something else to concentrate on.

I remember going for a swim when I was probably at my worst, full of anxiety and D.P. I wanted to just shut the world away and not go out, but I went. I arrived in the changing rooms and felt weird, but I got changed and into the pool. I was somewhere else half the time, my mind reverting back to me, but it was o.k, things would not change overnight. I finished my swim and got changed and again felt odd and a little anxious, but that was fine. When I arrived home I was happy that I did what I did and felt just a little better, nothing major but a little better. I went every week after that, not demanding or expecting anything and within a few weeks I felt almost normal at times, doing normal things was beinging to feel normal, when at first it was the other way around. I remember when I first felt I had recovered, I had an odd feeling of strangeness and that’s because feeling normal felt strange, like a prisoner first let out of jail, my body needed time to adjust to feeling normal. This is what I mean when I say it comes in layers. A lot of people don’t want to go through anxiety, they think yes, yes, this is all well and good, but I would rather have the quick route and find the answer to make it all go away today, so off they go on their merry way, googling again, going on numerous forums asking questions on how to get rid of this damn thing, they just end up going around in circles, chasing their own tail and getting nowhere.

Going back to forums, some are good, but there are many that are poorly moderated and people who are looking for help end up trying to help others and you end up with plenty of conflicting advice that helps nobody. Also as I say I think they can become addictive and people can end up spending too much time there and not just living their life.

A blog I feel is more helpful as one person is posting advice and then people answer questions and discuss things afterwards on that certain topic. There is no option too google away on here, your not having loads of conflicting advice and not being bombarded with information daily. I want people to come here and read what is relative to them and take away any advice, live their life and use the information given. I to have breaks where I don’t come on for a few days, I have just learnt the need to add plenty of things into my day and do some living, its not an anxiety thing, its just I spend so much time working on the computer, I need some healthy time out.

So to sum up, live your life however you feel, don’t let anxiety make decisions for you, go out and do things, doing so may seem weird at first, that’s o.k as we are changing a habit. But living a normal life is where normal feelings will come back, emotions, your bodys reactions. Do everything you would normally do if you did not have anxiety or D.P, this is the key. Its o.k to have anxiety, its o.k to have D.P, this needs to be your attitude and the opposite of spending your day trying to rid yourself of it.

I hope this helps and people can relate to it.

For more help and information on anxiety visit

www.anxietynomore.co.uk

For more information on my book ‘At last a life’ Visit

www.anxietynomore.co.uk/the_book.html

Hi Everyone. Well there has been a lot of replys to the last post and many newcomers to the blog, so a welcome from me and I hope you find the blog helpful. Also thank you to Scarlet and Candie for some excellent posts. Its great to come back and see good advice that I totally agree with on my return from holiday and I am sure your posts have helped a lot of people. That also goes to anyone else who posts on here supporting and helping others, its greatly appreciated.

If people would like to carry on posting on the topic below then feel free, I just wanted to take a break from advice and have an off topic post. Having a break from the subject can also help. So here are a few things I would like to add.

Firstly my holiday was a disaster. It rained for 3 days solid and boy does it rain abroad. I went down with a cold for 3 days and the resort was far too quiet. I think from now on I will stick to the U.K : ) No it really was disappointing and I just wanted to get back to be honest. One funny incident was me being pulled on stage to do flamenco dancing and it was filmed. I am going to try and put it on youtube for anyone who wishes to see how not to dance : )

Secondly I did mention to a few people about raising money for an anxiety charity. They have always been good to me and I wanted to give something back. The site is www.anxietycare.org.uk They struggle for finance and need all the help they can get. So I have been in training for the last few weeks so as to do a 10k run just after christmas. I have yet to decide which run but it will be in the Yorkshire area. If anyone would like to get fit and maybe do the race, then just get in touch and I will give you more details. I will also post nearer the time when I do it and post some pics after the event.

Lastly I was sent this video of a lion that was brought up in London by two friends. The lion got too big and was taken out to the wild and set free. The two men who looked after him went to track him down and were warned the lion would not remember them, how wrong they were, you have to see the reunion, but get the kleenex ready. http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-B0G_ZuBGD-0/christian_the_lion_full_video_great_quality/

Please feel free to join in some off topic chat or comment on the above, maybe tell us a bit more about you and what you do, post a clip of something, anything at all.

Paul

Hi Everyone, This will be my last post for a while as I go on holiday next week, so hopefully people will get something from this latest post, which is different than recent posts, where I have tried to get people to change their attitude to anxiety or any other symptoms, as its not about having no symptoms, its fine as long as you don’t let these feelings control your life and spend so much wasted energy trying to rid yourself of them.

This leads to todays post, which the idea comes from a program I was watching, I actually do not like the program ‘Jeremy Kyle’ and it was on in the background until it caught my attention.

The program started with a women who had been burgled and met the guy face to face. Two years down the line she never went out and was constantly in fear and suffered with anxiety/panic etc. It was having a terrible impact on her life and she wanted help. Then some guy who was there to help her, did actually for once talk a lot of sense and said something that I could relate to. He said ‘I went through something very similar, but I refused to let it rule my life’ He said he understood the concept that, if he did not get straight back out there, then it would cause far more problems and he went towards what he feared and did not hide. I think he said he was mugged or something similar and he actually wanted to get straight back out there, understanding that it was better to do this than let the problem grow. The main thing is, he did it straight away and did not build up more avoidence behavour habits that could cause more problems.

I wont claim to know anything else on this part of the program, as I say it was on the background, but I just caught him saying this. But I thought, here goes his advice to this lady will be the usual twaddle, but he surprised me and said the only way to move forward can come from you and you have to go towards what you fear to get your life back, he never said it was easy, but suggested staying at home and all the habits of needing someone with her constantly and not going out were counter productive and she needed to do the exact opposite to move on from this. I am not blaming this lady by any means, but what she did wrong was to never her allow herself to feel any fear to get through it, for her it was about not feeling any fear or as little as possible. She would ring her boyfriend 20 times a day and when he got back he was never allowed to go out, she would not go out in case she saw this guy again and the problem just grew and grew. What she needed to do was feel these feelings and go through them, even if at first it was not ring her boyfriend so much, little steps, but she had to feel some uncomfort, only then would she feel more comfortble, she could never expect to live life with someone constantly by her side. But again I am not blaming this lady, she was just going with her instincts.

I always went towards any uncomfortable situations and refuse to get into avoidence behaviour, even in my days of little knowledge I knew that this was the worst thing I could do and trust me this is what de-sensitises you. I know we want the easy way out, but I thought if I don’t do everything at will and allow myself to feel some fear, then my life would just get narrower and narrower. A realisation once came when I had a job interview and as I got near I thought ‘I can’t do this, I felt very anxious’ I then had a realisation. ‘I would feel like this pre-anxiety days’ but I would not let it bother me, also my nerves are sensitised so I may feel it a little stronger than most, but its the same feeling, its only my attitude to it that has changed, so I just got on and went in and soon felt a lot calmer once I was in chatting. Again I nearly let a common feeling of excess adrenalin (which is all it was) bluff me into avoidence.

From that day I always went everywhere at will, however I felt and it was the reason things got so much easier. But I had to go through these times and not trust my bodys instinct to avoid, there was logically nothing to fear, so why should I? I may have felt uncomfortable again, but these feelings did not bother me in the slightest, I had an in built confidence, I had been through them so many times and nothing ever happened, so there was no reason to care how I felt anymore. I just tried to lead as normal life as possible even though I was wracked with anxiety or felt great. To get normality back I had to live as normal as possible and not let any feeling control what I did and did not do.

I refused to let how I felt narrow my life even furthur.

I know we are all different and some people may need to take small steps at first, but the power is in us all. Don’t be bluffed into avoidence by what is nothing more than excess adrenlalin in a sensitised body. Once you deal with yourself and not a place, nowhere can hold any fears, the feeling is always the same.

I hope that people can relate to something there.

For more help with anxiety visit www.anxietynomore.co.uk

For more information on my book ‘At last a life’ visit

www.anxietynomore.co.uk/the_book.html

Hello everyone, the title is just something that has cropped up a lot recently and I wanted to cover. Before I do a few words. Firstly I am going away for a week in a month, just a holiday and Candie will be moderating the blog for me while I am away and maybe helping beyond that. All comments are moderated, as I don’t want mixed messages coming through or people promoting their useless affiliate products on here, which they keep trying. I also want people to be helpful and supportive, which is very easy to moderate as we have a very nice bunch of people on here. Candie also takes the time out to answer a lot of people and is very helpful and someone I trust a lot, so thanks for helping me Candie.

Secondly I am starting some voulantry work next month. Its on hospital radio and two evenings a week. I think most or each hospital do it. You get to chat with patients, ask what they want played and learn all about how to work in the studio and eventually get your own slot. It is something I am very interested in and can’t wait to get started.

O.k todays post came from a post on the blog, which went something like ‘How do I get rid of this thing’ The ‘thing’ being anxiety. I must admit when I first suffered I did know know what the hell was up with me and just thought it would pass like a cold. Well obviously it did not and then I started to worry and obsess about it, especially when everywhere I turned nobody was giving me any answers. So a lot of people do believe they have been unlucky and question why did anxiety come to them.

