You CAN recover from anxiety and panic. I did. You can too. I was a lifelong anxiety sufferer. Nothing I tried worked, until I finally stumbled on the approach that made all the difference – the acceptance method based on the work of Dr. Claire Weekes.
I am now fully recovered, and know that I will never return to that state.
Anxiety can be a devastating condition that causes severe suffering from which it may seem impossible to escape. It resists attempts to make it go away, which adds to our fear and desperation. Acute anxiety can trigger panic attacks. Prolonged anxiety can lead to depression. What we don’t realize in the midst of our suffering is that, while it feels serious and unsolvable, anxiety is actually just a bluff. There is a way out, and we can make a full and permanent recovery from both anxiety and panic attacks.
Symptoms
The variety of anxiety-related physical and mental symptoms is almost unlimited. There are so many it’s impossible for me to list them all, but here are some of the more common ones:
Physical
- Headaches
- Feeling of a “tight band” around the head
- Blurred vision
- Stiff or painful neck / back
- Dizziness, feeling light-headed, fainting
- Feeling weak, tired
- Trembling hands / body / legs
- Tingling skin / Pins and needles, itching
- Agitated / unable to rest or relax
- Sleeplessness (insomnia)
- Heart palpitations, racing / thumping heart
- Chest or abdominal pains
- Shallow breathing / Hyperventilation / Unable to get a deep breath
- Dry mouth
- Difficulty swallowing, lump in throat, choking sensation
- Upset stomach, diarrhea
- Frequent urination
- Blushing
- Flushed face, hot flushes, sweating
- Ringing in the ears
- Hypersensitivity to light or sounds
Mental / Emotional
- High levels of fear & anxiety
- Racing thoughts
- Scary, weird or disturbing thoughts
- Night terrors
- Obsessive thoughts / Compulsive actions
- Thinking one is going crazy
- Difficulty focusing
- Short-term memory loss
- Highly sensitive to everything
- Feeling impatient / short tempered
- Frequent anger, emotional outbursts
- Fearing one’s thoughts and reactions
- Afraid of harming someone / self
- Feeling agitated yet exhausted
- Overwhelming feelings of despair, sadness, crying a lot
- Experiencing a lack of joy, numb
- Loss of confidence, blaming oneself
- Feelings of shame & guilt
- Disintegration, unreality
- Feeling incredibly alone
- A sense of bewilderment
- Feeling hopeless, no motivation
- Depressed
As you can see, anxiety can cause a bewildering array of symptoms. The variety and intensity of the symptoms can convince us that there is something seriously wrong with us – that it must be more than just anxiety. But it is important to understand just how much anxiety can bluff us. Symptoms caused by anxiety are not serious, no matter what our thoughts try to tell us.
Anxiety is a tricky condition. Whenever we become “comfortable” and are able to tolerate our current symptoms, it will throw something new at us. When one symptom disappears, another can quickly take its place.
It’s almost as though anxiety is a separate entity that is desperate to survive. Our attempts to recover threaten its existence, so it throws more and more anxious thoughts at us, keeping us off-balance, reacting, and searching for answers.
Suffering
Anxiety loves to give us symptoms that really bother us. The more we hate and fear a symptom, the more our anxiety gives it to us. It seems the more frightened we are, the more our anxiety likes it.
The symptoms that bother you may be no issue to someone else, and vice versa. The symptoms that don’t bother you much come and go without you really noticing or paying attention to them. It is the ones that you fear and hate that you react to strongly. And it is this powerful reaction that causes them to stick around, and (if they leave) to come back again and again.
Our anxiety seems to have a goal of keeping us afraid of our thoughts and symptoms. It ultimately causes us to become afraid of experiencing fear/anxiety itself, and to avoid places or situations where that might happen. It is this fear, combined with our unsuccessful efforts to fight off or avoid the anxiety, that causes us great suffering.
Suffering is the combination of our fear of the anxiety condition, fear of situations that may trigger it, our prolonged and unsuccessful efforts to overcome the anxiety, our resulting physical, mental, emotional and spiritual exhaustion, and our despair that things will never change.
Trying to Work It All Out
As anxiety sufferers, we spend an enormous amount of time and energy trying to work out why we suffer, what caused it, and how we can bring an end to it.
