steve111
Active member
First, I would like to say that this is not a method, gimmick or anything like that to cure Anxiety disorders. I am not a psychologist, psychiatrist or medical doctor. I am not looking for money, nor am I looking for guinea pigs for this technique. Remember, this is not a technique, but simply the method I used to beat my anxiety problems. If this can only make you realize that anxiety is not an illness and most can be cured, then, I would have given back to the anxiety prone community. I am not here to anger you, nor am I here to project false beliefs on you… Whether you realize this or not, you have control over this and most can at the very least, minimize your symptoms to a point that you will never, ever think about anxiety again.
My understanding of anxiety disorders
Anxiety disorders including (SA, GAD, OCD, Depression, phobias, etc...) originate from basically the same premise; FEAR. Fear of a situation, thing, event, behaviour, and such. This fear usually develops at a young age, but can manifest itself later in life such as in post traumatic stress disorder. This fear was learnt and profoundly embedded itself in our consciousness. It usually stems from mankinds frugal attempt at control. If we can’t control we fear. If we fear, our body instinctively reacts to protect ourselves. And that is where the symptoms and avoidance behaviour start.
Mankind, through evolution, has developed the fight or flight. It was needed to protect humans from predators. When we encounter what we perceive as danger, our amygdala (a switch located in the brain) signals our body to do the following:
1. divert blood from the extremities to the major muscle groups
2. Makes the heart beat fast to pump more oxygen
3. Shortens the the breathing so we bring in more oxygen
4. shuts down unnecessary bodily functions such as digestion to conserve energy
5. elevates the temperature of the body.
When danger is eliminated, the amygdala signals the body to return to normal. The connection from thought to bodily reaction is extremely rapid. Think about how long it takes you to think to move a finger and actually moving it. So you can imagine that as soon as you think of a fearful situation (imagined or real), your body goes into panic mode.
When I got stung at 9 years old by a bee, I instantly developed an intense fear of bees. I could not control bees and associated them with pain. So, every time I would see or hear a bee, I would run as far as I could. Then I asked myself, why is it that I fear bees and others don’t? So slowly, through trial and error, I desensitized myself by consciously prolonging my exposure to bees. Of course it was hard, of course I simply wanted to die, but when a bee was hovering around me, I just stood there and waited as long as I could… After a whole summer, I was cured. I do not fear bees anymore.
Research suggests that people suffering from anxiety disorders demonstrate above average intelligence. This is demonstrated by the fact that we analyse things to much. How will this person react to me? What if I do this? What if I do that? What if I say no? And by analysing things, we create scenarios with possible solutions. It is human nature to adopt the worst possible case in a situation, and that is where our problems start.
My understanding of this situation is that if you can “unlearn” the behaviours that feed the disorder, and replace them with positive behaviour, then, the fearful situation will not exist anymore, thus the disorder will fade away.
So how did i to cure myself?
How does one eliminate the fear of heights? Well, not by climbing the empire state building, but by climbing a ladder, one step at a time. You have to push your bubble further and further, in small steps.
Born into a family where my mother suffers from OCD, GAD and depression, I was basically condemned to be like her. That is all she taught me. I was always very shy and, while looking back at this, suffered from little panic attacks all through my childhood.
I experienced my first major panic attack at age 22. I was about to take the most important exam of my life at college when all hell broke loose. I could not breath, walk, talk, my heart was racing and pounding. The event changed the course of my life for the next ten years. I could not be in crowds. I could not talk one on one with people. I would suffer an deadly disease every month or so. I started grinding my teeth. I developed a drinking problem, I lost some friends, I lost my wife. I started suffering from migraines. I became very socially withdrawn.
About a year ago, I was at my wits end concerning this disorder. I was depressed, drank heavily and I was just sick and tired of being a nervous wreck all the time. I could not even stay in the same room with my family without going into full blown panic attacks and such. Further, I had been experiencing irregular heartbeats and palpitations for about 3 months. I could not even sleep at night. So I decided to go see a doctor again about this.
He listened to me, did blood tests and an ekg. It was decided that I take PAXIL CR and ativan to cure me… I sat home for three days looking at those pills. I researched the success rate of SSRI’s and found that they worked. So I decided to take them… Well, after 5 days of dizziness, weird thoughts, trembling, more panic attacks and such, I threw the pills away and realized something that was going to change my life forever.
I discovered, through research, that anxiety disorders stem from thoughts and thoughts alone.