Well anxiety does not chose certain people, it is not something that you just get like a cold. Anxiety is the result of your body being over worked, be it through long hours, stress at worrk, a problem or collection of them that you worry about. You over work your body and it breaks down, your nerves have been battered so much. that they go ‘bad’ if you like. Anything you buy, be it a blender, a vacuum and yes even a car. If you work that beyond its capabilitys it will break down or begin to clunk and run bad. Your body is the same, so anxiety is not a ‘it’, it is not something your body wants to go through, it is telling you it can’t work with the pressure you are putting it under. That is why it is so important to take your symptoms with a pinch of salt, not to get stressed or worry about them, as again you are working your body far too hard, a body that is crying out to be left alone. The easiest way to not worry or get stressed about how you feel is to understand more about why you feeli like you do and this is the reason I try to explain a lot in my book and on here.

Some people say they feel instantly better when they have read the book or a post on here. I say yes because you understand why now, it does not scare you as much, so you worry less and don’t get as stressed by the way you feel. The more of an understanding I received, ‘most of it I had to work out by myself, pre internet days’ the better I felt and the less respect I gave to my symptoms. I had the same symptoms for a while and that point is important, as a lot of people hope they will feel better overnight. But they did not hold the same fear anymore and obviously changing the daily habit of worry and obsessing how I felt helped me to recover, it gave space for me to progress. How could I ever get better while I still worried daily and stressed everyday about how I felt, ‘trying to fight and think my way better’, it was impossible, but something most people do without the right information, scrambling around daily for answers, worrying and stressing about how they feel, watching months go by without any progress, wondering if this hell will ever leave them. That person was me also and would still be me to this day if I had not educated myself enough.

I hope there is something there for everyone

For more help and advice visit www.anxietynomore.co.uk

For more information on my book ‘At last a life’ visit

www.anxietynomore.co.uk/the_book.html

Firstly just a few words from me. I am working on my book at the moment as things are in the pipeline to help it reach out to more people (more if this delvops later) so I want it to be as good as it can be and I always keep a document named ‘Book updates’ and one of the most helpful places to have new ideas is by what people ask or write on this blog. If something comes up time and time again then it needs covering. I also had an idea of a new chapter that would be from people who post here/email me on how much progress they have made or their full recovery. I always say the more people that have stories of their own recovery, that others can relate to the better. In my own search all those years ago I had a massive interest in reading about anyone that had come through and I think this new chapter will really benefit people. It will not only be that they have come through or improved dramatically, but what really helped them to do this.

Anyway I am halfway through doing this and this is the reason I have not being around to post much recently. So thanks to all those who have replied to others as I have noticed one or two new posters recently so welcome. Most people like to just read and stay in the background without posting and that’s fine. But to all those that do post and help and support others ‘A big thank you’ as it helps keep the blog going with me only having limited time to put into it and through the emails I receive I know how much this blog helps others and without the people who do post and support it would not be what it is.

O.k on to todays post

The title above is nothing new, but I wanted to add a conversation I had with someone recently as it may relate to a lot of people and help them understand better as to why they do stay in the cycle, which always helps to reverse it. Many regular posters and readers may have come to this conclusion with things I have said in the past, but we get so many new visitors each day that I really wanted to add it.

O.k I was talking with someone the other day about his anxiety and how it came about. He said at the time that he was put under a lot of pressure at work and one or two things in his home life were also a factor, although he could not really remember what. He said I have cut my hours down, the other problems no longer exist, so why do I still feel like this?

I said that just like me when I first suffered; that you now have a new problem and this is the problem that is keeping your anxiety going. To which he replied ‘What new problem’?

I replied ‘Anxiety’ These feelings have become your new problem and this is the reason you stay in the cycle. I further explained that he may have worried about his job, the problems at home initially, with which he agreed. Right o.k you put your body under too much stress and worry and it sort of broke down and you ended up with anxiety. Now what you are doing is worrying and stressing about how you feel and this is the reason the anxiety stays around, it has a new worry to feed on.

I did exactly the same, in fact my initial problem did not matter, this anxiety was far bigger than what brought it on. I worried daily about it, fought it, tried everything to make the damn thing go away. How could I ever recover putting this much stress and worry on myself. I could not.

He said ‘I really understand what your saying here and I realise that I am doing all of the above and why I am getting nowhere’

So I told him you cannot hope to banish these feelings, so why not live with them the best you can. If you decide to do this then you will not add anymore fuel to the fire. You will begin to break a cycle. Anxiety is like a fire that you throw petrol on. It wont stop until you take away its fuel. It may burn for a while, but it will began to dampen if you stop feeding it. I did the opposite for 10 years and it got me nowhere, I understand fully now why I got worse and not better. If my body would speak it would have said ‘Paul just leave me alone and I will heal myself’.

O.k that’s me for today, I hope people can relate to that conversation and it helps in some way.

For more help with anxiety visit www.anxietynomore.co.uk

For more information on my book ‘At last a life’ visit www.anxietynomore.co.uk/the_book.html

I thought long and hard about my next post, as I think I have covered a lot recently about having a ‘whatever’ attitude to how you feel and so many people have this concept, and reading through so many have improved a lot. I have like a diary of my own suffering and how I got through each stage, so I have plenty more to say and do take on board what people post and do think ‘I remeber that stage’ or ‘I remember when I struggled with that’ and try to cover such comments or posts the best I can.

Todays topic certain people will relate to and it was certainly something I went through that held me back. When I first suffered with anxiety, I really had no clue what was wrong with me and in time my confidence really plummeted. Well we all know what people with little confidence have a habit of doing and that is ‘People pleasing’ not only that, but we try and cover up how we are feeling, still trying to be the jolly person with loads of confidence when inside we feel lost and bewildered.

I remember going to work and just trying to please everyone. My confidence was so low, I felt that everyone was better than me, I had suffered from depression and wanted to make myself feel good and wrongly thought that trying to please people would do this. I stopped having opinions and just agreed with everyone, which is the quickest way for your confidence to plummet even furthur. I used to get frustrated as to where the old me had gone and try and cover up how I was feeling, acting through the whole day, ‘I must not let people see how I am’ , ‘I must come across as normal and happy’ The stress of this had me breakdown in tears one day. I could no longer keep this act up. I was sick of trying to make people like me, which in turn had the opposite effect I am sure, as people lose respect for someone who has no opinions and just agrees with what everyone is saying, it certainly made me lose even more confidence in myself.

So one day I thought ‘No more’ I am not acting my way through the day, if people notice I am not myself, if I come across as odd then so be it, I am not acting that everything is o.k anymore. So many people email me and say this hurts them more than anything. Losing who they are. I say ‘Don’t chase your own tail trying to scramble your way back to who you were or act that everything is o.k, this will only put yourself under more stress’.

I also said to myself, ‘However I feel I am no longer trying to please people. However I feel I am going to have an opinion, this anxiety is just a surface feeling, I am still me underneath and that confidence will come back in time, but not if I lose who I am underneath and I have never gone around trying to please people in the past and anxiety will not lead me down that path’.

So from that day if I came across as odd then so be it, I had stopped acting that everything is o.k, if people spoke about me not being the person I used to be, quiet, more withdrawn, not as chirpy, then water off a ducks back, the real me will rise again in time. Also from that day on, the people pleasing stopped, I no longer ‘Tried to make people like me to help me feel better, this was having the opposite effect, it just made me feel worse anyway’. From that day on the stress of trying to be something I wasnt and not have to act anymore was lifted from me. I felt more at ease and in time when I was free of anxiety, I was more confident than ever. The real me had risen again like I knew it would, it was always there, but it came back stronger than ever.

So if you can realte to any of the above I would like you to do the same. I hated trying to please others, I knew that acting my way through the day made me feel worse and like everything else. I always recognised this and tried to change it. These changes made so much difference to me in the short and long term. Never forget however you feel, that person is still there, just waiting to rise back up, more confident than ever.

Just to finish, so many people who recover say how much more confident they feel, also how they view life differently, they lose their lust for material things and just enjoy living again. They no longer take the simple things for granted and love just waking up in a morning and doing the simple things, that person was also me.

I hope todays post helps in some way and that everyone had a great bank holiday.

Paul

Hi everyone!

Firstly thank you Jo for sending the pics to me to post. I have re-sized them all and put a border round them, so I hope you like them. They are really lovely and great to see something positive. I hope you and Michael have many years of happiness and I wish you all the best for the future.

Also I commend you for letting me post the pics, a lot of people like to stay in the background, due to people’s ignorance on the subject, so I applaud you for that. As I said if anyone else would like some pics posted on this page then feel free to send them to me. I am training for a half marathon which I am a long way off doing yet, but as soon as I do, I will post the pics.

So for anyone who would like to see Jo’s wedding pics, here they are www.anxietynomore.co.uk/members_pics.html

Paul

I decided to write this post today after reading through a lot of posts recently. Firstly I want to say something again that was stated in an earlier post, some may have missed it so here it is, in a post. I think certain people get hung up with accepting how they are, this should be a whatever attitude and NOT a need to keep reminding yourself to accept how you feel as you once again start battling with yourself and again becomes a ‘Do’. I think someone mentioned it in the last post to the effect where they had to keep reminding themself to accept how they were. There is no need to do this and as some people may know it loses its force in time. Accpeting is all about not doing ‘Not fighting, not worrying, not filling yourself with self pity. Giving your body a break, its never a ‘Do’, so please don’t feel the need to walk around telling yourself daily you must accept this. I put it more as laying all your tools down and accepting this is you for the time being and not resisting or spending every day trying to get better. I really hope that makes sense.

