We all have inner voices that play thoughts in our heads. These can be helpful or unhelpful in our response to feelings of anxiety. Understanding and training these inner voices can be the difference (the missing piece) between simply recovering to a temporary state of wellness, or achieving a full and permanent recovery.
The anxiety state results from our internal reaction to anxious thoughts, feelings, and symptoms. In the anxiety state, our minds are inundated with thoughts of all kinds. The anxious and fearful thoughts are the loudest and most intrusive, and come from what I call – the Voice of Fear. This is the internal voice that tells us lies and tries to scare the stuffing out of us. It is the voice that we tend to pay most attention to, and it maintains and even intensifies our state of anxiety.
Much weaker inner voices, that tend to be drowned out in the anxiety state, are the Voices of Truth and Acceptance. The Voice of Truth may be faint, but it knows what is really going on. It knows we are not really in mortal danger. It can see that our reaction to anxiety is irrational and unnecessary, but it is swamped by the intensity of the fears and anxious thoughts.
The Voice of Acceptance is nowhere to be found when we are in the depths of our struggle and suffering. We cannot even imagine how we could accept and allow the thoughts or symptoms that are bombarding us. This seems like an impossibility, and we do the only thing that seems to make sense we try and fight off the anxiety or suppress it, and try to avoid anything that might trigger more. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work, which is why we remain in the anxiety state.
Recovery involves learning to give less attention and energy to the Voice of Fear, and more to the Voices of Truth and Acceptance. Because of their importance to the recovery process, I’ll now explain these three inner voices in greater depth.
The Voice of Fear
The intrusive thoughts, the doubts, the questions, the anticipation and worries are all products of the Voice of Fear. It is the voice that torments us and keeps us on edge. It speculates about every twinge and sensation we get, telling us it is some fatal illness.
The Voice of Fear convinces us something vague and unspeakable is going to happen to us. It scares us to the point that we seek medical attention to be reassured, or we try to figure out what’s wrong by consulting Dr. Google. Without fail, it latches on to the very worst possible diagnosis and tells us that is what we have, or the worst possible scenario and tells us that is what will happen, causing us to add fear on top of fear.
We try desperately to work things out, but no matter what we find, what we try, or how much reassurance we get that “it’s only anxiety”, things don’t improve and the Voice of Fear tells us it never will – that we will be stuck suffering like this forever. It prompts us to ask questions that seem to have no answers, such as “Why did this happen to me?”, “Why can’t I just go back to how I used to be?” and “What if I don’t recover?” etc.
It doesn’t seem to matter what we try, we can’t get his voice to stop chattering away and keeping the anxiety going. It is almost 24/7. While we may try to ignore it, it is loud and insistent. Alternatively, we may try to fight it, to replace it with more positive thoughts, but it keeps on dragging us into the depths of worry and despair.
The Voice of Fear is never our friend, and its message is never helpful or to be trusted.
The Voice of Fear pretends to be looking out for our well-being, alerting us about all these supposed dangers. However, that is just a big bluff. Anxiety is not dangerous, but the Voice of Fear keeps getting us to react as though the world is about to end, and we are about to die. It causes our bodies to pump adrenaline and other stress hormones and chemicals into our bloodstream at ridiculous levels for the situation we are in, creating intense symptoms and even panic attacks.
This inner voice doesn’t respond to reason, and in reality it isn’t trying to solve anything or help us out; it wants to keep us in the quagmire. It knows only fear. If it notices we have had some hours or days of relative peace, it perks up and finds something to frighten us with again. It is happiest when we are scared, suffering, fighting, avoiding or trying to work things out.
To counter this destructive inner voice we need to build up the two right inner voices – the Voice of Truth and the Voice of Acceptance.
The Voice of Truth
Understanding how and why anxiety does what it does is an important part of recovery. It helps us see the bluff for what it is, and realize that anxiety is not some really serious and dangerous condition; we are not going to die or go crazy; our thinking has just got a little bit “out of whack”. There is no edge to go over. We can totally let go and surrender to the feelings.
We need to understand what is normal for someone who suffers from anxiety, what to expect during the recovery journey, and to be able to tell the difference between what is true and the lies that our Voice of Fear tells us (as these can be very convincing when we are in the depths of our suffering).
We build this voice of truth by repetitive reading of the truth about anxiety on this website, in my book, or in any of the books by Dr. Claire Weekes. We need to read this information over and over because it is hard for an anxious mind to grasp it and hold on to it.
The truth seems to disappear out of the window the moment our anxious thoughts and symptoms become severe. Truths and understanding that we had just a little while ago vanish, and we find ourselves unable to see things in the same way. We know we understood, but we just can’t see it any more from our anxious state.
The Voice of Truth allows us to distinguish between what is real and what is the bluff and lies of the Voice of Fear.
Repetition of these truths is the only way to build the Voice of Truth and make it strong enough so that it can still speak to us loud and clear when our anxiety is intense. That is why I repeat these truths many times throughout my writings on this website and in my book. – it is an essential part of the journey to recovery.
While crucial to our recovery, just knowing the truth is not sufficient to recover – that is why “trying to work it all out” never got us anywhere. It is only half the answer. The other part is learning how to accept our anxious thoughts, emotions and symptoms and building up the other right inner voice, the Voice of Acceptance to a similarly invincible level.
The Voice of Acceptance
This is the voice that calls anxiety’s bluff. It tells the anxious thoughts (our gremlins or worry monsters) that we are not going to fall for their attempts to scare us. It notices when we start adding second fear and reminds us to just let go and surrender.
The Voice of Acceptance guides us to not judge things or to get caught up in expectations. It tells us to let life unfold naturally, to walk calmly through the storms knowing that things will clear again. It helps us accept unpleasant experiences and feelings with the same ease as the pleasant ones.
The Voice of Acceptance guides us to replace avoiding and fighting behaviors with ones of facing and acceptance. It helps us to accept the outcome of our practicing of the Acceptance Method – whether the symptoms increase, decrease, stay the same or disappear completely. It allows us to be philosophical if and when the symptoms return after a period of peace by saying “Oh, well…”
This is the inner voice that accepts the outcome of any decisions we make, such that we don’t spend time second guessing things, or indulging in regrets and wishful thinking. It is also the voice that tempers our reaction to the actions of others, allowing us to be more tolerant of what others say or do, and not take things personally.
The Voice of Acceptance is also compassionate about the times we make mistakes or say the wrong thing. It refuses to demand perfection of us, accepting that we are human and imperfect.
An invincible Voice of Acceptance is the key to full and permanent recovery from anxiety.
When this Voice of Acceptance develops an unshakable strength, we KNOW that we can handle all of life’s trials and tribulations. This is the single most important element in a full and permanent recovery from anxiety, as well as the change that brings a whole new level of peace and confidence in our life.
Developing the Voice of Acceptance takes time. There are so many levels to acceptance that we uncover layer by layer. Now, we may understand acceptance intellectually, but we need to integrate it emotionally as well. We cannot do this just by reading about it; we must live it and experience acceptance repeatedly to internalize it.
Insights and “Aha!” moments will occur where we look back and think “I thought I understood acceptance, but now I REALLY understand it”. This can happen again and again as we attain each new level of understanding, and further strengthen our Voice of Acceptance.
These insights cannot be sought out, nor can they be gained from reading about or thinking about acceptance; they simply materialize organically from our consistent practising of the method.