Many of us consult Dr. Google (big mistake!), and this rarely ends well. For a start, there are very few articles about cases where the symptom was benign or caused by anxiety because people aren’t motivated to post them. But we see lots of horror stories, most of which were just other anxiety sufferers being bluffed by their condition, and so we get a very negatively biased view of our symptoms. Add to this the fact our scared and sensitized mind ignores any good news and latches on instead to even the most obscure but frightening things, and we have a recipe for health anxiety.
Our minds are so powerful that simply reading about some symptoms related to a serious illness can cause us to experience them.
As stated, the symptoms we experience can be so severe and convincing that we are sure there is something seriously wrong with us. Feelings of panic can make us think we are about to have a heart attack or stroke. So it’s not surprising that sufferers of panic attacks are common visitors to the Emergency Departments.
In 2013, an estimated 1 in 25 of the population in the U.S. were admitted to Emergency because of an anxiety or panic attack. This speaks to two things about anxiety: it is VERY common, and it is VERY convincing that there is something seriously wrong with us.
We Are Never Reassured
Despite multiple visits to the doctor or hospital, test after test coming up negative, and being declared healthy, we may still find it impossible to believe it is just anxiety. Even when we know the symptoms are just anxiety, we still fear them. Reassurance has very little effect on reducing our anxiety, and in any case, each new symptom triggers a fresh round of fear and worry about our health.
When our symptoms are diagnosed as anxiety, the medical community seems to have few answers for us, other than prescribing tranquilizers and/or antidepressants. These may provide us some relief, but it is usually partial relief, and often only temporary. They may help us cope, but they are not a cure. We may be referred to a counselor, psychologist, or Cognitive Behavior Therapist, but if your experience was like mine, these rarely helped much.
The Search for a Cure
I suspect you have tried (as I did) just about everything you can think of to achieve recovery from anxiety or panic, and nothing works. You have reached a point of desperation and are fearful that you’ll be in this state for the rest of your life. I have been where you are. As someone who suffered from severe anxiety for decades (most of my life), I know just how stuck, frustrated and in despair you feel.
I tried medications, counseling, psychotherapy, cognitive behavior therapy, exposure therapy, hypnosis, meditation, positive thinking and affirmations, and more. I spent thousands of dollars over the years on self-help books and courses, but nothing worked. At the end of it my anxiety was just as bad as ever, and I had lost almost all hope of ever recovering. Then, finally, a few years ago, I came across an approach to dealing with my anxiety that actually made a difference.
The Acceptance Method
This acceptance-based method taught me how to change the way I responded to anxiety. It showed me that anxiety is a bluff, and not nearly as serious as it felt. It changed my experience of anxiety and allowed me to gradually desensitize and heal. The method did what every other approach failed to do for me – it taught me how to recover naturally just by accepting my anxious thoughts and symptoms. It gave me my life back!
I want every anxiety sufferer to recover like I have. For that reason, I have created this site and written a book to provide you with the means to full and complete recovery using the same approach that worked for me.
Anxiety is NOT Serious
Despite how it feels, and how difficult it seems to be to deal with, and how frightened/worried we are, anxiety is NOT serious. This is why I say: “It’s Only Anxiety”.
The anxiety state can be a horrible condition, and have a severe impact on the quality of our life. The symptoms can be intense and almost non-stop. Our thoughts, symptoms, or emotions/feelings can petrify us, causing us to withdraw from life or seek relief through medication or other means.
However, in reality, anxiety is just our mind and body reacting to fearful thoughts. We have become afraid of our own reaction, and afraid of everything that might cause that reaction. We have slipped into a feedback loop of anxious thinking and reacting.
While it is not obvious how to get ourselves out of this loop, it can be done. One of the first things we need to understand is that despite how awful anxiety feels, we are NOT seriously ill; we are NOT mentally ill; we are NOT going crazy; we are NOT doomed to be this way for the rest of our lives; we are just suffering from anxiety.
Anxiety is a bluff. Nothing more. It has convinced us we are in mortal danger, and our subconscious mind and body (knowing no better) have reacted with the “fight or flight” response. This cause more symptoms, more sensitization, and more fear and anxious thoughts.
Now, it is fine for me to tell you this, but the anxiety still seems very serious, and even if you accept it is a bluff, that changes nothing. At this stage, you cannot see the anxiety as a bluff, so it is not yet possible to reduce your reaction to it.
