Surrender means letting go of resistance to what is, to accept inner experiences, life, and others as they are. It means to stop fighting with reality and letting go of trying to control the uncontrollable. Doing the opposite only leads to suffering.
How does surrender relate to anxiety sufferers?
I, like many other anxiety sufferers, used to be a chronic worrier who always wanted life to go as I thought it should and that others should behave as I wanted them to. I worried about how things would pan out in the present and the future. I was constantly at odds with reality, and so I suffered. Then, when anxiety hit, I refused to accept my current state (one that I had created) and went to war with it. This never-ending war to escape how I was feeling while worrying about it only led to more suffering, and so I went to war with this also, falling into a cycle from which I couldn’t escape.
Rather than detail my whole experience, here is a brief correspondence from someone I was helping to put my point across.
Paul, I am a successful businessman with a lovely family, but I am at my wits’ end. I had no idea what anxiety was until it hit me a few months back. I have tried everything to overcome it and spent a small fortune, but nothing is working. I am reaching out to you as I am desperate, my family need me, and I can’t put them through this. I can’t stand feeling this way; please tell me how to get rid of this damn thing.
I explained to him that it wasn’t a case of getting rid of this damn thing but accepting his current state while no longer adding more stress to the mix. His not being at peace with his non-peace only added another layer of suffering to how he was feeling.
His next message, a few weeks later, was even more frantic. He was now worried he would lose his business, as he was struggling to function; he feared his wife would leave, as he was getting snappy and distant. He also worried that his children weren’t getting the dad they deserved, and had many other fears and worries. He was barely sleeping as he mentally tried to find a way out of his current predicament. Every day, he tried everything he could to feel better while stressing and worrying about how he felt and what it meant for the future.
At this point, I could see nothing but someone who was creating more suffering himself, and yet he stayed on this path through his sheer desperation to feel better. Not for one minute was he going to surrender to how he felt and end this war with himself that was creating so much extra stress and mental torment.
I explained to him once again that the more he fought to feel better, the further he would sink and that trying to get out of suffering only creates more suffering. His anxiety was not the reason for the majority of his suffering; his non-acceptance of his current state was. I also explained to him that his anxious feelings were a result of what he had been putting himself through. That if he allowed these anxious feelings to be present without seeing them as wrong, this anxious energy would release itself; it was not something to go to war with.
It took quite a while for him to see this, but he finally got the message and sent me this message a few months later.
Paul, it’s been a while since we spoke, but I just wanted to thank you for not giving up on me and helping me see that I was the creator of my suffering. I also wanted to let you know how much better I am doing due to your guidance.
Firstly, I did as you said, gave up the battle with myself, and allowed myself to feel as I did. This had an immediate effect on me and helped me see what I was doing to myself. My mind and body were utterly spent, and by trying to fight it while at the same time worrying about my current state, I was only thrashing myself further, leading to more exhaustion and anxiety. Also, by trying to get out of my predicament, I was overthinking and living in my head. I was never present towards life or those around me, and felt mentally shot. Finally, you were right about allowing this anxious energy to arise within me instead of trying to suppress it; the more I allowed its presence, the freer I became of it.
I have reassessed my work situation by seeking extra help, which will enable me to reduce my workload. Previously, I had to be in charge of everything and took on far more than I could cope with while doing a 60-hour week. I now see why I ended up an anxious mess, putting so much pressure on myself to succeed while ignoring my mental and physical health. I am not out of the woods yet, but I feel so much better than when we first spoke. I can now see that my suffering was not a curse, but rather a guiding force that led me to make changes in my life. That was the only way out of my suffering, to deal with the root cause and not wage war upon it while hoping someone or something could fix me.
The above is something I did in my early days until an increase in my suffering was telling me I was on the wrong path, it’s a path so many unfortunately take.
Suffering is guiding you towards change
I look back and see how my anxiety was a blessing and not a curse; it was an alarm call for change. These changes resulted in far less worrying, less stress, less overthinking and far less suffering. Yet when anxiety hits, for many, the worrying, overthinking and stress only increase, adding another layer of suffering on top of their suffering, and this is why people find themselves in a never-ending cycle from which they struggle to escape.