Secondly through some posts I have seen people worry about the future with statements like ‘Will I be better soon? . ‘I worry about going to….?’ ‘What if there is more wrong with me?’ etc…etc…Firstly please try just for a week or so deal with today, don’t worry about the past and don’t worry about the future. Just deal with today, how much extra stress and worry do people put on themselves doing this. If you just live in today then it takes so much of this away. Especially in people who suffer with anxiety as people worry far more and put such a dark cloud on the tomorrow/next week. Minor issues become far bigger than they really are and we get into a cycle of anxiety/worrying, more worry, more anxiety, anxiety and more worrying, at some point this cycle has to change. So just live for today and then take what comes tommorrow.

I once explained to someone who was in the same situation as another person, that the only reason she felt dreadful is that she worried about the situation and the other person realised there was no point. I learnt early on how destructive worrying was and yes it had become a habit for me, but again it was one I was able to change.

Paul

Well here is the post I promised. I do read almost every post on here as I have to moderate the blog by myself. But I do take on board what people are saying and then adjust my next post accordingly. I can’t post every week, otherwise it would dilute the quality and I would mostly end up repeating myself. The best way to know what to post, is by what people are saying as a collective bunch. I know some ask for specific posts, but I have to do it for everyone and I felt todays post would help the majority.

Todays post is more on my recovery and the journey towards my goal of living anxiety free. Firstly maybe I should not say goal, it was more a dream as at the height of my suffering as I saw no way out, I truly did not. I thought this was me forever, nothing was working, in fact I was getting worse. The first stage for me was not a visit to the doctor, he was only concerned with giving me pills. My first rung on the ladder was to find out why I felt like I did, a pill would never do this, I wanted answers. Eventually through research and reading and eventually finding someone who understood the subject, I found a lot of these answers. Just to have an explanation and to realise that I was not alone, was enough for me to change a cycle. A cycle of self pity, complete bewilderment and constant worry and fear of what was wrong with me. This is the very reason I was so bad, so lost and felt so terrible. My mind and body was about as tired and emotionally spent as it could be and all I did was worry, fight and pound it with questions daily, no wonder I was getting worse, but what choice did I have, when I had no answers? I felt I had to work it out for myself, to fight it and hope it went away. I look back at the hole I was in and get angry that I did not find the answers sooner, that no one could tell me anything. This would have saved so much suffering. I lost my job and many friends, more than that I lost who I was.

So the first stage was understanding, once I had the knowledge I could slow down on the worry, not be so bewildered, realise that I needed to step back and give my mind and body a rest and not fight through each day. Yes I still felt awful, my body was so sensitised and tired, but for once I felt some relief and hope. Understanding is always the first step, this is why in my book I don’t just say do this or do that, I explain why you feel like you do, what keeps you in this cycle. Many people email me after reading the pages on my site or reading the book and burst into tears with relief that they have finally been given some answers and also a realisation that they are not alone. They have finally been given an explanation to why they feel like they do, they have the first stage to recovery.

So I now had plenty of knowledge to what was wrong with me. I then believed I could get better, I never lost this belief once I had some answers. The next stage for me was working out what was right for me and what was not, a lot through trial and error and once one thing made sense then other things would also. I realised very early on that I had fallen into a lot of bad habits. Avoidence being one of them and that hiding away was not the way forward and that I would no longer be bluffed by how I was feeling. I knew that normal living would eventually bring back normal feelings. I remember the first thing I did was join a thai class. I must have put off going 10 times in the week before I went. The thought of going into a room of strangers, feeling dreadful, anxious, panicky, strange, all the symptoms I felt at the time. But I could either hide away or take the first step to a new start. So I went and yes I felt awful at times, but something happened, I got into the class and for a minute or two forgot about how I felt and just got on. I finished the class and went home elated. I had floated past all the negative suggestions not to go. This is what happens, in a healthy body anxiety means fight or flight, it is telling you that you are in danger, take your choice. It could be a snarling dog that you meet and the option to avoid is a good one. This is where all the feelings of avoidence come from. Well going to a thai class there is nothing to fear, no need to run, apart from your instinct brought on by anxiety, that is not needed in that situation. This was why I knew I had to ignore the instinct to avoid, I had to just go and take what comes, what was the worst thing that could happen anyway? So I then began to go everywhere at will. I went socialising with friends, feeling awful and strange. I remember going swimming and feeling as though I was not there, thinking, that’s fine the more I do it the more normal I will feel. Once you do things time and time again then feelings dampen, your body does not react to certain situations anymore, once you go through certain situations many times you build up a strength, an insulation if you like, places just don’t hold any fear anymore.

So this was my second stage of recovery. Begining to live my life again, without anxiety ruling what I did and the decisions I made. This was very important to me and in time I felt so much more comfortable wherever I went. I always dealt with me and not the situation I was in, if I felt awful then so be it, if I felt great even better. I sometimes felt overwhelmed in the early stages and wanted to run or go home and take the easy route out, but I never did and this is where the real victorys came. I did it, I felt really awful, overwhelmed and I stayed, I know now I can handle anything now, it was just a feeling, this is what these times brought to me.

To sum up I would have bad weeks, good weeks, great days out, days when I felt awful, but I did everything at will and never let anxiety rule what I did and did not do, this made so much difference to my life. I am not saying it is easy at times, but I knew how important it was. To feel more normal I had to pack as much normal living in as possible.

The next stage for me was to then to do positive things in my life. I was at this point where a lot are on the blog with how I felt. I felt o.k, but had bad days and still did not feel great. I was though no longer fighting or worrying, questioning everything, tiring my body out. I was just left with a tired and sensitised body, so yes I would still feel crap sometimes, but I felt 1000% better than I once had. I had gone from having no good days to plenty. From feeling so odd I questioned if I lived on this planet, to feeling more normal than I had felt in ages. Depersonalisation has been covered on here many times, but I had stopped concerning and worring daily about how I felt, which in turn dampen these feelings of strangeness and I once again felt part of the world again and not just 24/7 anxiety. I had also began to get out an socialise, I went back to work and was again able to live my life. I may not have felt great all the time, but at least I could go wherever I wanted, I had reversed the avoidence cycle. You can see now that this has been a journey and that takes me onto this stage of doing more positive things.

I then joined a friend running each night, just a 50 minute run. When I first went I felt awful, so tired and spent, but no pain no gain, I wanted to get fit and bring something to be proud of into my life, again another focus but me. I cannot express how much better I felt when I came back from these runs. I felt great, excercise is by far the best way of burning off excess adrenalin and not only that it really helped me think straight, I could think so clearly when I got back that I had another realisation, it was anxiety and excess adrenalin that made my thoughts race and come out odd. As I have explained before it is the excess adrenalin needing an escape and this manifests itself sometimes in odd, racing thoughts.

I was now so into this that I took up cycling. I used to go with a group of friends and cycle all over my local county, sometimes for miles. I now had something else in my day, instead of thinking about how I felt, I was planning my next bike ride or run. I was aiming to do a half marathon also and had so much going on that my whole life and focus was changing. I hardly cared about the few twinges of anxiety, the very slight feeling of strangeness, they became just a feeling in the background that really did not bother me. The exercise and looking after myself brought them to such a level that I hardly bothered or noticed, my days had another meaning to them now.

I did eventually give up the running and cycling and have recently just got back into it. But I was just about recovered then, recovery was never my goal, it just came to me. I think people reach out too much for it and end feeling dissapointed. I first ran because I thought, hey I will feel great when I get back and I would almost tune in to see how I felt, feeling dissapointed if I did not. I then realised I was again trying to do something about my anxiety, putting pressure on myself to feel a certain way. So I changed my attitude and ran for me, to get fit and if it helped me feel better then great. This attitude helped me so much as I ran and forgot myself, not running and then thinking about how much it would help me, again reverting back to trying to recover from anxiety, I had to let that come to me and stop focusing everything I did on this goal. I hope that makes sense and I would say that realisation was my final stage to recovery and the person I am now. You don’t have to go running and I understand it is impossible for certain people, but it was as much a new focus, as the excercise that helped me so much. So doing anything new, even if it is painting at home. My own attention was on myself for a while, but this was just habit and would fade in time, when I first went running and cycling this was the case, but it was fine I did not let it bother me just carried on with what I was doing and in time my new focus was my new hobbys I had brought into my day. This has been asked many times ‘How do I stop thinking of me and how I feel’ the answer is you don’t, brooding at home does not help and the reason I say find a new hobby and focus to your day. But thinking about yourself has just become a habit that’s all. Don’t try not to think about yourself, if the attention is on you let it be, but don’t get frustrated with it. I had it for a while but in time it dampened when I gave it no respect. As I say I had other things to bother with and not myself, to be honest I got bored with the subject in the end. I had really developed a ‘whatever’ attitude, it had become in built in me, I no longer cared.

To finish I will say some people will relate to all of the above, some to parts of it, we are all different and I had a few stages to go through as I suffered so long and fell so deep. It is a lot easier to recover the shorter time you have suffered, memory and habits are not so raw and people may not be as sensitised. I have had many people email and after reading the book they are back to normal within a few weeks, but in almost all cases they have suffered a very short time, they unlike me were given answers very early on. If you have suffered longer, then it may take longer, but just go for progress, don’t put loads of pressure on yourself to recover, this holds so many people back. You also have a lot more information than I ever had, you have the support from others, that I so craved, but never received. As you see I went through a lot of bad times, to become the person I am now, did things I did not feel like doing at times. I used to lie in bed wanting and wishing it all away, but I knew deep down this would not happen, certain things were up to me.