Knowledge is the first part however in recovering from anxiety. Understanding what happens and why removes some of the bewilderment that is a big part of the anxiety state. The second part is learning how to unmask the bluff, and develop a strong inner voice that allows us to desensitize and recover.
Where You Are Right Now
If you have been suffering from anxiety for a while, you are probably frustrated, desperate, maybe frantic. You just want to get back to normal or how you were before you suffered. No doubt you feel lost, bewildered and ashamed by your condition. You may feel defeated and depressed because of your inability to get better, and even have doubts about whether you will ever recover. The struggle has exhausted you.
But most of all, I suspect you are feeling very scared and alone.
Your Experience is Normal (& Common)
Firstly, it is very understandable that you feel scared. It seems like anxiety has trapped you in a world of pain and suffering with no apparent way out. Let me put your mind at rest right now: I felt exactly that way for over 30 years, and yet I was able to recover completely once I found the right approach. I have personally witnessed many other sufferers who were in the same state and recovered using the very same method. I believe that all of us (you included) can recover from anxiety with the right approach, persistence and time.
Secondly, be assured you are far from alone. There are an estimated 40 million sufferers in the United States – about 1 in 6 of the adult population – and a similar percentage around the world. We are not really aware of just how widespread anxiety is because sufferers tend not to talk about their condition. In fact we tend to be so ashamed of it that we go to great lengths to hide it from others. We suffer in silence.
What you are going through is far more common than you probably realize. Furthermore, since the thought patterns that create and maintain the anxiety state are essentially the same across the spectrum of anxiety and panic disorders, the same approach can work for every type of anxiety, and can work for you.
Recover from Anxiety & Panic
The core of the method is acceptance, which of course is why I call it “The Acceptance Method”. As sufferers, we mostly avoid or fight our anxiety. Fighting and avoiding works against our healing by adding energy to the anxiety, strengthening it, and keeping it in place (“what we resist persists”). This is the behavior we need to change.
When instead we face and accept our anxiety, this allows it to expend its energy and dissipate. This may seem counter-intuitive, but it is the key to recovery. It is the opposite of what we naturally do when faced with our symptoms.
Facing and accepting sounds very easy; too easy almost. It is certainly simple, however it’s not easy to do. It takes practice, practice and more practice. We need:
- specialized knowledge and instructions laid out in a logical sequence;
- to know how to practice and learn the techniques in the face of severe anxiety symptoms or panic;
- some special skills and concepts that really help us make progress;
- understanding of the many challenges, obstacles and pitfalls that we will encounter on the journey to recovery, and what we must do to overcome them;
- encouragement to practice, and keep practicing, even when things feel hopeless.
The Acceptance Method
I have integrated all these things into the Acceptance Method as described in the book “IT’S ONLY ANXIETY: How to Recover from Anxiety & Panic“. As we practice applying the method, over time, the new way of responding to anxiety becomes ingrained. When that occurs, the anxiety and panic lose their strength and fade away, and we move into a life without anxious suffering.
This method taught me how to think about and respond to my anxiety condition the right way, and for the first time in my life I saw real changes in my condition. Over time, things improved, and continued to improve until I reached the point where I knew my recovery was complete.
For the first time in my life, anxiety no longer dominated my every waking moment, and was no longer part of every decision I made. It was no longer an issue for me. I now live a life so full of peace and contentment that I couldn’t even have imagined it when I was suffering. To be honest, I would have settled for much less, so I am unbelievably grateful for the life I have now. And I KNOW that my recovery is permanent.
My Goal
I have traveled the path myself, gaining firsthand knowledge of what it takes, and what it feels like to make the journey to full and permanent recovery. I subsequently have gained broader understanding from providing coaching, guidance and support of sufferers with a variety of anxiety types as they go through the ups and downs on their journey to recovery.
Now I want to help even greater numbers of sufferers reach recovery from their anxiety and panic. I want everyone to have the same opportunity I had to permanently heal from this horrendous and devastating condition.
I decided a book was the best vehicle to provide all the information that I believe is needed to recover. It is both a set of instructions on how to apply the method, and a reference for the journey. I designed it in a logical way to guide you step-by-step from anxiety and suffering to recovery and a life of peace.
In addition, I will continue to add relevant and useful materials to this website, and it is my intention over time to offer other services that people need or want. Stay tuned.
Wishing you the very best on your journey to recovery!
~ Carl