So many people approach anxiety or any form of suffering with a need to get rid of it, and this is why they always fail, as you can never find peace this way. If you have a constant upset stomach due to eating rotten food, you won’t get rid of it by going to war with the pain; you do so by no longer eating bad food. Going to war with how you feel is the same as eating rotten food with an upset stomach; it only creates more pain. The true meaning of surrender is when you stop being at war with yourself.
When you allow yourself to feel however you do, be it negative emotions or thoughts, this war with yourself ends. When you allow any negative emotion to be as it is, you allow these energies to free themselves from your inner space. When you allow any mood to be as it is without labelling it as wrong or bad, you will find it doesn’t touch you the same; it doesn’t have the same energy to disturb you. There is nothing more damaging and counterproductive than trying to deny, change or resist your current experience.
How to surrender to how you are feeling?
As the war with your internal state is the cause of so much suffering, it is vital to understand what surrendering to how you feel truly means.
When you find yourself in an uncomfortable state, you will sense that your instinct is to try to escape it, as you don’t want to feel uncomfortable. However, the more you try not to feel uncomfortable, the more uncomfortable you feel, as an internal war is now underway. This internal war is not only full of resistance that creates more suffering, but it also wears you out mentally and doesn’t allow the emotion to free itself. Some people spend a lifetime using this approach without understanding why their efforts are not yielding results.
So, the answer to less suffering is to ‘Do Nothing’. Allow your mind and body to do as they wish. Just leave your thoughts, feelings and emotions to their own devices without trying to interfere in any way. Allow everything to be as it is without trying to change it, no matter how you feel, and the negative mood/thought/emotion will pass all by itself.
It’s essential not to try to ‘Do Nothing’ in the hope that you will feel better; otherwise, control has returned, which is the opposite of what this approach is about. It is the end of all the mental gymnastics and techniques you may have been using to manage your inner state; no more of that.
This may seem counterintuitive at first, as we are so accustomed to trying to control or suppress our feelings, thinking this is the answer to freedom from any form of suffering, yet the answer is the opposite. It is all the ‘Doing’ that creates the majority of your suffering, keeps you stuck in your head and doesn’t allow the emotion to free itself.
The result of not surrendering to how you feel
Living in your head
Overthinking/Obsessing
Self-Pity
Suppression of emotions
Detachment from your surroundings
Poor mental health
Depression
Worrying/Increased anxiety
Racing mind
Irritability/restlessness
Feeling mentally worn out
Lack of motivation or enjoyment in life
Narrowing of vision
Isolation
Increased anxiety
Lack of sleep
This is just a short list to show that nothing good comes out of trying to fight or think your way out of how you feel, and that surrendering is not to be used as another technique, but as an end to all the extra suffering you are putting yourself through. This concept is also true when we apply it towards life, as not only do we need to heal from the past suffering we have created, but also no longer create it going forward.
Allowing everything to be as it is
I mention in my first book, “At Last a Life”, that someone once said to me, “You will never get better until you stop trying to get better”. These words meant nothing to me at first. How can I improve if I stop trying to? At the time, I did not realise that trying to get out of suffering was the very reason my suffering was getting worse.
As I have said previously, just like the gentleman mentioned above, when I first suffered, I was always at war with how I was feeling. My continued suffering was trying to tell me to stop, but I refused to listen until I was brought to my knees and had no other option than to surrender. This is when the statement “You will never get better until you stop trying to get better” made complete sense to me.
Yet, even after I recovered from anxiety, I would have days where I felt down or crappy and would once again try a bunch of techniques in an attempt to manipulate my inner state to feel better. If my mind became noisy or unsettled, I would try to quieten it in some way. If I felt down, I would attempt to feel better, which only led to me feeling worse again.
I then concluded that, just like my anxiety, I was still trying to control and manipulate my inner experience. I then realised it wasn’t my mood or the frantic mind that was causing me to suffer; it was my non-acceptance of it. I was wasting so much mental energy trying to control the uncontrollable. I was living in my head, constantly trying to manage how I felt and was constantly resisting my current experience, so of course, I was going to suffer more. I started to see on a deep level that the more I fought to feel different, the worse I felt.
I then asked myself, “What if I allowed my moods to shift as they wished? What if I allowed any emotional state to be exactly as it is? What if I allowed my mind to be busy and frantic? What would happen then?”. Well, when I took this approach, my negative moods and mind states changed of their own accord far sooner, and due to my non-resistance, I found I suffered far less. Also, by doing this, I found that my mind began to settle over time, and my overall mood improved.