I hope there is something above for everyone. It is not a full account by any means, just a brief account highlighting the most important stages of my recovery and how I came through them. I am not saying everyone will go through the stages I did, but I felt I needed to go through the stages, so people don’t feel they are missing something and that it was easy for me, it was a very up and down affair, but so worth it to be the person I now am. My life is so different now and everyday is a gift and that gift is there for everyone who keeps the faith. Anxiety and the symptoms that go with it are just feelings, never see it as anything else, it will only hold you back if you let it.

Paul

For more help and advice visit my main site www.anxietynomore.co.uk

For more information about my book ‘At last a life’ visit

www.anxietynomore.co.uk/the_book.html

I don’t know if people remember but last year Channel 4 asked me to help them find people for a T.V show about teenagers with anxiety. Well the B.B.C have asked me to help them find people who maybe interested in appearing on T.V dealing with food phobias and anxiety and also aksed me to appear. I have no interest as I have said in the past and like to stay in the background. But I did say I would post on here in case anyone would like to appear or think it may help. Instead of going through the ins and outs I will just post one of the later emails that was sent to me. When copying and pasting the message below, the font or layout may change so apologies for that.

Hi Paul

Thanks very much for your message.

I’d be very grateful if you could have a think of any psychologists or
psychotherapists who might be suitable to appear on TV. Perhaps there
are speakers who’ve stood out at mental health conferences, or authors
you’re aware of who might translate well to TV. The most important thing
is that they have the personality to engage TV viewers, they don’t need
to be clinical psychologists.

Also, if you do know of any sufferers, who haven’t had any treatment
yet, we’d very much like to speak to them.They need to be in the early
stages of finding help – as the TV series introduces new psychological
insights and therapies to them.

The show specifically helps people with a restrictive and unbalanced
diet, who obsess about certain foods they must eat, or are fearful
of certain foods they must avoid. Here is the BBC link showing previous
case studies: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0090y2h

The experts offer techniques to reduce anxiety levels and introduce
exposure/ desensitising exercises over a 1 month period. This aims to
help individuals get on their way to helping themselves – improving
both their emotional wellbeing and physical health. In turn, viewers at
home, who may be suffering in silence, realise that they are not alone,
and that there are steps that can be taken to break the vicious cycle.

As we’ve seen by the previous successes in the first two series of the
show, individuals benefit from intensive, one to one, life-changing
support from a nutritionist and a psychologist. Past participants have
since contacted us saying how grateful they are for the help, and as a
result, are continuing to cope well. Participants also find taking part
in a TV programme a great deal of fun and a once in a lifetime,
memorable opportunity!

Obviously the title ‘Freaky Eaters’ is worded in a way just to ‘grab’
viewers’ initial attention. Content in the last two series was received
well in nutritional and psychological circles, due to the experts
successfully helping people. In the next series we are also looking to
give even more time to psychological analysis and scientific /
nutritional information and we are very open to ideas.

It is a great opportunity for experts to lift their professional
profile by appearing on an educational BBC series.

Please feel free to contact me on ***************** I’ve also attached a
flyer we are distributing in our search for participants with food
issues.

Best wishes
Em

If that would interest anyone then just email Emma at em.marshall@betty.co.uk

Just a few words from myself. I am just finishing a new site completely seperate to this subject and the reason I have not been around much. I have also just bought a bike and took up running again and am as fit as I have been for a while and really feeling the benefits. I know I have said it before but exercise as well as the new hobby it brings is very beneficial to anyone with anxiety. It burns off a lot of excess adrenalin, clears the cobwebs and with the fresh air and new focus to your day I can’t promote it enough. Sometimes its the last thing we feel like doing when we feel lousy, but it is well worth it for the rewards it brings.

I will post something new next week, glad to see everyone communicating and helping each other.

Take care

Paul

Hi Everyone, Well I have just got back from a weekend away. I went to Chester and visited the zoo in the rain. Well I think I saw about 3 animals, there was just nothing there at all. They must have been hiding away or on strike but it was a very dissapointing day. i then went into Chester city centre looking to but some cords to go out in and not one shop stocked them, it was just jeans, jeans, jeans. Why do shops think all men want to wear is jeans! Well that’s what I have been up to recently. I am also nursing a bit of a hangover today, not like me to drink too much, but I do have those days and always understand the day after why I try to keep them to a minimum.

Well todays post is a comment that someone put up to an earlier post. I liked her comment and the way she put things and asked if I could maybe use it as a post with a few words of my own so that everyone got to read it, she was very happy to do this, so here it is.

I have just read Beths post from 7th May and have to say I totally agree with her. I started suffering from anxiety and panic attacks only about 3 months ago and reading up on the subject and this website have helped me more or less totally overcome them….

Because as Beth quite righlty said, all that we are doing is tuning into our over active imagination – which has probably always been there and popped various thoughts into our mind – but in the past we’ve always ignored them. It’s as if once you have suffered from anxiety you listen to every negative thought and then question why its there and why it won’t go away – when if we just ignore it, it actually does goes away.

I think what i’m trying to say to give some help and support to people (I want you all to know that whilst I have only suffered for what may seem a short period of time – it was the most fightening time of my life) is to try not to over analyse everything, question every thought, or worry what’s wrong with you. There is actually nothing wrong with any of us – we’re all human and naturally experience thoughts, feelings, moods…..just accept them and try not to question then as being weird – its normal.

Sometimes we spend too long thinking about these intagible feelings, instead of focusing on the external positive things in our life that will help us to ignore the ‘random’ negative emotions which will naturally pop up from time to time.

Maybe that’s why I managed to overcome my fears and feel back to normal?

I hope I haven’t come across as patronising or belittling anything anyone feels or us going through – believe me, I understand. It’s just reading some posts started to make me feel like I was helpling myself go back to the place I was in and I wanted to offer something positive which helped me and my battle.

Imogen xx

Well I thought Imogen put that very well there. I know there has been the odd post on people doing really well recently and others may think ‘When is it my turn?’ The only point I would like to make on that is that the less time you have suffered, the easier it is to come through. I had 10 years of suffering behind me and did not expect things to turn around overnight and it took a while for me to get to the point I am now. So no matter how long you feel you have suffered, just think how far you have come. This is the only thing you need to know you are on the right track. But don’t get impatient and as Imogen says start to question everything. Lets all the negatives go and focus on the positives. I always looked at it like this ‘Look how far I have come’ instead of ‘I want to be 100% better’ , ‘I now have good days instead of feeling bad all the time’ again instead of ‘Why do I still feel awful sometimes’.

Focus on the positives and take comfort in the fact that people are posting that have now recovered or come so far. Don’t look at is as a ‘Why not me’ Never let impatience be your jailer, I never even thought of recovery or demanded it, I was just happy that things were changing for the better.

Paul

O.k here is todays post as promised. Firstly I want to express how much setbacks are all part of recovery. Again there will never be a post saying ‘How to make sure you don’t have a setback’ You almost certainly will, the post is to tell you how to deal with them.

Setbacks for me were the hardest things to work out

‘I thought I had cracked it, why do I feel so bad again?’

‘Oh I hate this feeling, I thought it had gone forever’

‘Last week was so good and now I am back to square one, this will be me forever’

These were just a few of the statements that I came out with when I first started to recover. What did these statements do? Well they filled me with self pity, filled me with thoughts of ‘maybe I am doing something wrong, this is not working’, I began to fight again, to try and figure out why this had happened, worried about ever getting better. I did everything wrong basically.

I eventually changed this way of thinking and said’ I have been through so much, do I really expect to be better overnight?’ No of course I am going to have a few setbacks. I felt bloody awful for months on end, with no good days, this up and down affair tells me things are improving, I am finally getting somewhere’. And that’s the hardest part, feeling great and then when we feel bad again, it seems even worse, as we enjoyed some good days and now its back.

Setbacks come because suffering is still raw, we have suffered and been through so much, our bodies do take time to regain their balance, a stressful event or memory can trigger a setback. Sometimes we may just feel bad for no reason. Well we feel happy some days and sad on others, but don’t feel the need to work out why. And this brings me to the whole point, there is no need to go too deep into why they come, as it does not matter, that is not important, its how you deal with them that is.

And trust me the more you go through setbacks, the easier it becomes as you begin to realise they always pass and become an expert in letting them, they don’t feel as important when they come in the future. They just become a little nusiance and that’s fine. Don’t ever try and scramble your way back to how you were last week, just accept it as part of recovery, another chance to not care, to let it do its worse. Here is something Clare mentioned last week.

My only concern is that I never want to go back to the way I was a few months ago and I’m trying to make some changes in my life to solve that, like more exercise, eating better, relaxing more and talking about things rather than bottle them up. But unfortunately life deals you some knocks every so often and I’d like to think I could handle these knocks and not crumble with anxiety like I have done in the past. Thanks to your book Paul I have more confidence to get through the bad times but I’d like to know if there were any changes you made to help you keep a positive outlook in life and not let stress get on top of you.

The changes Clare are very good, I can’t express how much making changes to my lifestyle made a difference. But do them for yourself, don’t do them with the attitude of keeping anxiety at bay, as then if you do have a setback you will begin to question everything again and also don’t live your life trying to keep anxiety at bay. Remember it is always’It does not matter how I feel, if I feel anxiety then so be it’ Do you see the difference. I actually welcomed a setback, I stopped caring how I felt so it was not an issue. I did all the ‘Must do everything to stop it coming’ This is why people go around searching for medical cures, therapists, internet searches, forums…All to stop it coming or to get rid of it. And this is the reason most of the time they get nowhere, as the opposite is true, allow it to be there, welcome it, don’t care if it is or not and this goes for setbacks. It is hard and very tempting to fight or try and push it away ‘Do something about it’ but it gets you nowhere.

