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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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