The peace I was looking for came when the war with myself ended, yet for years, I believed it would happen the other way around. This is why so many people fail on the self-help route, as they are continually looking for some technique to feel better, or, even more damaging, they become obsessed with trying to fix themselves, leading to being overly self-absorbed.
The paradoxical nature of suffering is that the more we try to get out of it, the more we suffer. When we give up the whole war with it all and go back to living our lives, we begin to feel better. When we do this, the suffering may or may not still be there, but the war with it is now over. The very war that had us sinking deeper into what we were trying to be free of.
Allowing others to be who they are
As I began to see the benefits of accepting things as they are, I applied this concept in practice to others as well. I stopped thinking people should be different from how they are and that they can behave how they wish. We all have different personalities, beliefs and perceptions due to how we were brought up or our past experiences, and see and act out life through these filters, so it made no sense to think others could act or be any different from who they are.
The best relationships/friendships are built around allowing the other person to be how they are instead of trying to change them. Trying to change someone only leads to friction, frustration and conflict. I am not saying that if someone is abusive or unkind, we should accept their behaviour. We have the choice to remove ourselves from them, while understanding that something brought them to be who they are and that they are most likely suffering in some way. Only those who suffer, hurt others or say unkind things, and although we may not like their behaviour or wish to be around them, we can still have compassion for them.
Many wars and pointless arguments stem from people trying to impose their beliefs on others, believing they are right and the other person is wrong. You only have to go on social media for proof of this. I may not agree with someone on a subject, but I accept that they may think differently than I do, and I refrain from trying to force my opinion on them, leading to more peace in my life and better friendships and interactions.
I know someone who has an adult son and recently found out that he had started smoking. When this person discovered this, she went into a total meltdown and was in constant conflict with her son about it, resulting in frequent arguments between them. The son was doing nothing illegal and had made his own choice, yet she couldn’t deal with it because her model of how he should behave didn’t align with reality, and so she suffered as a result.
It’s like a parent who has a child and gets frustrated and angry because their child didn’t make the grades to go to university or wants to follow a different career path than their parents want for them. The reality is that they don’t have the required intelligence to pass their exams and attend university, or their career path differs from what their parents want them to follow. Accepting them for who they are and what they are capable of achieving would save a great deal of suffering and conflict. As long as the person isn’t doing anything to hurt you or others, accept them for who they are and see how your relationship with them changes. If you have a fixed model around how life should unfold, how you should feel or how other people should behave, then you are in for a lifetime of stress.
At one point, I always thought life had to go the way I wanted: people should drive at a certain speed, it shouldn’t rain when I was due on holiday, my car should never break down, relationships shouldn’t end, and nothing bad should ever happen. Again, we go back to the concept of arguing with reality, and the reality is that negative things do happen, and things do go wrong. It’s not the event that makes us suffer; it’s our response to that event that does. The more accepting I became of things going wrong, the more peace I had in my life, as I was now in tune with reality and not in resistance to it. It is the resistance that causes suffering and not the event itself. This is why two people can have the same experience happen to them, and while one gets stressed about it, the other stays calm. One accepts it while the other does not; which one suffers?
The reason many people suffer is because they have a mental model of how life should unfold; the ones who don’t and are open to life unfolding as it does are the ones who don’t. You can have one person stuck behind a slow driver, who thinks the person should be driving faster, and so they react by getting angry and maybe even remonstrating with them. Then you can have another person who doesn’t think the driver should be driving at any speed other than the one they choose. With this attitude, they don’t feel any anger and have a peaceful drive. Again, the outside was not the cause of the person’s anger but their mental model of how life should be and how others should behave.
It’s like worrying about a future event or scenario that may or may not happen. Worrying about it will have no bearing on whether it will happen or not. All worrying does is make you feel like crap, and if it doesn’t happen (which is often the case), you will have made yourself feel like crap for no reason. Even if it does happen, the worrying makes no difference to the outcome, so again, you will have made yourself suffer for no reason.
An example of surrendering to reality
I have told this story before, but for those who haven’t read it, here is an example of allowing life to be as it is. I was once out cycling, and when I returned to my vehicle, I found that someone had broken into it and that my wallet and phone had been stolen. In the past, this would have sent me into a complete frenzy, but with my new attitude, I had no stress or anger over the event. I realised it had happened, and there was nothing I could do about it but sort it out. I was incredibly calm and accepting of the situation. I took the hit on the money stolen, rang the bank to cancel my cards and ordered a new phone.