My attitude and what I teach others is welcome the good days and don’t get too down about the bad. Don’t try and scramble back to how you were. Don’t waste an ounce of energy on why you feel bad again, it passes, it always does. But setbacks can pass a lot quicker depending on your attitude towards them and then come with less force in the future. I once helped a lady who used to get very frustrated about having bad days out of the blue. With some advice she emailed me and said her new attitude on a bad days was ‘Well my anxiety is high today, but so what’ she knew she could not control it, so she might as well get on with her day and not care even though the feelings were not too good. She still disliked the feelings, but she had stopped getting so frustrated, stopped the self pity, the need to figure out why and her setback did not seem as bad.

I hope the above helps, I am not asking you to like a setback, just try and change your attitude towards them, they do come less frequent and with less power in time, just remember that they are part of recovery, they always pass, so don’t let them get you down or pay them too much respect. Tomorrow could be the best day yet.

Paul

For more information about my book ‘At last a life’ visit

www.anxietynomore.co.uk/the_book.html

Firstly I have to say its good to get back to the blog. The forum did not work out for various reasons and the best thing to do was close it before it grew too big. Just seeing people’s post and comments below and the feedback I have had I think I did the right thing.

O.k I hope everyone had a good bank holiday. I went out today to a pub next to Manchester airport. It backs on to the runway and you can see all the planes take off and come in. They have a few things going on, bouncy castles for kids, a mini park, food and music. Its also where I met my partner for the first time a few years back so call me a bit of a romantic : ) Then stopped we off for something to eat and I went up a belt size with steak pie, chips and my big weakness……Cider!

Talking of food and beer I recently decided to look after myself better. I have done a month now and feel so, so much better. I got into a rut of drinking and eating far too much, eating all the wrong things, sleeping too much, not excercising..etc…etc…I have now got my running shoes back on and cut my drinking down to once a week and then just a few pints. I also invested in a fruity machine…Wow these are brillaint to start the morning off, just fill it with fruit and then some orange juice or similar and then withing two minutes they are done. I have one every morning and with the cutting down of beer, bad foods and more exercise I feel 100% more healthy. I just thought I will lose a bit and gain so much by making some changes. Lets just see if my will power holds out : )

Just one more thing on looking after myself. I have a full body massage or an indian head massage once a week or at least as much as I can afford. This is my de-stress time. I know they can be expensive, but if anyone can afford one from time to time I would recommend one. I feel great for the rest of the day and can’t wait for my next. All this was alien to me before, but I guess after abusing my body, which brought led to me first suffering with anxiety, I now try and look after it and don’t take my health and well being for granted like I once did.

Well that’s me, I think its good to just go off topic from time to time. Also I like to post quality and not quantity, so I do wait until I have something to say, sometimes its what people comment on or something that keeps coming up.

Hope everyone is well

Paul

Well its been a while since my last post and sorry to everyone who follows my blog, I have been super busy and things will now be back to normal. I try and title the posts for people who may place these statements in the search engines, this way you reach more people. There is no point putting the word advice as nobody will find it. So this is today’s title and something I have not covered before.

This post covers something that I went through and wanted to share with others as I feel it is very important. When I was going through recovery a couple of stressful things happened, day to day problems, that put me under a lot of stress and as my anxiety was always close to home, Bham it sent me into a setback. I can remember two very bad setbacks, as though I was walking a tightrope with my mind and also I was very anxious again, it was not a nice feeling. Now the first time this happened, I sort of hid away, did not dare put one foot in front of the other for fear of making myself worse, I thought about not going places. Also I tried to think and fight my way better, which is never a good idea. Well I felt like I was being swallowed up, this was not working, so I changed tactics and lived my life as I normally do. I stopped tip toeing around, watching how I felt, basically being worried about it and how I could climb back up. I just got on with my day as normal, made breakfast, went for a bike ride, come back and made something to eat. Got up the next day and went to town and then went out at night. In all this I felt awful, I truly did not want to do anything, but sit and feel sorry for myself. But within a couple of days I felt like me again. The second time I had this kind of setback I did the same again and although again I just wanted to hide away, I did not, I was wiser now, and again a couple of days and I was back to my old self. My stress levels had gone down and I was back to just having anxiety in the background.

Now this taught me a very important lesson, it was to help me all the way through my recovery. This lesson was not to be bluffed by how I felt at anytime, no matter what, I was not going to be bluffed by the way I felt and just carry on with my day. More than anything it taught me that to find normal feelings you have to live normally and have normality in your day. Don’t hide away worrying, don’t worry that your mind races or what it says, I only ever had odd thoughts that stuck when I had high anxiety, so I knew that’s all that caused them and so never let them bother me. They were something that would calm when my anxiety levels went down and they always did. It taught me that the best way to come through a setback was just to be, the more normal living I crammed in, the more my body caught up. In fact that was my saying ‘The more normal things I do and have in my day, the quicker my body catches up’ . It taught me a lesson even when I felt average, just to live my life and not be bluffed by how I felt. Don’t be bluffed into thinking you are back to square one, you are not. It the height of a setback feeling good felt so far away, unreachable sometimes, but as soon as I felt better and my anxiety levels dropped I could not see myself in a setback. This is the point, don’t be too impressed by how you feel at any given time, these times always pass. The more you go through these times the stronger you become and the more belief you build.

Some people say they like to keep working or take a break and like to go back, as it gives them this sense of normal living and helps and I agree it can, if you feel able to work, even if its just part time. Anything normal in your day helps. I used to go swimming and felt the oddest person on the planet, but kept going each day and in time I felt more and more normal, I was not going to sit at home feeling sorry for myself, trying to figure things out all day, I wanted normality in my day. Even now I spend a lot of time on-line as I have to through what I do, but I have to have time outs, to refresh myself and do other things, it brings a lot of normal living into my week and keeps my mind active and refreshed.

Hope that makes a lot of sense and helps people.

Paul

For more help and advice visit my main site www.anxietynomore.co.uk

For more information about my book ‘At last a life’ visit

www.anxietynomore.co.uk/the_book.html

Firstly I have not dropped off the face of the earth. I have been very busy with other things, including building the forum which is just about ready and I will launch it in a while. I am also trying to get a new site of the ground and build a couple of others, one for a family member and one for a friend. Well things have calmed down a bit, so I will be a round a little more than I have been and here is my latest post. I do try and think of something that will help with what people have been talking about on here and what they struggle with. So here is todays title ‘Don’t fight to be right’

The title sums a lot of people up who suffer with anxiety, even people who don’t know they are doing it. The two things people do when symptoms increase or come out of no where is

1. They fight their symtoms, they may have a mental juggle and try to do something about how they feel, they begin a little battle to make themselves feel right or

2. They run away, this could be when they are in company they begin to babble on or lose eye contact and try and get away from the conversation. Or without company they may try and occupy themselves, sort of take a sideways glance to how they feel, they don’t stand their ground, they begin to run away from how they feel.

I used to wake up feeling awful, loads of symptoms and feel very lost and odd. Straight away I fought to be right. I went over things, tried to make things better. Said things like ‘I must relax’, ‘I must accept these feelings’, ‘I must go with it’. Now yes I should just accept it and Tarmo covered this earlier in the blog. If we go around making these statements all day then it becomes fighting again, I was saying these statements to create instant relief, it should be an attitude. Again I used to say these statements all day until I realised I was fighting again.

Here is what Tarmo said and my response to it in an earlier post.

When “trying to accept” becomes “accept”, even for a very short period, is when everything really starts to come together. It shouldn’t take any effort (because then it becomes trying) but it sure does take a lot of patience! Keep your heads up everyone, it’s all within reach!

Yes Tarmo is right and this is something I am going to add in my book, if you spend all day trying to accept, you end up again trying to do something about it.

It should just be an attitude and trust me it does come in time. You don’t have to go around saying ‘I must accept this thing’ ‘just go with it’, if that phrase helps more, don’t put up any resistance.

O.k if that is confusing let me explain something. When you are at the point of either running away or trying to do something about the way you feel, question it etc….This is a very crucial point as this is the time that if you don’t try and do something about it or run away it will pass, it always does, it will pass of its own accord. I found this out, the point when I was just about to go in to ‘trying to control it’ or run away from the feelings was critical. Let me give you an example. I go back to when I had the battle when waking. One moring I felt more odd and lost then ever, I had never felt symptoms so bad. This time I thought I am not going to fight, do what you want, I stood my ground and did not fight or question it, did not run away from it, it sort of washed over me and then within an hour or so I felt great. The same night I went out with friends and later into the night Wham, I felt odd and awful again, I was again just about to go into the ritual of doing soemthing about it, fight, question, and I thought no ‘Whatever it will pass’ and just got on with what I was doing, yes I felt bad for a while but it did pass and I was begining to learn something here, this part when I felt at my worst was crucial, I needed to stand my ground and not run away from it or fight it. The next day I was at a bar in a pub when I saw someone I knew, the symptoms rose, I felt uncomfortable and this is the point where I always acted and tried to get away as quick as possible, yes I would try and run away from how I felt. Well right at the crucial point, the height of my whole instincts telling me to flee, I did’nt, I thought no more running away. I felt uncomfortable, but the more I stood my ground the better I felt and I got through the conversation and actually started to enjoy it. Can you see the crucial point I am talking about?

