Microsoft Word - At Last A Life Final Copy 16-03-09 (18 page)

no matter how long this suffering has lasted, your body is just

waiting to recover.

We’re anxious because we’re anxious!

One question I am often asked is “How do I give my nerves chance

to rest when I feel anxious?”

Well, yes, your nerves are sensitised at the moment and they may

seem as though they give you no rest from your feelings of anxiety.

The reason this cycle continues is because
we’re
anxious because

we’re anxious
.
Do you know what I mean? All the “Oh God, I hate

this, I just want it to go away. When will this ever end?” This is what

keeps your nerves tense; you are not giving them chance to calm

down. It does not matter whether you feel anxious or not, your

nerves will have a chance to rest as long as you don’t fall into this

trap. This can be especially true if a person has had a taste of

freedom from how they feel, like a lady that once emailed me. She

felt better for a while and that was good, but when the bad feelings

returned, she fell into the cycle of being anxious because she was

anxious again, especially as she thought this dreaded anxiety had

gone for good.

That is why I advise that any return of symptoms should be treated

with a pinch of salt. Nerves take time to calm down and return to

normal. You may feel tense one day and not the next. You may feel

more nervous than you did the day before. Accept it all, question

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none of it and, above all, try not to be anxious because you’re

anxious.

Let me explain it another way. Anxiety can be due to a period of

worry in our lives that makes us anxious. So then we worry about

being anxious, which increases our anxiety, so we worry even more

about new symptoms that seem to have appeared, which makes us

worry more. We become experts at watching our bodies, worrying

about every sensation that anxiety brings.

This is exactly what happened to me. I worried constantly about how

I felt. I now realise just how much pressure I was putting on my

already anxious body. I was caught in the anxiety cycle and it’s no

wonder I spent ten years getting worse rather than better. My body

was telling me to slow down and stop worrying and I did exactly the

opposite. Can you see the cycle we can so easily fall into?!

Don’t worry about how you come across to others

This was one of the things I struggled with during my recovery. I was

so keen to come across as normal that I would hold on to myself,

hoping that I would not crack and that people would not notice how

strange I felt. Most of the time, I would just try to avoid meeting

people, full stop.

I just told myself not to care how I came across in front of others. If I

came across as strange, then so be it. When I recovered, they would

see the real me. This avoiding was getting me nowhere. It felt

strange at first trying to accept feeling odd in front of people, but I

did it, and once I had convinced myself not to care how I came

across, I did feel better. It was like releasing a cork from a bottle and

I no longer felt I had to keep a grip on myself. I stopped feeling like

two people, one trying to hold a conversation and the other watching

myself and my reactions. This in turn allowed me to feel more

involved in the conversation. I did this in every situation, however I

felt, and I found it got gradually became easier and I was able to

overcome this part of my anxiety.

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This is a very good example of changing a habit. A lot of anxiety is

caused by habits that need to be reversed. I had practiced

avoidance for so long that this avoidance had become me. I

reversed this by ignoring what my body was telling me to do and just

went forward anyway. This then became my new habit and

eventually it felt less strange and easier to put myself in the front line

of battle. I had gone through my fears, faced the bogey man head

on and finally achieved something. This realisation helped me with

so many other parts of my anxiety. I became conscious of the fact

that I did have some power over the way I felt and I could take some

control.

Eventually I learnt to stop worrying about how I came across to

others. I stopped holding on to myself and putting on an act, hoping I

could bluff my way through. I let go, despite how I came across and,

for the first time, I could follow a little of the conversation. I did not

crack like I thought I would. Through letting go, I relieved some

tension and felt more at ease. I had been convinced that I had to

hold on to myself, otherwise I would crack and the game would be

up. How wrong I was. I still felt tense and strange during

conversation, but I was okay. I knew that I had to go through this

many times before I felt more in touch with reality.

Still feeling apprehensive

This is the sensation that something bad is going to happen even

though you are no longer afraid of how you feel. One lady described

it as like being in no man’s land.

I also experienced this feeling of apprehension a lot during recovery

and it seemed to hover over me as though it was waiting to drag me

back under. This is just another habit that I had developed from my

years of suffering. I felt as though I was improving, but the feeling of

anxiety hung around. I accepted that anxiety had been part of me for

so long it was only natural to feel this way and it was actually the

transition between my suffering and feeling normal again. In other

words, feeling normal actually felt strange and I was stuck with this

in between feeling. I let this feeling of apprehension be there and

saw it as part of recovery and in time it faded.

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Step out of your own way

It's time to put your fear aside, and allow your mind/body to find its

own natural balance. It will do so when and only when you begin to

step out of your own way. This will happen. Trust your body by

stepping back and allowing the natural process of rejuvenation to

occur. Without worry, the fuel for continued distress is removed.

