Microsoft Word - At Last A Life Final Copy 16-03-09 (5 page)

You just need to put Paul’s advice into practice as often as you can

in order to get off the ‘hamster wheel’ of anxiety and get on with

‘normal’ everyday living. Even when you don’t feel like it, go out, go

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to work, down to the pub, cycling, whatever you fancy doing. Don’t

be put off by inappropriate feelings or thoughts … do it anyway. For

normal feelings to return we have to live as normal a life as possible.

I made the mistake for the first year, of sitting and waiting to get well

before I actually ‘lived’, thinking this was the way to do it. It took me

the best part of a year to find out this was totally wrong. My anxiety

levels shot up during this time also. I ended up ruminating all day

and became almost housebound.

Scarlet is right and this is something I try to get across early. Don’t

hide away indoors, don’t wait until you feel better to go out and live

your life. Don’t put off anything because of how you feel. Just live

your life regardless of how you feel. You may even feel worse when

you first do this because you are coming out of your comfort zones,

but it is the actual doing that begins to take the edge off feelings.

Normal feelings begin to override the feelings of strangeness. For

normal feelings to return, we have to live as normal a life as

possible; nothing is gained by hiding away. I always went

everywhere at will no matter how I felt. I knew that this was the only

way to move forward and I never allowed anxiety to make my

decisions for me.

Yes, sometimes I really felt like hiding away, but I never did.

Sometimes I felt uncomfortable in certain situations, but I thought ‘so

what, this is not me forever’. I knew deep down that putting myself in

situations that I had avoided in the past would help me to recover.

Avoidance just creates more problems and what was I actually

avoiding anyway? It was nothing more than a feeling, a feeling that

had once dominated my life. But I made the decision to no longer let

it, and what a difference that had on my life. I am not saying I started

running around like a headless chicken, I just started socialising

more. I went running, took the dog for a walk, went swimming and

just began to live again. Yes, at first it was strange and sometimes I

had to drag myself there, but I always went. Eventually I felt more

and more comfortable and more and more at one with the world

around me. I had stopped sitting at home brooding, hoping that a

miracle would come along and rid me of how I was feeling.

One thing I quickly learnt is that the road to recovery is not all plain

sailing. There are ups and downs. You should enjoy the good days

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and don’t get too depressed about the bad. The most important

thing to remember is that in order to get better, you may have to live

alongside the old you for a while, including the feelings of dread and

anxiousness. This can’t be avoided, but while you are doing this a

new you will begin to emerge, ready to rise to the surface.

Below is part of an email from someone I helped. She was in a deep

hole when she first came across my site and read my book. At the

time of writing she is well on her way to recovery and in her own

words ‘1000 times better’. The statement below is so very true and

something I tried to get across to her very quickly – it is the ‘trying to

control’ the anxiety that ultimately keeps us in the cycle.

Hi Paul, I was having a think yesterday about how far I have come.

There were times when I thought I was trapped with anxiety

forever… but thinking about it, all the ‘fighting to control’ is what

trapped me and not the actual symptoms. If I had left the stress

induced symptoms alone then I would have never ended up in the

state I did! But I persevered and now I am seeing big results. I don’t

ever worry about whether or not I will recover now - it’s like it’s inbuilt

that I just know I will.

She had finally got it. It was the fighting, trying to control the anxiety

that made her sink deeper into the condition. If she had just got on

with her day accepting the anxiety induced symptoms, her life would

have been far easier. But she did the exact opposite and spent her

day trying to ‘rid’ herself of the way she felt and trying to think and

fight her way better. I told her from a very early stage “When you

wake up in a morning, don’t make it your daily aim to rid yourself of

your anxiety”. It is a fight you will lose for sure as there is no battle to

fight. Looking back to my own suffering, I don’t think there was a day

that I did not try and rid myself of how I was feeling. This was

obviously getting me nowhere, so I had to try a new approach. I

began to realise that if doing this was making me worse, maybe then

I should do the opposite.

Referring back to the stress induced symptoms she mentioned, she

also sees them for what they are. She has changed her attitude and

understands that however she feels it is just an off shoot of anxiety -

stress related symptoms as she puts it. Symptoms that used to

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bother her and fill her with so much dread and fear no longer have

the edge anymore as she understands why she feels like she does. I

used to have many symptoms when I suffered, but once the anxiety

left so did the symptoms and none hung around. At the time I

thought I had to deal with each one separately, but this was not the

case.

I also received the following email, which I would like to share with

you. It came from someone who was going through recovery, but

could not seem to get over that final hurdle.

Hello Paul,

I just wondered if you could help me. With your help, I have been

able to banish so many of my symptoms, but what I can’t seem to do

is get over that final hurdle to recovery. I seem to have hit a brick

wall now and even though I can do so much more and feel so much

better, I still find myself being anxious in certain places and

wondered if I should just maybe not go there until my body fully

repairs itself?