This is a post from someone who was doing really well recently and then fell back.

Ok all I’m really struggling at the moment. I really don’t know what happened. I’ve read Paul’s book and couldn’t believe how much sense it made. I kept the book close around in case I would need some help or guidance. I also visit this site to get help and support. This blog is great.

I started feeling a lot better and started having periods (maybe a few minutes and slow I would fade back into the full dp state) where my dp faded and I almost 100%. It felt so great. I guess I started getting busy at work and stopped visiting the website and reading, I guess I thought I knew it all and my anxiety was fading away. But then all of a sudden I started feeling really bad and falling into bad habits. I felt good at work for a few days when I felt good and could talk and goof around with coworkers everything kind of opened up and I started to see the world again and felt like I could connect and have “more like me” comments. Now I’m scared to talk again because I don’t feel like me or I guess the don’t know who I am feeling is causing me to question everything I say. The panicy feelings are back and my heart just runs and I feel so confused on where I went wrong. I want to move forward, but I’m so confused. Also, does anyone constantly look back and analyze how they felt at this time last year or so on? I’m just so hard on myself in my mind and don’t know what to do.

What he has done is have loads of good times and then as will happen, had a setback and has then started to fight to be right, he has questioned everything again. ‘Why was I better and now feel like this’ the crucial points where he felt bad has had him fear everything again, fight, question, he has not been willing to pass through them again. When you have had a period of feeling good it is even harder, we question it even more, we fight to be right even more, we become bewildered. We basically lose the tools that made us feel better in the first place. I keep repeating myself because I really want to get this through to people.

If you care how you feel at any given time then you will begin to fight and quesion it all over again.

IT IS NEVER ABOUT IF YOU FEEL BAD OR NOT, THAT’S NOT IMPORTANT, ITS ABOUT YOUR ATTITUDE TOWARDS IT’.

If you have faith and don’t fight or run away it will pass, trust me it will. You will have bad days and times again, just again trust that it will pass, don’t fall into the trap of fighting or running away from how you feel.

All I did and what I others need to do is break the chain of anxiety. Feel awful, fight and question, feel good and get on with their day, feel bad, fight or run away again….etc..etc..Its like acting in a movie, it will get you so far, but you will not break the chain. I had loads of bad times that I had to not fight, question or run away from before things became easier. But each time gave me more confidence and it began to be automatic, it was my new habit, I did not have to walk around telling myself to do this or that, it just became natural not to fight or question, espcially at the crucial points when I felt at my worst. I had now built up the trust that it would always pass and that it was FINE to feel odd or lost, it did not matter, yes it was not nice, but it always passed and I needed to keep going through these times to reach my goals. When we try to constantly do something about how we fell or question, we are trying to do something about something that is totally normal in the circumstances, this is what I figured. I have anxiety, I have been through so much, I should feel odd at times, anxious, a little lost, why I am I constantly trying to fight this? Let it be and trust in my own body to bring me through.

Hope that helps people in some way.

For more help and advice please visit my main site www.anxietynomore.co.uk

Well firstly the blog is out growing itself and with people commenting a lot I would like to put a suggestion forward. What would people think for a forum for us all? Someone said tonight we are a pretty tight bunch and I agree, not only that and I am repeating myself here but we have some wonderful, positive and helpful people comment on here. I do moderate the blog and I delete so many comments from people I think are trying to misuse it, people who offer the latest miracle cure, people who try to spam the blog, it filters a lot of crap out and keeps it clean.

I did actually put a forum up over a year ago and it was a nightmare, it was spammed, it was mis-used and to be honest was more hassle than it was worth. But I now have the tools to make it invitation only so it stays spam free. Not only that but it keeps it manageable and I want it to be a positive place, not only where we discuss things and support each other, but also where we can have a laugh and talk about other things, just a place for everyone to come to on a bad day for support, to share a good day, just as the blog has so far. What I don’t want is a forum with loads of conflicting advice, the latest medication, the latest miracle cures, the whole things about forums I don’t like. I would just like the people on here to have a place to hang out and chat. The blog is o.k to a point but I feel a forum run right would be really good. What I want though is opinions on this, if people would like it, then I will build one, if people are happy as it is then I won’t. So please give me your opinions.

O.k to finish here is an email I recieved today from a senior figure in the NHS who doctors refer to with anxiety.

Hi Paul,

I work as a support worker for the NHS, working in a Crisis mental health team in the community. We very often get referrals from GP’s and other services of people suffering from a personal crisis which we support in the community; quite a lot suffer from anxiety!
I am willing to purchase your book but if you have any other information that would be helpful in helping me treat my clients or advice would it would be very welcome.
My regards
Mark

Again someone being refered to someone from the NHS, the last port of call and they then have to ask me how to help them, you could not make it up, boy I hope one day they take this condition serious and actually put people in place that are qualified to help.

Well thats me for now, keep positive.

Paul

Well today’s post is again a question that people ask on forums and one question I asked myself over the years. The reason people with little or no information get worse is that they know nothing else but to fight this damn thing, they feel it is their only way out, when someone does fight the illness re-invents itself. But it is a lack of information from the people they first seek help from that causes people to go down this path of bewilderment, worrying and fighting how they feel.

For colds we know to just lie up in bed and it will take care of itself. For a broken leg we need a pot and realise we have to wait a few weeks before it gets back to normal, the list really is endless and we know the procedure and don’t concern ourself’s too much and trust in our bodys own healing powers to bring us through. Well with anxiety I did not receive any answers, most people don’t, so we are more scared and bewildered than ever and more than that we have no idea how to make our self better, so we go down a road of constantly trying to rid ourselfs of it, this then has the opposite effect and we begin to feel worse, so we fight and worry even more, yes that was me and many others.

This would be the conversation with someone who understands their condition and someone who does not. I would say to the person who had little insight to the way they felt.

“So what have you done today”?

“Well I woke up and felt sorry for myself as the damn thing was still there. I spent my day worrying about how I was feeling, I got frustrated and spent my whole day trying to do something about it”

“How do you feel”?

“Emotionally and physically drained and more confused than ever, I just seem to be getting worse”

The second person who understood their condition would go something like this

“What have you done today”

“Anxiety wise, nothing at all, I just got on with my day and gave my mind and body a rest, I also understand why I feel like I do and it does not hold the same fear, I just see it more as a felling, so don’t feel the need to do anything about it”

I was the first person and then in time turned into the second person. There is nothing special about anyone who recovers, its just understanding. I can’t get across how bad I was to anyone who thinks they were worse than me. I feel I had a very good understanding of the condition and knowledge really is power. People are understanding more and more and improving. I have more to say but I don’t want to bombard anyone with too much information. We are reversing something that did not come overnight and my recovery took time, a lot of ups and downs, it was not all plain sailing. So don’t think you are unique or that others will come through and for some reason you wont. I have heard this so many times from people as they never see themselves feeling normal again, I always say “Yes and you probably never thought you would feel like this”.

All I want people to do is understand more and not demand anything of themselves, you can’t force normal feeling, you have to let it come to you, which it will in time. If I had one thing that really brought me home, it was the lack of demanding anything or trying to rush my recovery, I just went with it however I felt at any particular time, took all setbacks on the chin and just became happy with the progress I had made, I never tried to scramble back to the person I used to be, this is a mistake some people make they think they have to feel perfect, even demand it of themselves, this again leads to them fighting their condition.

Hopefully there is something their for everyone. Also please do feel free to keep the positive post below going, I feel it really helps hearing good news and bringing a lot of positives to the table.

Paul

For more help and information visit my main site www.anxietynomore.co.uk

For more information about my book ‘At last a life’ visit

www.anxietynomore.co.uk/the_book.html

Todays post is two emails that I received last week from two people who are doing so much better, the latter one says he is 100% back to normal. You will see from both emails that they were in a real hole and I do remember how hopeless both felt at the time. The reason for me posting these emails is to show that going for progression and not demanding instant success, then you can make giant strides. A lot of people when they feel at their worst feel this may be them forever or that other people recover and they wont. Although I am posting these two, I do get many, many emails like this through a year and in all cases it took a little time. Just reading a lot of posts on here people have improved a hell of a lot. Everything I say and do on my site and in my book is all about changing your attitude to the way you feel, not treating like a monster ready to engulf you, not letting it rule what you do and don’t do. So you don’t go around worrying and obsessing about every little thought or feeling. Also to change habits you may have fallen into and as we have been doing the exact opposite for so long it can take time, I hope these emails give people so much more hope and belief and show how many people do come through.

Also sorry for the small font, this is created by having to paste the emails into the blog, hopefully they are still easily readable.

Hi Paul

Gradually got to the bottom of the bottom in May last year-found out boyfriend had been cheating on me- not that surprising given the state I was in and the little time I was giving him! It was awful and I had nowhere to live and some other personal complications which meant I had to get an emotional operation. Basically everything was rubbish!