As you can see, accepting the situation doesn’t mean you don’t take action; it simply means there is no stress or suffering surrounding the event. Also, when you are coming from a calmer place, you tend to make far better decisions on what to do about it.
Of course, some events have a significant impact on us, such as the death of a loved one, losing our job or the end of a relationship, and each one of us will experience one or all of these situations at some point in our lives. Yet, the more you see the reality of life and that nothing is permanent, the better you can deal with the tougher challenges of life. I have also seen many cases where something good can emerge from what seemed like a disaster at the time. Someone lost their job only to find a better one later on. Someone got divorced only to meet someone far more suitable.
Another example of non-acceptance that led to suffering came from a famous Hollywood actress. When she moved into later life, she lost her youthful looks and went for numerous surgeries in an attempt to beat ageing. This became a losing battle and, unfortunately, she made a mess of her face. This made her even more depressed, and eventually she became a recluse. If only she had accepted the reality of getting older and that we can’t hold onto our looks forever, she wouldn’t have suffered. The same scenario plays out when people lose their wealth or their fame. They can’t accept the reality of their life as it now is and often turn to drink or drugs to fill the loss they now feel, instead of accepting the reality of the situation.
Surrender should become a way of life
When you see surrender for what it is, then you realise it’s not to be used as a technique to deal with life, but as a way of no longer conflicting with it. This is what is meant by the popular saying, “Nothing will be OK until everything is OK”. The more OK you are with everything, the less suffering you will experience and the less OK you are with the reality of life, the more you will suffer. Even if you find yourself in a tough place due to certain events, you can still accept where you are and look towards making the changes necessary. Not doing so doesn’t change anything and will only create more suffering.
This concept of surrender can take a while to truly sink in and even longer to apply as a way of life, as we are wired to resist and complain about what we don’t want or like, but when our suffering hits a threshold, then we realise it’s time for change. Your suffering is asking you to align with life as it is and not your mental model of how it should be. The reason people don’t suffer when life is going well is that there is no resistance around it. Can we not have the same attitude when it doesn’t go our way?
It’s the same as when we feel in a good mood; there is no resistance around it, yet when we feel in a crappy mood, we condemn, complain and try to change it. Yet it is not our current state that is causing the majority of our suffering, but our resistance towards it. This is how so many get into a never-ending loop of suffering as they are in constant resistance to how they feel, which only creates more suffering, which creates more resistance, which leads to more suffering, and so it goes on.
Find the root of your suffering and make the changes needed
Suffering is always a guide towards change, and one I had to take on board. I now allow life to unfold how it does, I allow others to be who they are, and I allow myself to feel how I do, all three of which I had no control over in the first place. For this reason, I have far less stress and more peace in my life, and yet nothing on the outside has changed; it was just a shift in perception and attitude that did, a shift that no longer creates stress and anxiety within me. Previously, I thought it was life and others who were making me feel anxious and stressed.
That is why I was constantly trying to change the outside and never looked at changing the inside. I had no idea I was the cause of how I felt; I thought suffering was something to fight against, to get rid of, and to complain about. When this didn’t work, I realised that the only way out was to find the root cause of what was making me suffer and make changes there.
To finish, we can’t think, fight or worry our way back to our natural state. When we surrender to how we are feeling, our mind and body will naturally fall back into it. We can’t complain or fight against life and expect to feel peace. When we realign with the reality of life and become more accepting of it and others, there is no longer resistance, and we no longer suffer as we once did.
When you stop trying to control your inner and outer world and accept and allow things to be as they are, you will find far more peace in your life.
This is the true meaning of surrender.
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Fabulous blog Paul. All so true. I currently have strong habit of checking myself for anxiety as for years I fought it. Very self aware of myself. Will surrendering help me with this?
Hey Paul, great advice. The thing that is bothering me right now is that i‘m afraid that i‘m using stuff like surrender or accepting thoughts as a technique. I‘m far better at allowing negative moods to come & go. I think all anxiety sufferers want to feel better altough their allowing but what do you say if i‘m afraid that i‘m using acceptance & surrender as a technique? Because this question always leads to worrying ..