Like I say, I feel much better and full recovery seems so close, but I

can’t seem to get over this last stage and don’t seem to be making

any progress. I just wondered if you could explain why?

Regards Ian

My reply was:

Hi Ian,

I also went through this and felt the same frustration of being so

close to recovery, but not being able to get over that final hurdle that

I felt was in front of me. Here is how I overcame this.

I felt so close to recovery and had come so far, that I decided I

would stay in to help reach my goal of recovery, thinking this would

take me over that final hurdle, as long as I did not put myself in the

situations that still made me feel uncomfortable. I did not stay in

because I wanted to stay in. I did it because I felt so close to

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recovery and did not want to risk feeling bad again. Like you, I also

did not like how it made me feel, so I set up camp in my safe haven

called home thinking this would take me over that final hurdle. I soon

learned that it did not, and one day I said to myself: “Anxiety, you

still hold the power over me to influence what I do, but today its

stops. I am going to embrace you and take away that power. You

are never going to stop me doing anything anymore. If you want me

to feel bad, then so be it, but this is the last time you have any

influence over what I do”.

The next day I went to visit a friend and felt okay. I then arranged a

night out and felt fine. I also went walking my dog and popped into

my dad’s house and nothing happened. Okay, I experienced a little

bit of anxiety but I embraced it. I did not see it as an obstacle any

more, but accepted it as an opportunity to see what I could achieve.

This went on for a few weeks. I went everywhere I wanted to and felt

every twinge of anxiety at will.

Within a short space of time, I had passed that final hurdle. It was as

if my mind and body had overtaken my memory and habit and

convinced me that I could do these things. Memory and habit were

holding me back and the more I embraced anxiety, the more it died

down. Anxiety loves avoidance, so take its power away and

embrace it. Stop letting it influence what you do and stop running

away from these feelings. This is the way forward.”

This person replied saying that this is exactly what he had been

doing and once he received my reply, he was able to overcome this

and reach recovery.

I wanted to include this email as it explains that the more you avoid

the way you feel, the more it can drag you down. It may be the safe

way to do things, but it does no good long term. That's the key. I felt

like this once but then changed my attitude to thinking, I am sick of

this now and I no longer care what happens - anything is better than

having no life. So I went everywhere and did everything against my

body’s instinct and, you know what, nothing bad happened to me.

Oh yes, I felt uncomfortable at times, but I just gave into the feelings

and stopped trying to control them. Whatever happened, happened,

but nothing did. I felt awful - overwhelmed at times - but it always

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calmed down. I stopped adding avoidance and fear and the feelings

had no fuel left to feed on. It is all about going through it and

changing habits like avoidance. It’s not easy at times, but it brought

me so many victories and this is where confidence is built. It is the

continued doing that brings so many rewards. As one lady put it ‘It’s

like re-training the brain’. The one thing I learnt is that you have to

lose the need to be in control. At one time, if I did not feel right then I

felt I had to fix it, but I eventually learned to go with the ‘craziness’

as I put it, and not fight against it.

One lady who struggled with anxiety and let it dominate her day,

recently sent me an email saying, “I feel anxious today Paul, but,

hey, it’s okay”. This is the stage she needed to reach. More than

anything else, the first step is to view anxiety in a different way and

to change your attitude towards it, so that it does not dominate your

every waking moment. It is never about how you feel - you can do

very little about that - is more to do with your attitude towards it. If

you want to fight, worry and obsess about it daily and let it get you

down, spending the whole day in a battle you cannot win, then go

ahead, but, trust me, you will feel far worse.

You need to reach the stage where it no longer matters if those

anxious feelings are there or not. They just become a nuisance in

the background. I knew I was reaching recovery well before I did, as

the symptoms no longer bothered me to the point that they affected

my day. I had also given my body the break it so craved and my

symptoms were far less severe, the good days far outweighing the

bad. I went from having no good days at all, to some good and some

bad. This proved to me that for the first time in years I was heading

in the right direction and that it was only a matter of time before I

was my old self once again.

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PANIC ATTACKS EXPLAINED

Below I will try to give an explanation of panic attacks, so that you

fully understand what is happening to you during an attack and will

become less afraid. It will also help you to understand that they do

not just happen to you because you have been chosen; there is

always a reason behind them.

What causes panic attacks?

This can vary. During my own period of suffering I only ever had one

full blown panic attack. Some people suffering from anxiety

experience none at all and for others, they become part of their

lives. Some people’s personality can be a contributory factor. The

person prone to worry a lot throughout their life may suddenly go

from been anxious to having a panic attack for no real reason apart

from a continuous build up of worry. Sometimes they are born out of