But thinking about and obsessing over my break up meant I wasn’t thinking about DP as much, so surprise, surprise it seemed to get better event though my life seemed crap. Then I got a new play which took my mind off it more and being with new people was great because they didn’t know about my d.p so I had to ignore it more! I had a great summer- sometimes I felt a little odd. but I was getting much better at dealing with it.Basically I’m so MUCH better!! I would almost say cured but there is still that black d.p cloud threatening to come back and showing its head the odd morning I’m hung-over and that! It’s almost like if I could erase the memory of having it from my head I would be ok because I wouldn’t remember to feel it if you know what I mean?!
But I just wanted to say thanks for being a true life saver when I was stuck in a period of blackness I thought I’d never get through! Your doing a great thing, so keep it up and good luck with everything. I’m hoping to forget my d.p nightmare completely one day and feel truly relaxed and happy and I can feel very positive that that will happen soon! But for now I’m just glad I can have periods of hours and sometimes days of not worrying about anything! And I have stopped feeling guilty about messing my life up by taking drugs, which is also what I needed to do-although I wont be taking them again!!

Hi Paul,

I am not sure if you remember me, but I was a client of yours
this summer. Here it is, almost April, and I am 100% back to normal!
I do not feel anxiety constantly everyday all the time, and I feel like
a million bucks. I am not tired as I once was, I can go out and have
fun and enjoy myself and life. It is really odd, it really IS all of
your attitudes towards it. If you don’t treat it as a monster, it won’t
treat you like a victim! It will just go away after a while. And yes,
I still think about how I used to feel from time to time, in hopes that
I will never feel that way again. But now I have the tools not to
worry, but just to have a good, healthy, and exciting life. Thank you
for everything you have done for me. Without your book and e-mails, I
still might be struggling, trying to figure it all out. I am in my
senior year of college, and only three months away from graduation. I
found out last week that I got a full time job as a business development
representative from a company here in Pittsburgh! My girlfriend and I
have been together almost a year and a half, and I promised an eventual
engagement to her this past Christmas.

Thank you so much for all of your help.

Brent Castillo For more information about my book ‘At last a life’ visit

This title I have used is because it is one of the questions that people search more for on google than anything else. The trouble is that people will try anything to make it all go away and this in many cases is the problem. Their desperation to be better in many cases makes them worse. I know this is what happened to me. I don’t think a day went by where I did not worry about how I felt, a day never went by without me trying to figure a way out of this hell, a day never went by where I did not try to do something about it. I searched through the yellow pages for something to make it all go away, I tried acupuncture, hypnosis and many other useless treatments that just parted me with my money. My whole week was set around making it all go away, everyday was a battle.

My day would go something like this…..I would wake and feel awful, very anxious and almost like like a walking shell. I also felt odd and strange, not with it, but I had to earn a living so off I went to work in auto pilot. I would get to work and try and hide from everyone how I was feeling, put on an act and hope to hold it all together. I would then be in my own little world for a few hours trying to figure out how to make it all go away. I would worry and obsess daily about how I felt. Then I would go home after an awful day of worry and self pity. Then I would search for the miracle cure to make it all go away, maybe a trip to the library to read my 30th book on the subject, I had to get rid of this thing. At this point I had been given little explanation if any as to what was wrong with me, so I had to try and figure it all out myself. This went on for many years and I was getting worse…Why?

Well a lot of people develop anxiety through a build up of stress. Well I felt worse because I spent all my day worrying and stressing about how I felt, the last thing my body needed, it wanted a break. My mind was so, so tired from all the deep thinking, trying to figure it all out. Did I give it a break? Did I hell, I constanatly tried to figure a way out, again worried and obsessed about it, so my mind tired further and I felt more lost than ever. I felt so dis-connected from the world because I had not allowed myself to connect with it, the subject of anxiety and how to find a way out had consumed me, is it any wonder I was getting worse?

Sometimes even after advising people they can carry on in this pattern. Never quite sure that its not something else and they need to keep searching, worrying and trying to do something about it. In my book I said it is like having a broken leg and hitting it each day, it will never repair, it needs to be left alone and given a little time. They day I gave up the daily battle with myself, the day things got easier. I was not cured by any means, this took more time. To integrate back into the world you need to begin to live in it again, no matter how you feel. Don’t waste time trying to rid yourself of how you feel, this is how anxiety re-invents itself. You are trying to change something that is normal in the circumstances.

I wont claim things are easy, they were not for me at first, the real rewards come later. But this is another mistake people make, they become impatient or let one bad day throw them back into despair. So off they go on their roundabout of searching for something to make it all go away again. There is nothing wrong with educating yourself on the subject if the information is useful. I instantly knew when I read something if it was good information, it made sense, it felt right. All the miracle cures and therapists I had seen before did not, I knew deep down the answer must be out there.

I hope there is something there for people to relate to.

For more help and advice visit my main site www.anxietynomore.co.uk

Paul

For more information about my book ‘At last a life’ visit

www.anxietynomore.co.uk/the_book.html

Hi, Well todays post is a double post from a question and a point somebody made through the blog. Firstly I did first suffer through soft drugs that took over my life a bit. I know a lot of other people also first experienced anxiety and depersonalisation this way. Here is the original question.

Paul if you could share a little of your drug experiences, personal as they are, then I think it would help a lot of readers of this site.

I am not going to go into the effects of drugs and I have no right to preach to anyone, but here is how I fell into the trap of anxiety and everything thing else it brought with it.

I basically got into the dance culture of the late 80’s and got into soft drugs, speed and ecstasy. I felt my personality was changing over time and began to feel not with it, a bit dreamy and very little energy. I suppose if you treat your body like that it will get its revenge. I ignored all the signs and carried on until I first felt panic. I had never felt like this before and it really scared me, I knew then I had to stop taking drugs at this time and get myself back together so I stopped. I began to build my health back up but I still suffered from bouts of panic and worried daily about them, I had no anxiety at all at this point. But the constant worry of these bouts of panic and the way I felt made me anxious, as usual it was all the worry of how I was feeling. I then worried about the anxiety and went to see my doctor, who put me on seroxat and propranol. Well to be honest I felt worse, I was also trying to hold down a full time job. So I fought and worried daily about how I was feeling, all this extra worry and stress made me feel worse and then one day I felt unreal, this is when the depersonalisation came on, so I worried and fought even harder. I can see so clearly now how each stage started and why I fell deeper into my condition.

Here is something else I would like to expand on from a comment above.

A final note, Paul suffered for all that time, yet he continues to immerse himself in an environment of people with anxiety issues, I must admit reading some of these posts is great and encouraging, but sometimes it just reminds me of how I feel. If paul suffered for that long, and can come on here and discuss all of this with us, when at one point the word ‘anxiety’ used to send him into a panic, then I honestly know if we stick to the methods, we can all get better.

I agree that we can begin to remind ourselves of how we feel and it does not help at times. This is one of the reasons I don’t have a forum, I am not really a fan of them. They are full of people’s problems and loads of conflicting advice. Someone suffering finds it hard to deal with their own problems without being subjected to many more on a daily basis. There was no way I could have helped others when I still suffered myself.

I moderate this blog as I don’t want it to go down that road. In the main these are posts of support and achievements, something people can read and be encouraged by, also we all tend to stick to the same beliefs which to me is very important, you don’t want to read 10 different bits of advice and think, I wonder if that will work for me, or Sandra said this helped her, I will try that and the search goes on and on and they are more confused than ever.

I always felt able to read about the subject if I could relate to it and I was learning new things, reading something that you can really relate to and that makes sense tends to make you feel better, mainly because you lose a lot of fear about how you are feeling. Reading horror stories of how people are getting worse or how they can’t go out can have the opposite effect, especially when suffering with anxiety as our emotions and reactions are a lot higher.

I help people now and have no problems at all with doing this. As I no longer suffer and have no fear of symptoms then it is very easy for me to help and talk about the subject, otherwise I would have to put myself first and not do so. It is a pleasure to help others when and where I can and we have some wonderful people on here, some who really impress me with the way they have picked up a lot of what I try and get across.

Anyway that’s me for today, I hope you all had a good weekend and that everyone is well.

Paul

For more help and advice visit my main site www.anxietynomore.co.uk

I thought I would take a break from posting bits of advice and just post some random things. Please do feel free to post something below, it would be nice to know a little more about the people who post here. Well firstly I will just post a few boring bits about myself. I am 37 and live with my partner in Yorkshire, she like my mother was brilliant through my suffering and gave me nothing but support.

I used to work in engineering building turbo chargers, I did this for 11 years, before that I worked for a major sports company. The engineering job was very mundane and boring, the money was good but with my anxiety problems and the need for a change I left. I then went working for a friend of mine who had a carpet business. I did this for a while before I got into web design. I still build sites to this day for people. It is something I enjoy to a degree until you find someone who wants the site changing every two minutes, but its good fun and I am still learning to this day. I also have a few other sites myself, some active, some not as active. Each site takes a lot of work to promote so you tend to slack at times with one or two.

A few hobbies of mine. I love Rugby league and travel up and down the country every week watching games. I also bowl outdoor 3 times a week in the summer and also once a week indoor. I also play squash and football to try and stay fit, I really should eat better, that is always mine downfall at times, I try but the smell of fish and chips always wins : ) I love my ipod and like a wide range of music including R.E.M, Crowded House, Keane, Dance and soul.

I like spending time with friends and have also met some lovely people on-line. I have always thought of placing a forum on the site but they take so much time to moderate and keep up with that I have decided against it and stick with the blog instead. Although I get very busy I never want to be a faceless person behind a site, but the forum would be a step to far I am afraid.

Well that’s a little more about me. Please feel free to add something about yourself below, it would be great to know a little more about others, maybe I am just nosey : )

Thanks for listening

Paul

A similar post to this was on the earlier blog that was lost. A member here asked if I could post it again as he found a lot of comfort in it. So here it is.