Thank you 🙂
Craig, as the article mentions, you have become self-absorbed, which creates this self-awareness issue, it is something I went through too. This is because your awareness centre in the brain has been trained to turn inwards due to you constantly self-checking. The solution is to end this habit, and then the habit will die away of its own accord, as now you are keeping the habit going, you may even start obsessing and self-checking this symptom of self-awareness, which only keeps it going. Surrendering, allowing, letting go, etc, is all pointing to no longer obsessing and self-monitoring. If you just allow yourself to feel how you do,, even if this is a feeling of self-awareness and go back to living your life, you end this habit.
I wrote an article on this very issue here https://anxietynomore.co.uk/2024/02/how-being-too-self-absorbed-can-affect-your-health/
AK
The article mentions not turning it into another technique to feel better, as if you do, then you are not surrendering to how you feel, you are trying to change it. True surrender is when you let go of all your techniques and strategies to feel better, it is the trying to feel better that keeps you in the loop of suffering. Ask yourself if this approach has ever worked? It doesn’t mean if you allow yourself to feel how you do that you will instantly feel great, you won’t, as there is still an imbalance and excess anxious energy within.
When you surrender, then all these energies you have suppressed before are allowed to be released instead of suppressed. Your mind will also go back to its natural resting state, it will calm on its own without you doing anything. When we try to manipulate how we feel, we interfere with this process, we don’t allow the suppressed energies to be released or the mind to calm naturally. When I first started to allow, I went through some intense fluctuations, from some intense downers to some good days, from some anxious bouts to a feeling of freedom.
This went on for a while as my mind and body came back into harmony and the anxious energy I had created inside left my inner space. Progress is measured on how allowing you become and not how you feel, if you go into it with a need to feel good, then you will just start fighting and suppressing again.
This is no different than a drug addict deciding to quit, to heal, he will have to go through a process of purification where his body gets rid of the toxins and the brain gets used to no longer having the drug. No technique can bring him to peace, he will have to go through the good and the bad days before he can feel at peace again. It’s the constant need for temporary relief that keeps people stuck, no different than the drug addict going back to the drugs to avoid the negative side effects of healing.
Thank you for your response. I see, but sometimes I think that the worrying is the only thing keeping me in the cycle. But I think that I still want to change the way I feel like you said because if I would truly surrender, the worrying would also fall apart automatically, right?
It doesn’t matter what you are worrying about, worrying creates stress/anxiety, that’s the whole point of the article, to end the worry cycle, the battling with yourself, to end the things that are making you suffer.
The more I allowed life to unfold as it does and realised that good and bad things happen, the less I worried. The more I let go of trying to control my inner experience, the less I worried about it. Just like the guy mentioned in the article, when he gave up worrying about how he felt, what effect it was having on his life, then he felt better. It’s up to the person themselves to see what is causing them to worry by reflecting on what is causing it, rather than asking someone else to tell them, as only you know why you do this. I had to see for myself what was causing it and make the changes needed, this could be by changing my attitude or perceptions or seeing how pointless and counterproductive it was.
Thank you so much Paul for your reply. I basically have been when I am not aware I am fine and when I am I am bad. I then question am I allowing properly . Probably desperation to ‘get rid’. You should be knighted for what you are doing
Kind Regards
Craig
When the anxiety was still “on thick” I regularly thought “I must be accepting wrong”. But then I’d have those moments where the anxiety completely lost it’s grip on me. At those moments I would feel fully confident towards acceptance.
So, during some of the rough moments, even if we’re accepting perfectly, we still can have those strong doubts of “I must not be doing this correctly”. It just needs to be remembered that acceptance isn’t like a switch that we toggle to immediately turn the anxiety off. It’s more like not giving the raging fire anymore fuel to burn through.
For me the simplest way I thought of it was that acceptance meant living my life (doing the normal things of my life) in the face of the profound fear I would be feeling.
Hi Paul, Great article. I feel like when i get anxious or fearful i doing damage to my body like i am sensitising it. that gets me into fix it mode.
Craig, the question ‘Am I allowing properly’ is just another way of turning allowing into a technique as you think if you feel bad you are doing something wrong. The whole point is to allow yourself to feel bad, it doesn’t mean you are doing anything wrong. As I stated in the article, when I allowed, I went through some huge swings, feeling good and bad until balance/harmony set in.