NOTE: an underlying condition such as thyroid problems may appear as an anxiety disorder.
That is when I realized that I was creating my own prison and that the meds prescribed by my doctor would only alleviate the symptoms. I decided that this must stop. I convinced myself that the following year, I would not be the same person.
I then researched the disorders for about a week, reading everything I could get my hands on. I research treatment options ranging from therapy, pharmaceutical to natural remedies. I armed myself with as much information as possible.
I then devised a plan to attack this in a systematic and methodical manner that would ensure success. Here is what I did:
1. I instilled in me the strong conviction that I would be free of anxiety in one year. You have to convince yourself that you will change and actually follow through with it. Without this, success is very difficult.
2. I spent a week forcefully understand what I am afraid of. I wanted to know where this stemmed from.
3. I changed my diet: I eliminated caffeine completely and started taking vitamins. The old saying that you are what you eat is true and the diet is the first step.
4. I started meditating and using relaxation techniques. This is crucial to permit your mind to recognize what calmness is. I discovered that I did not know how to breathe. I would inhale and exhale very rapidly throughout the day. This caused me to hyperventilate all day and cause dizziness. Thus feeding my problem. So every hour or so, I would breathe in for a count of 4, hold it for 4 and exhale for 4. Instant relaxation. Also, I used progressive muscle relaxation where you tense up a muscle group, hold it for a count of ten and release. DO this also, you will see how it helps.
Further, I used, while meditating, guided imagery where I would, while in a relaxed state, imagine myself being cured. Image myself being in a crowded room and feeling great, talking to people, etc… After a while, it starts to sink in.
5. I analyzed my posture. When you fear, you elevate your chest and sort of lean your shoulders back. A primitive way of making yourself look bigger to predators. This caused me to suffer from chest muscle spasms because my muscles were tense all the time. I mistook the spasms for heart problems/heart attacks, thus contributing to my problem and many trips to the emergency room
6. I slowly cut back on my drinking since, at my stage it could have been dangerous to stop cold turkey. I gradually cut back until I was alcohol free
7. I made the conscious effort to provoke my anxiety in a controlled manner and responded to it. You see, the idea is not to try to relax in a stressful situation, but to embrace the anxiety, understand why you are anxious, feel your body’s response and eliminate the notion that this event is fearful. Again, why is it that some people go into full blown attacks when they are in a crowded room, and others don’t? It is simply the fact that you fear this situation. When you finally understand the fear, you will be able to eliminate it. An example of this was that I feared large crowds. Well, what I did was I went everyday, at the local shopping mall. I would grab the courage to walk in and simply walked around until I could no longer stand it. I would try to set goals for myself to see how long I could stay in there. Well, at first it was 3 minutes, then 5, then 10, and up to a point where it did not bother me anymore. I then turned my attention to speaking to strangers. In that mall, I would stop a stranger and ask for directions. Slowly, my fear of that went away also.
8. Suffering from GAD also brings an incredible amount of worrying about the future and past. I always thought about the next day, the next meeting I would have at work, how I was going to come up with an excuse not to go to that party and such. I also agonized about how my disorder was caused by my childhood and I could never be cured…. So I made an agreement with myself to live hour by hour. I made a conscious attempt to only think about now. If I would catch myself thinking about the future, I would stop, change my mind, and continue. Now this does not mean that you don’t need to think about insurance, or the dental appointment coming up. It simply means that you need to stop dwelling on this and move on.
9. Next I decided to keep busy. Your mind cannot think of 2 things at the same time. If you don’t believe me, try this: Try to come up with the answers to the following 2 questions at the same time. Not one after the other, but at the same time.
43 + 65 =
32 X 6 =
Couldn’t do it right? SO by keeping your mind busy with something that actually requires thinking, you have no place for worry at all.
Now, one must realize that it can take some time to change/modify learnt behaviours, but it can be done with perseverance, willpower and patience. How does one stop smoking? Well you do it one day at a time. How does one stop being anxious? Well you do it one hour at a time.
Consciously modifying your behaviours and thoughts every day is difficult. It takes courage and patience. It does take effort. A lot of effort. But if you really want to eliminate this from your life, then your have to jump in there and do it. You will encounter setbacks. But setbacks imply you are making progress.
In addition, can you explain how a top tennis player remains a top tennis player? Practice. This practice creates a connection between the brain and the body to perform a given way in a certain situation. If the player stops practicing, then the performance goes down. Same thing applies to eliminating this disorder.