People often ask me how I suffered for 10 years and then found my way out of anxiety. Well the main reason is because I now know I did everything wrong. I spent years basically trying to fight and think my way better. Not one day went by without me trying to rid myself of how I felt. And that was the problem, I was trying to rid myself of something that was normal in the circumstances. I suffered anxiety firstly because I had panic episodes through drug withdrawal. I had no idea what was wrong with me and worried daily about these feelings, this added anxiety to the episodes of panic, Wow, now I really had something to worry about. What were these new feelings? The shaking hands, the lack of emotion, the irratibitly, the blurred vision, the racing thoughts. After no answers were given to me by the medical world I worried I was going crazy, I searched my mind daily for answers, I got angry, filled my day with self pity. I worried daily as to what was wrong with me. All this worry led to depersonalisation, my mind protected me from all this worry and shut my emotions down, I felt like a walking shell. I forgot how to smile, to feel emotions, struggled to hold a conversation. So I worried and fought even more. Can you see why we get worse and not better without the right help and advice?

All my body and mind wanted was a break to regain its balance. But I worried daily and added loads more stress to the mix. I thought deeply each day and this tired my mind even furthur and made me feel even more detached from my surroundings. This was something I had to change and I did. As soon as I realised what was wrong with me and why, I lost a lot of fear and bewilderment.

The mistake people make is they are always trying to rid themselves of how they feel, instead of just getting on with their day no matter how they feel. I always say don’t put yourself under any pressure to feel a certain way, If your having a good day then fine, if your having a bad day then fine, just go with it, don’t fall into the trap of trying to constantly do something about it. It is NEVER a case of ridding yourself of how you feel. It is all about changing your attitude towards it and knowledge and understand does change your attitude, it is a lot easier not to worry or be bewildered over something you understand. As one person once said to me ‘ I understand now if you treat anxiety like a monstor and it will treat you like a victim!’ That is a very good way of putting it.

Some people email me asking about medication or if hypnotherpy is good, what do I think about this method or that method. What they are really saying is I want this to go away today, again they want the impossible overnight fix. My own recovery took time, it was like defrosting, normal feelings and emotions came back bit by bit, there was no overnight success. I receive emails from people who are doing so much better, many fully recovered, and in all cases they get in touch a while after first buying the book or landing on the site. This is because they have trusted in what I have said, not rushed things and given their body as much time and space as it needed.

So don’t fall into the trap of seeing anxiety as a big monstor, something you must rid yourself at all costs, this turns into fighting, worrying, self-pity, it gives it all the fuel it needs to continue. You don’t have to go around saying ‘This is just anxiety’, ‘I must accept this’ etc.. Just have a ‘whatever’ attitude’ towards how you feel and move on with your day.

Hope that helps

For more information and help visit my main site www.anxietynomore.co.uk

Well I was not going to post until Monday, but I received an email today that really brought home the lack of support there is out there for sufferers of anxiety. The email was from a mental health worker assigned to help people with anxiety and panic issues, this is her actual job. The letter stated she had looked at my site and found a great deal of insight and would like to know if I could tell her more and advise on how she could split things up to make it work for a 6 week course in helping patients, this is the time each one is allotted.

I found this incredible, someone who is paid and supposedly trained in helping people with anxiety, has no real clue and has had to surf the web and then ask me. No wonder people get worse and not better when they seek help. I will of course reply to her as I would not like to see these people get told a load of mumbo jumbo that will just not help.

I understand that anxiety and recovery from it really is a subject in itself, but training and paying people to give advice on something they know so little about makes me so angry. Its like taking your car to the vets for a service, its just not going to help and you are seeing the wrong person. The real trouble comes though when the person puts so much trust in this person, they receive little help and advice and then falsely believe they will never get better, who can help them now!

Well I will sign off with that thought.

Have a great weekend

Paul

I thought I would just post more of my own story about how I recovered. A lot of people who have read my book will know my story, others will not. This short post has a message and is not about self promotion on my own recovery, as I am sure you will acknowledge as you read on.

How did I recover? My own recovery came through knowledge. I have spoken to many people who have recovered over the years, some who have become close friends and they all pretty much recovered in the same way. This is why I have stuck with my own beliefs throughout. The reason I don’t put adverts on my site and the reason I turn down all offers from others to place, in my opinion useless products from people trying to make money out of other people’s suffering.

Knowledge brought me so much. Without knowledge I spent all my time worrying about how I felt. Why did I worry all day? Because I had no idea what was wrong with me, I was a serial worrier for many years. All this worry sensitised my nerves further and kept me in the cycle of anxiety and panic . I also spent all my days tuning into how I felt, thinking deeply, trying to figure a way out of my hell. Why? Because with no help from the medical profession apart from pills, I felt I had to try and think my own way better, what choice did I have? All this did was tire my mind further, making me feel more lost and detached than ever. My whole day was filled with fear, Why? Because again I had no idea what was wrong with me and certainly thought I would never find out, I believed this was me forever. I always believed I had to fight and think my way better, the daily strain on my already anxious body was immense, is it any wonder I got worse and not better.

I have been involved in the subject for many years since my recovery, going on to help sufferers in my spare time. The one thing that stood out more than anything was that people still had a total lack of good information on the subject. To this day people seem to be passed medication and sent on their way. People would sometimes burst into tears in front of me because for once they had been given an explanation to why they felt like they did. This was the very reason I set my own site up and went on to write my book. I did not want people to spend 10 years like I did getting worse through lack of information. I don’t get bitter, but I could have been help far sooner than I was. In fact it was left to me to get all the answers I craved for all those years.

So don’t be fooled by claims to cure you within a week. Recovery comes through knowledge and progress, nothing can be achieved overnight. I could have anxiety and all its symptoms tomorrow and know that it would pass in time as I would not give it the fuel to continue. My own recovery did not come when I no longer had any symptoms, it came when they were no longer important. They sub sided a hell of a lot yes, but they no longer felt important. And this came through a lack of fear of how I was feeling.

I know in the deep part of suffering there can seem no way out, but there is. I was as bad as anyone, worse than most people I help and don’t get me wrong, my recovery was a very up and down affair. I had a lot of bad days, but it was my reaction to those bad days that was the key. I knew my symptoms would not leave me overnight, but I needed for once to step out of my own way and let my mind and body recover in its own time. I never set targets, demanded anything and this is one of the reasons I did recover. I never put any pressure on myself.

Regards Paul

Hi, I wanted to set this blog up to help others and to show my face and not be some faceless person behind a website. Firstly you are fine to leave a comment, all comments are subject to moderation and may not appear for a day or two. The reason for the comments will be to just say a few words and let others know how you feel, also to be there for others and build a little support. Last but not least you can ask me a question. As my main site grew I truly became swamped daily with people wanting help and it became impossible for me to answer people, as one email can lead to many others. I really don’t want the blog to go the same way where I cannot cope with questions. So all I ask is that you let others post and don’t spam the blog with questions. Also if a question has been asked before then I will have to leave it from the site. Also if you feel you have come through something that someone else is asking, please feel free to answer them, again if I think the reply is helpful I will moderate it as such.

I usually pop in a couple of times a week to moderate comments. Please don’t be offended if you have a question and it does not appear on the site. If I have loads waiting then I will have to chose which ones I feel will help not just the original poster, but also others.

So please do help me to keep this facility alive by not spamming the site so as others get a chance to ask something. Also please read through other answers to make sure the question has not been asked before. Try and use the blog as a place to support each other and let off some steam, even share your stories or spread some good news on your own recovery.

Paul

This question I get asked very often. ‘Paul how do I stop my anxiety’ Well again this is unfortuntely why they stay in the cycle. They spend all their time trying to rid themselves of how they feel. I wrote in my book that this is like having a broken leg and hitting it each day with a hammer. Well it is never going to heal. This is the same with anxiety.

If you read my story on my main site you will see that I suffered for 10 years, was I unlucky? Did I take longer to recover than others? No its because I spent all my days trying to rid myself of how I felt. I also spent everyday fighting, trying to control my symptoms. All day worrying about them, going around and around in my mind each day trying to find the answers out of this hell, only to hit one brick wall after another.

The truth is recovery is all about ‘Not doing’ anything about it. I feel one of the major flaws of people who write books, therapists etc is that they tell you to ‘Take breathing exercises’ , ‘To imagine your on a beach’ ‘To count to 10′ . This in my opinion is all wrong. I don’t want to go around thinking I have to do this or that. I recovered because I let my body get on with feeling awful, uncomfortable. I finally stopped worrying each day, going around in circles and getting nowhere. I stopped fighting how I felt. This was so important to my own recovery. To do this I had to have an understanding of why I felt like did, again this is why knowledge is so important.

So the message is to step out of your own way and give up the daily battle with yourself, surrender yourself to how you feel and you may find a peace you never knew existed.

For more help and information visit my main site

www.anxietynomore.co.uk

For more information about my book ‘At last a life’ visit

www.anxietynomore.co.uk/the_book.html

Well here we start all over again with my blog. Yes I had some severe techie problems and lost my other one and all its info. But don’t worry I will try and pack this one with as much info as I can, answering questions, posting about me, giving you the latest info and more. So to everyone who followed my other, Hi, I am back and to any newcomers, I welcome you aboard.

Once I sort out the theme and other bits and bobs then I will create my first post.

Paul