The need to ‘get rid’ is a natural drive, but it doesn’t work and as you see, creates numerous other problems like mentally exhausting yourself, living in your head and this issue of feeling self aware, so instead of just feeling bad you are adding a whole stack of suffering on top and why you stay stuck.
Hence, the more you try to solve yourself, the more you break yourself. To heal, there really is nothing to do but end this process of staring at yourself, trying to fix yourself and just live alongside how you feel, good or bad, while going back to living your life. Allow all mind and emotional states to change naturally (which they will) instead of jumping in, trying to manipulate your inner state.
We posted at the same time, Nolan, hope you’re well
As Nolan and I state, going back to living your life is very important, instead of making how you feel the focus of your day and staying in obsessing mode, you go back to what you should have been doing, the same as people who don’t suffer do. This starts a natural integration back to feeling normal, to feel normal, you have to go back to doing normal things. The second part is allowing yourself to feel like you do, as again you stop obsessing over fixing yourself, as you no longer care to try and solve anything. This also ends the obsession with yourself, the obsession that creates numerous other issues. It became clear to me that trying to fix myself was the very reason I continued to suffer, this was the shift in attitude for me, rather than someone just telling me to allow, without understanding why.
Great seeing you too, Paul. All of the people that you’ve helped over the years. Prior to reading your first book, way back in 2013, I was beyond lost and, assumedly, beyond hope. How wrong I was.
Get to add my name to the list of those that you help through the dark night(s) of anxiety.
Hi Paul,
i hope you are good. I wanted to thank you for your good work and blog. Without you, so many people couldn’t recover. Thank you from my heart.
Maybe you remember me,I wrote in August 2024 and you gave me a lot of advice. I also needed another half a year to really understand what surrendering and accepting the symptoms really mean. To allow all the thoughts, feelings, sensations, emotions, no feelings and so on. After 6 years in the cycle I started to understand that researching day by day and thinking a way out of this hell was since 6 years not the solution.
Since April last year, I really practiced what you said. Now I am 10 months in recovery but recovery is so slow that you don’t even notice you get better.
I am stuck for months and recovery goes not fowards. I think maybe this was it, i could not recover more. It’s like I am stuck at 70%. Sometimes I think maybe not all symptoms disappear and some will last forever.
Sometimes I miss the fear and the anxiety in the first years, I had because the life without any emotions and not being fully here is hard. People don’t know how lucky they are that they can feel all the emotions about the things they see and do.
Did I do something wrong or should I need more patience? I practice 10 months of real surrender from the heart and live life the best I can. But sometimes I lose hope to not reaching the finish line.
I wish you all the best.
Take care of you.
Duy
Thank you so much Paul and Nolan.
Paul, your book really helped me overcome the darkest point in my life years ago with anxiety and depression. Now years later, my question is this.. how does someone with these struggles deal with grief. I’ve just lost my father and I am terrified of what life looks like without him. I have all this stress, anger, and deep sadness and I don’t know how to not let my old ways take over. I desperately could use your advice..🙏🏾
Hi Chan,
Sorry about you losing your father. I know that pain as well. I would try to not beat yourself over feeling grief. When my dad died (and a young age) and my mom (at an even younger age) I felt quite a bit of grief. Sometimes, in those moments of despair, I would think “what would be worst? To have these feelings of profound loss…. or to feel indifference?”. As much as the grief weighed me down and followed me everywhere, I could never conclude that it would have been better to be indifferent towards their dying.
Your dad cared about you then, no reason why he wouldn’t still care now. He would not want to see you falling into anger and despair. That doesn’t mean you can’t feel sadness towards the loss of him. Maybe thinking, “for my father, I’m going to keep living my life, even if the sadness and grief follows me around everywhere. He raised me and was there for me. As a testimony to his memory and my love for him I am going to move forward and accept whatever comes my way.”
You have the normal obligations of your day, focus on those. The sadness will be with you, but to avoid letting your “old ways take over”, you have to do the normal things of your life. It’s when we allow the despair to dictate how we live our lives that we can find ourselves slipping back into those “old ways”.
Sorry for your loss, Chan.
Nolan, it’s good to see you’re still around helping people! I hope you and your family are well!
Good to see you too, Stephanie. My family is doing well. My kids are excited we finally got some snow this winter. It was getting depressing just seeing withered, brown grass. Hope you and your family are doing well also.