A saying that stuck with me about releasing fear was:

Invite it if it wants to come. It hates been invited because then it has

no fear to feed on. This is the very thing that keeps it alive. Again it

is only adrenalin being released on a sensitised body. There is

nothing to fear and the way to realise that is to go through it. This is

how you unmask the truth, not by avoidance.

Move forward

What has gone has gone. It does not matter how long you have

suffered, how many years you think you have wasted, or how many

times you have felt you failed in the past, now is the time to move

forward to your goal of recovery. Don’t look back. You have a new

goal and with your own courage and determination, you can achieve

anything you want. Have faith in what you have been told and trust

in your own body to heal itself.

Will my anxiety return?

Somebody once asked me if anxiety would return once it had left

them. Anxiety does not pick on certain people. It’s not something

that can come back out of the blue. It is not an illness but a condition

brought on by ourselves.

The person most unlikely to suffer again is actually someone who

has suffered in the past. I can honestly say I know what brought me

to that terrible place and I know I could never go there again. My

whole outlook on life has changed and I would always put my health

before anything else; nothing is more important. I am also far more

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laid back. I understand that worry is the most useless emotion we

have and I tend to just live life for today and worry about nothing

past or present. My life is actually a lot richer for suffering from

anxiety and it has put a lot of things into perspective.

Medication

A lot of people ask about medication and as I am not a doctor, I

cannot comment on any particular medication that anyone is taking.

I believe that medication is thrown at anxiety sufferers far too easily

because of ignorance on the subject. Some doctors appear to have

a lack of understanding of the condition and therefore the only

solution they know is to throw medication at it. I’m not saying this

happens in all cases, but I feel I was just given medication because

the doctor knew no better.

I was given tablets to slow my heart rate down, when all I suffered

from was anxiety and these tablets did nothing for me at all. Then I

was put on anti-depressants that just made me feel worse. Neither

did me any good, so I came of them gradually and felt better for it,

but I accept that there may be a need for medication in a lot of cases

in order to take the edge off anxiety/panic and give people some

room to recover.

The reason I sometimes worry about medication been thrown at the

problem is that I believe it can create other problems. For example,

people can also get addicted to the very medication that was

supposed to help them. I also believe that medication can become a

crutch for a lot of sufferers. They become so dependant on the

tablets that they feel they can’t go out without them. They need

them just to get through the day, even after they recover. It becomes

their crutch and in a lot of cases you could give them anything

disguised as their tablet and they would be fine. In other words, it is

not the medication that is helping them but the change in their

attitude. What happens when you take this crutch away? That is

why I wanted to recover without medication. I needed to know that

when I recovered, there would be no other obstacles to overcome.

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Obviously, each individual is different and you may have a different

opinion on the subject. If you’re taking sedatives or any other

medication and it helps, that’s fine. If you truly believe it helps, this

can make you feel well enough to attempt to recover, which is good,

as long as they don’t keep searching for that magic pill that’s going

to make it all go away. In every case I believe that the underlying

problems of anxiety need to be addressed for recovery to begin and

unfortunately medication cannot achieve this. That’s why people

may find themselves coming off medication only to go back on, or

constantly changing their medication.

I am not a doctor and don’t pretend to be. These are just my views.

You must talk to your doctor about how you feel and let him advise

you. If you are taking medication that has been prescribed for you

and you feel you are having more problems than before, then please

return to your doctor and talk it through with him.

Diet and Fitness

Exercise can also be a great help to people who suffer from anxiety.

Something that really helped me was going for a swim a couple of

times a week and going for the odd run throughout the week. It

really helped bring my body back into balance. When I could afford

it, I also went for a massage to relieve a lot of the tension in my

body. People sometimes say things such as: “I went for a swim

today and still felt awful”. Again, they are demanding instant

success. It takes time to integrate back into normal living. It is a

gradual process, but it does come as long as you stop demanding

instant results. Exercise not only helps to bring your body back into

balance, it produces endorphins which lift your mood and give you a

sense of well-being. It also burns off the chemicals produced by

stress and worry and re-absorbs that adrenalin that has built up, as

well as giving you a focus other than yourself, which helps to stop

the constant brooding about how you feel.

Exercise is an excellent way of relieving some of that stress, so if

you are in a position to take up some form of exercise, I would

suggest that you do. Some people say that they could not possibly

go for a walk or a run because they are far too tired and would not

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make it to the top of the road. Again, they are being tricked by their

tired mind and body into thinking they can’t. Float past these

thoughts and try it. You have nothing to lose. Don’t start getting