So in sum, every minute of every day I ate right, controlled my breathing, relaxed, changed my thoughts, provoked my anxiety, cut back on my drinking, imagined myself dealing with my anxieties, etc. After a couple of months, I saw a change. After a year, I was cured. The more you do it, the easier it gets.
My understanding of anxiety disorders
Anxiety disorders including (SA, GAD, OCD, Depression, phobias, etc...) originate from basically the same premise; FEAR. Fear of a situation, thing, event, behaviour, and such. This fear usually develops at a young age, but can manifest itself later in life such as in post traumatic stress disorder. This fear was learnt and profoundly embedded itself in our consciousness. It usually stems from mankinds frugal attempt at control. If we can’t control we fear. If we fear, our body instinctively reacts to protect ourselves. And that is where the symptoms and avoidance behaviour start.
Mankind, through evolution, has developed the fight or flight. It was needed to protect humans from predators. When we encounter what we perceive as danger, our amygdala (a switch located in the brain) signals our body to do the following:
1. divert blood from the extremities to the major muscle groups
2. Makes the heart beat fast to pump more oxygen
3. Shortens the the breathing so we bring in more oxygen
4. shuts down unnecessary bodily functions such as digestion to conserve energy
5. elevates the temperature of the body.
When danger is eliminated, the amygdala signals the body to return to normal. The connection from thought to bodily reaction is extremely rapid. Think about how long it takes you to think to move a finger and actually moving it. So you can imagine that as soon as you think of a fearful situation (imagined or real), your body goes into panic mode.
When I got stung at 9 years old by a bee, I instantly developed an intense fear of bees. I could not control bees and associated them with pain. So, every time I would see or hear a bee, I would run as far as I could. Then I asked myself, why is it that I fear bees and others don’t? So slowly, through trial and error, I desensitized myself by consciously prolonging my exposure to bees. Of course it was hard, of course I simply wanted to die, but when a bee was hovering around me, I just stood there and waited as long as I could… After a whole summer, I was cured. I do not fear bees anymore.
Research suggests that people suffering from anxiety disorders demonstrate above average intelligence. This is demonstrated by the fact that we analyse things to much. How will this person react to me? What if I do this? What if I do that? What if I say no? And by analysing things, we create scenarios with possible solutions. It is human nature to adopt the worst possible case in a situation, and that is where our problems start.
My understanding of this situation is that if you can “unlearn” the behaviours that feed the disorder, and replace them with positive behaviour, then, the fearful situation will not exist anymore, thus the disorder will fade away.
So how did i to cure myself?
How does one eliminate the fear of heights? Well, not by climbing the empire state building, but by climbing a ladder, one step at a time. You have to push your bubble further and further, in small steps.
Born into a family where my mother suffers from OCD, GAD and depression, I was basically condemned to be like her. That is all she taught me. I was always very shy and, while looking back at this, suffered from little panic attacks all through my childhood.
I experienced my first major panic attack at age 22. I was about to take the most important exam of my life at college when all hell broke loose. I could not breath, walk, talk, my heart was racing and pounding. The event changed the course of my life for the next ten years. I could not be in crowds. I could not talk one on one with people. I would suffer an deadly disease every month or so. I started grinding my teeth. I developed a drinking problem, I lost some friends, I lost my wife. I started suffering from migraines. I became very socially withdrawn.
About a year ago, I was at my wits end concerning this disorder. I was depressed, drank heavily and I was just sick and tired of being a nervous wreck all the time. I could not even stay in the same room with my family without going into full blown panic attacks and such. Further, I had been experiencing irregular heartbeats and palpitations for about 3 months. I could not even sleep at night. So I decided to go see a doctor again about this.
He listened to me, did blood tests and an ekg. It was decided that I take PAXIL CR and ativan to cure me… I sat home for three days looking at those pills. I researched the success rate of SSRI’s and found that they worked. So I decided to take them… Well, after 5 days of dizziness, weird thoughts, trembling, more panic attacks and such, I threw the pills away and realized something that was going to change my life forever.
I discovered, through research, that anxiety disorders stem from thoughts and thoughts alone.
NOTE: an underlying condition such as thyroid problems may appear as an anxiety disorder.
That is when I realized that I was creating my own prison and that the meds prescribed by my doctor would only alleviate the symptoms. I decided that this must stop. I convinced myself that the following year, I would not be the same person.