No snow for us here in Southern California, but we did get rain last week that was much needed. I only had one baby when I found this blog over 10 years ago and I’ve been blessed with three more since then. Hard to believe that much time has gone by!
Fabulous, Paul! Your books led me out of anxiety years ago. I have shared your book with many. Sending you love and appreciation.
Nolan, you have helped many people on this blog since the very early days with your clarity and wisdom on the subject, you could have easily walked away, happy in the place you were, but you continued to pass on advice to others, so thanks for that.
Thank you for your kind words, Leslie and thanks for sharing my work to help others.
I injured my shoulders exercisie machine 3 months ago. Have done PT and am doing ok, but with some shoulder limiting ROM.. although not awful, I keep regretting above action wishing it wouldn’t have happened ….aka ruminating. I know I have to just accept but am struggling to do so. Any suggestions ?
Hi Babs
That is what the article above is about, you hurt your shoulder and you accept that you hurt your shoulder and deal with the pain, or you regret and ruminate over hurting your shoulder and you not only is your shoulder pain still there but you add another layer of suffering because you regret, resist and ruminate over it happening.
So it achieves is nothing apart from making you feel like crap, if it’s not the shoulder then it will be another thing that goes wrong and so you suffer in life for no reason as none of this changes anything. Good and bad things happen to everyone in life; the people who suffer far less are those who accept this fact and roll with the ups and downs of life and what it brings.
People often comment on how calm I am these days and yet nothing has changed for me on the outside, just the inside. My perceptions, attitude and reactions to things are what changed. I still have plenty of things go wrong, personal and health-wise, but I don’t dwell on them, resist the fact they happen or get down about them and so I have much more peace in my life. Again it’s not what happens in life that makes us suffer but our reactions to them.
Hello everyone,
I have read both of Paul’s books and have a few questions regarding his wisdom – which I find incredibly helpful and accurate.
However, there are some things that I am really struggling to accept. My main symptoms are mental exhaustion, overthinking, being highly aware of my thoughts, and sleep issues. However, I have noticed, as Paul says, that these don’t matter, and I should just allow myself to feel the way I do – I can’t change it anyway, so I might as well live my life regardless.
There are, however, some situations where I struggle to do this.
I live a “normal” life and work full-time. However, I really struggle to concentrate, and every single day when I go to work, it feels like my brain is so exhausted that it wants me to go home and rest, as it can’t handle working. When I feel this way for 7.5 hours every day, I tend to start worrying again, and the vicious cycle continues. I haven’t taken sick leave from work because I don’t feel stressed due to my tasks, but the fact that I feel this way when I’m there – which is hard to endure for such long periods. I try to tell myself that it’s natural in the moment, and that it is just how it is, and to just keep going – but it’s incredibly difficult for me to keep staying in it, and then i start becoming aware of my thought and feelings and start to get involved, obess and worry which starts to make me feel very hopeless and sad that i won’t ever be able to live a normal life again, where anxiety isn’t a topic.
In this regard, I would like to know if anyone has had the same experience, and what one should do – should I take sick leave, or should I keep working despite feeling this way and being mentally exhausted?
Hi Matthew
I have written an article on Mental Exhaustion here
https://anxietynomore.co.uk/anxiety-mental-exhaustion
The reason you feel tired all the time is that you are mentally tired, which is the brain working too hard. So all the getting involved, worrying and obsessing keeps this exhaustion going, and why you find yourself in a cycle you feel unable to escape from. The exhaustion is creating the worrying/staring/obsessing, which creates more exhaustion, and so more worrying, obsessing, ruminating and so it goes on. It’s like going for a run in an attempt to overcome a leg that’s in pain because you have just run a marathon, you will only exhaust it further. This is what allowing does, when you allow, the past exhaustion is still there for a while, but now you have broken the loop and the brain can now rest, and in time you will start feeling more clarity.
Leaving work is not going to do anything as this is a mental exhaustion, staying at home will probably lead to more ruminating and trying to escape how you feel. When the exhaustion eases, you will find concentrating at work much easier and tasks will seem much simpler. It’s a case of doing less brain work that will change things, not doing less physical things.
Firstly, I would like to thank you for all your kind advice. It really makes me feel like I’m not a lost cause.
