At Last A Life

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I remember feeling a similar peace when I let go and just allowed myself to fall into it. The anxiety was still there, but it felt different now I had finally allowed its presence and all the extra suffering created through the resistance to it fell away. If my mind was always disturbed, stressed, worried and complaining then it made sense as to why I was never at peace. Life and others didn’t need to change to suit me; this was all down to my attitude changing. Accepting life is full of ups and downs If your therapist if making you feel more fearful and less confident, maybe you should consider finding a new one?

Alz, I have a suggestion. It’s not the actual thought that is scaring you because you already know that it is only because you have anxious energy in your body that that thought is in your head. If you had no anxious energy in your body then that thought wouldn’t even be there. Instead, its the fact that the thought keeps popping into your head and you feel like you have no control over that, I feel like that is the bit that is freaking you out – The fact that it keeps intruding. With that intrusion you feel weirded out because the thought has negative connotations but because the thought feels powerful it evokes a fearful reaction in you. I feel, that if you were to lose the fear response when the thought appears then you would be able to just see it as an anxious thought. I would get little loops of a song playing over and over in my head that at one stage of my anxiety had me wanting to bash my skull against something. And that eventually changed (later on in my journey) to me saying something like “oh well, that song loop is playing again…. play on as long as you’d like”. It didn’t immediately take the pain and torment away, but it was signalling to my body that I didn’t care as much as I had in the past. As you can see, I was not trying to ignore the subject; I was building up a new habit and giving my mind something else in which to immerse itself in. When I first started to add other things into my day, my anxiety was still there. I still felt somewhat disconnected from my surroundings and I had little enthusiasm over anything. My mind was still exhausted due to my past overthinking and the habit of thinking about the subject was still present. However, I understood that this would be there for a while but by adding new things into my day, then the habit would be broken and a new one would be formed. I used to ask myself this very question, as I always seemed to be in some form of suffering. Yes, I would have some good days along the way, but I spent most of my time unhappy and always seemed to be worrying about something or other.I too spoke about this in my second book, how my complete surrender came not just through understanding that fighting and suppressing were utterly pointless and counterproductive, but through just bottoming out, I’d tried everything and nothing had worked. I was done, defeated, I had lost, just take me then. This is when everything changed, I had lost complete interest in struggling, fighting, suppressing, I had no fight left in me. One of my main aims in writing this book was to make it as easy as possible to read and understand; to get my message across from a sufferer’s point of view and dilute all the jargon that you may have come across in the past. I also felt that I had more to say than had been churned out before, mainly by people who had never actually been through it. The question is then , when will my mind reach its natural state after hving been badgered so long by anxiety . When will it reach its equilibrium ? I know you’re trying to figure it all out, to grasp on to a sliver of peace or normality. But it’s all of this frantic effort that is making you feel more confused and scared. The more you struggle, the more peace and calm eludes you. So give up the struggle. Accept that right now nothing makes sense. Accept that you’re scared. Then go live your life. I still think your focus is too much on getting your anxiety to leave. And I’m not faulting you for that. I completely understand and am guilty of it too. But as long as we’re searching for relief/the exit/a cure, then we are going to suffer. I’m not saying it’s bad to engage in relaxing activities – but if you’re doing so solely to “fix” how you feel, then maybe consider whether you need to be doing that activity at all.

I went through this compulsion because I genuinely believed that the only way out was to keep searching for answers and to go over and over all the information I had previously gathered. I believed that I had to mentally think my way out of how I felt and to constantly monitor how I was feeling and how I was progressing. I would only gather more self-help books and pore over more information in my search to get better. Celebrate the fact we are all different; you cannot mould someone into who you want them to be. All attempts will just end up with them resenting you, cause so much conflict and in some cases lead to you losing that person. I also cut down on the worry during the day and if anything was on my mind at bedtime, I would just let it go. If my mind wanted to replay anything, then I would allow it to do so, but I would no longer get involved with it. I’ve felt a little change yesterday when I was remembering the amount of suffering I go through on a daily basis in just regular situations that I have no reason to be resisting so hard and painfully; experiences where I am safe because I am with family or people who are kind and have no clue what is going on inside but would feel very compassionate if they knew.

Once I completely unfollowed all anxiety related stuff online, stopped reading books on the subject, stopped discussing it with others and finally decided that I was going to enjoy my life with or without anxiety present, then it finally started to go away. If you are still spending all your day trying not to feel anxiety, then you are still giving far too much attention to it. You can be patient with yourself even as you’re doing what you feel to be wrong but in a moment of desperation. And still, some positive growth can come from even that. I am now fully recovered and a much stronger person for it. Trivial things do not bother me anymore and it has made me realise what is truly important. Life is something to enjoy and experience and not something to stress and worry about. I am also more confident than I was before. When you have been through what I have, you become a much stronger person.