I then researched the disorders for about a week, reading everything I could get my hands on. I research treatment options ranging from therapy, pharmaceutical to natural remedies. I armed myself with as much information as possible.
I then devised a plan to attack this in a systematic and methodical manner that would ensure success. Here is what I did:
1. I instilled in me the strong conviction that I would be free of anxiety in one year. You have to convince yourself that you will change and actually follow through with it. Without this, success is very difficult.
2. I spent a week forcefully understand what I am afraid of. I wanted to know where this stemmed from.
3. I changed my diet: I eliminated caffeine completely and started taking vitamins. The old saying that you are what you eat is true and the diet is the first step.
4. I started meditating and using relaxation techniques. This is crucial to permit your mind to recognize what calmness is. I discovered that I did not know how to breathe. I would inhale and exhale very rapidly throughout the day. This caused me to hyperventilate all day and cause dizziness. Thus feeding my problem. So every hour or so, I would breathe in for a count of 4, hold it for 4 and exhale for 4. Instant relaxation. Also, I used progressive muscle relaxation where you tense up a muscle group, hold it for a count of ten and release. DO this also, you will see how it helps.
Further, I used, while meditating, guided imagery where I would, while in a relaxed state, imagine myself being cured. Image myself being in a crowded room and feeling great, talking to people, etc… After a while, it starts to sink in.
5. I analyzed my posture. When you fear, you elevate your chest and sort of lean your shoulders back. A primitive way of making yourself look bigger to predators. This caused me to suffer from chest muscle spasms because my muscles were tense all the time. I mistook the spasms for heart problems/heart attacks, thus contributing to my problem and many trips to the emergency room
6. I slowly cut back on my drinking since, at my stage it could have been dangerous to stop cold turkey. I gradually cut back until I was alcohol free
7. I made the conscious effort to provoke my anxiety in a controlled manner and responded to it. You see, the idea is not to try to relax in a stressful situation, but to embrace the anxiety, understand why you are anxious, feel your body’s response and eliminate the notion that this event is fearful. Again, why is it that some people go into full blown attacks when they are in a crowded room, and others don’t? It is simply the fact that you fear this situation. When you finally understand the fear, you will be able to eliminate it. An example of this was that I feared large crowds. Well, what I did was I went everyday, at the local shopping mall. I would grab the courage to walk in and simply walked around until I could no longer stand it. I would try to set goals for myself to see how long I could stay in there. Well, at first it was 3 minutes, then 5, then 10, and up to a point where it did not bother me anymore. I then turned my attention to speaking to strangers. In that mall, I would stop a stranger and ask for directions. Slowly, my fear of that went away also.
8. Suffering from GAD also brings an incredible amount of worrying about the future and past. I always thought about the next day, the next meeting I would have at work, how I was going to come up with an excuse not to go to that party and such. I also agonized about how my disorder was caused by my childhood and I could never be cured…. So I made an agreement with myself to live hour by hour. I made a conscious attempt to only think about now. If I would catch myself thinking about the future, I would stop, change my mind, and continue. Now this does not mean that you don’t need to think about insurance, or the dental appointment coming up. It simply means that you need to stop dwelling on this and move on.
9. Next I decided to keep busy. Your mind cannot think of 2 things at the same time. If you don’t believe me, try this: Try to come up with the answers to the following 2 questions at the same time. Not one after the other, but at the same time.
43 + 65 =
32 X 6 =
Couldn’t do it right? SO by keeping your mind busy with something that actually requires thinking, you have no place for worry at all.
Now, one must realize that it can take some time to change/modify learnt behaviours, but it can be done with perseverance, willpower and patience. How does one stop smoking? Well you do it one day at a time. How does one stop being anxious? Well you do it one hour at a time.
Consciously modifying your behaviours and thoughts every day is difficult. It takes courage and patience. It does take effort. A lot of effort. But if you really want to eliminate this from your life, then your have to jump in there and do it. You will encounter setbacks. But setbacks imply you are making progress.
In addition, can you explain how a top tennis player remains a top tennis player? Practice. This practice creates a connection between the brain and the body to perform a given way in a certain situation. If the player stops practicing, then the performance goes down. Same thing applies to eliminating this disorder.
So in sum, every minute of every day I ate right, controlled my breathing, relaxed, changed my thoughts, provoked my anxiety, cut back on my drinking, imagined myself dealing with my anxieties, etc. After a couple of months, I saw a change. After a year, I was cured. The more you do it, the easier it gets.