I truly resonate with the advice and the approach/attitude of acceptance. I feel like I understand it deeply on a cognitive level, but I really struggle to implement it in my daily life, as it feels like my mind is constantly going over my anxiety and the advice I’ve received (even when I know it isn’t helpful).
However, it seems like my mind has developed a habit of constantly worrying and ruminating about my anxiety. I start to feel like I’m constantly in my head, overly aware of my thoughts, which isn’t ideal. Then I often become aware that I’m doing it, and I say to myself, “You shouldn’t do this,” and try to move on to other things – but my attention very quickly comes back to the thoughts and anxiety topic.
Even on “good symptom days,” my mind constantly shifts back to trying to problem-solve and think about my anxiety. I then tell myself that I shouldn’t be doing this, as it’s counterintuitive. However, it has such a strong grip on my attention and focus that it almost feels impossible to “get out of my head” and stop thinking about my anxiety.
So, just to summarize: I feel like I often can accept my physical symptoms, but I really struggle with the mental chatter and my mental compulsions.
I hope my “problem” makes sense to you, and if you have any advice, it would be very much appreciated.
And as I said earlier. THANK YOU for what you’re doing, Paul. You truly are an amazing person, and I wish you all the best!
Hello. You write in the book that at some point you gave up all techniques that affected emotions. What techniques are you talking about? Are they affirmations, meditations, visualizations, breathing techniques? You also write that you started working on changing your beliefs. How did you work on it?
Hello Matthew,
The advice is always the same, regardless of the symptom, be it physical or mental. Your mental exhaustion/chatter/compulsions only seem like such a problem because it bothers you so much. So let it. Let your mind do what it wants and when you get those automatic reactions, allow those too. Instead of thinking “no, I shouldn’t be reacting this way” just say “ok, so what, back to what I need to be doing right now.” In time, as you learn to allow anything and everything, your reactions will decrease and eventually your mind will quiet. But don’t put a timeline on it. If you find yourself getting discouraged or checking in with your progress, just gently shift your focus outward. You might have to do that countless times a day. That’s ok. There’s no need to label good or bad days. If one day your mind is calm, great. If the nexts it’s racing and you’re exhausted, who cares. I know all of this might seem impossible when you’re in the thick of it, so be patient and gentle with yourself.
Hi Matthew
Stephanie talks a lot of sense above, that’s what true allowing is, my thoughts on your question
Firstly, what you describe is very common and something I went through too
You have half answered your question, and as you say, it has become a habit to question/obsess/ruminate. So when you say, you shouldn’t be doing this, it’s not you that’s doing it, it’s the habit doing so. You can’t just say ‘Right I’ll stop doing this’ as you will find the habit to do so kicks in and thwarts your efforts.
It’s why you can’t just go do other things without your brain reverting back to you and the subject. Or when you try to stop thinking about your anxiety, as the habit to do so will override your attempts. Also, when you try not to think of something, you think of it more, no different than saying ‘Don’t try and think of Pink Elephants, ‘ all you will do is think about Pink Elephants.
So the answer here is to allow the habit without feeding it and the habit will die down of its own accord. So if you think about yourself and your anxiety, then allow this also, don’t try not to think about yourself. Don’t give yourself any rules of ‘I should not be doing this’. If there is mental chatter, then allow the mental chatter without trying to do anything to stop it. Stop trying to perfect anything as this is just driving your attention back to you and how you feel.
Say you split up with a partner, it’s natural to think about them for a while, if you tried not to, you would fail miserably and only think about them more. The best way to get over them is to allow yourself to think about them, but go and live your life while doing so. If you went on a mission, not to think about them and read books on how not to think about them or kept trying not to, guess what you would be thinking about all day? This is what feeding the habit means.
Also, to stop thinking about them, you would be better throwing all pictures and letters out instead of going over them every day. It’s the same as giving up the whole subject of anxiety, there’s no need to read up on it, obsess over it, try and get things right to overcome it, this is just feeding the habit to think about it.
When I saw all this I just allowed my brain to think and obsess about it if it wished but I stopped joining in, stopped trying to sort it all out, stopped letting it bother me and just went back to living my life. It took time, but eventually, without me feeding it, the habit to think of myself died down naturally. The more I began to live my life, the more outward and less inward I became. It sorted itself out without me trying to sort it out, I just had to understand what was going on and be patient.
Hopefully that helps