Reis
09-23-2008, 05:37 AM
This post is about how 5 years ago I cured my anxiety and panic attacks, along with insomnia and other issues, nonmedicinally using a method that focuses squarely on behavior and on rewiring the physical organ in the brain called the amygdala. This is an attempt to bring some releif to others who may be in the same position I used to be in. It is called the Linden Method. This method is not about coping, it is about permanently curing. Ill be sharing some of the basic fundamentals and a give a short run down of my life with panic and anxiety. For more information go to youtube and look up "linden method".
Any psycho physiologist who knows their stuff will ultimitely agree after reading the information here and familiarizing themselves with it thuroughly that curing a panic condition, permanently, requires confronting irrational fears and letting them wash over you, while at the same time consciously making those fears, and the thoughts and sensations associated with them, as bad as humanly possible. This will literally reprogram the amygdala to be non anxious and unafraid very rapidly because this is the only way to prove to the mind that you are the one perpetuating the situation on yourself and nothing else. This is a scientific fact, and I know from experience that it works. This is not a fancy form of escapism from moments of actual clear and present danger where fear is a defense mechanism actually built into us for survival. What I am about to describe is a method of freeing the mind from terrible amounts of worry, stress, obsession, anxiety and the mother of it all.....fear of fear.
We have the gift of consciousness, but how often do we really use this gift? Very often people find themselves to be slaves to their own autonomous hind brain for refusing to confront the unconscious mind with their conscious behavior. Behavior is the only thing that the hind brain understands. You cannot fight the hind brain, and you cannot yell at your amygdala, which is a small organ in the brain, for torturing you with its learned behavioral conditions. Actually you CAN but this will only create a situation of viscious cycling. If one is frightened of being frightened, or angry at being angry, etc., etc.. this will not solve, cure, help or free one from this cage of behavior. Bar by bar the amygdala learns to be this way making one feel like a prisoner in their own skin, but in reality it is only doing its job by recording and reflecting back what you feed into it. It is autonomous. It records memories and records behavior through operant conditioning.
Operant conditioning is what you use when you are learning to drive a car, learning a new language or learning to play an instrument. You get better with repetition. The amygdala is the mechanism in the brain which makes this possible. It records our behavior so that we dont need to keep learning things like driving a car. A person who has been driving a car for ten years doesnt have to think about it while doing it as it has become a mostly unconscious process. But, we need to realize there are two sides to this coin. Just as you can learn and get very proficient at driving a car or with any passion you may have by constantly emmersing yourself into it, you can also learn and get very proficient at behaving anxiously with severe detriment to the mind and body. A person can feel like they are not at all in control of their lives and are going slowly insane. Often, once this process has begun, the sufferer feels as if they have been cursed by god, have been dealt a bad physiological card, or are just suffering from a certain "disease" or "illness" like anxiety, panic attacks, OCD, phobias and so on. These are not illnesses and they are most certainly not diseases. They are behavioral conditions.
If you suffer from an anxiety condition and once you have absorbed this information that I am presenting, it may be as if you are seeing the world for the first time with new vigour and resolve to take control, at least that is how it felt to me when i came across this information. This onion of behavior that is wrapped around the amygdala can dictate peoples actions, thoughts, lifestyles and so on. Your power lies in your ability to consciously and bravely take the reigns of your own mind, brain and body. And now it comes to that horrible word.....responsibility. You are responsible for your actions and not just in a karmic way, but in a very real and physical way. This is how the brain works, and ones conscious behaviors are like the power lines that connect the conscious and the unconscious mind. It is very much a two way street. One cannot escape this, though many have tried to their utter ruin. That is, to live a life on the constant offensive and to see it about to strike at any moment, or that the universe is sneeking up behind you to say BOO. They call the hind brain the reptilian brain for a reason. When it is in control of you, instead of you being consciously in control of it, you do not blink, you do not think, and you see nearly everything as a threat. And I do mean everything. Every thought, sensation, situation, memory...everything and anything. The amygdala, through operant conditioning, has been switched to anxiety ON...24/7, day in and day out, until you die. That is unless you take control.
There are many things to keep in mind and to pay strict attention to during this "process of recovery". Many times people have a poor diet which in turn makes the body very acidic which in turn may let the mind have grotesque but very imaginative fantasies about itself. Nutrition is important, but it takes a very firm second to ones own behavior. Someone else may have a very poor diet but still may be as jolly as old saint nick while still having a good dose of colon cancer. He is rotting from the inside out but he is content and happy. Why? Because we need to focus on behavior, consciousness, and the mechanisms of the physical brain. Think about it. When have you ever "talked" yourself out of an irrational and physically arresting fear? Never. You cannot rationalize the irrational. But what you can do is behavioraly take control over your life, immediately. Understand what is happening, understand what these disturbing thoughts are, understand where they come from, and understand what you have to do to reverse it right now.
Some people worry so much that it just can get annoying after a point because of the seemingly inane repetition of it, and we often think "why dont they just stop worrying". They worry so much that they even begin to fear that their worry alone will literally create the situation they are worrying about! What I tell these people is what I am telling you. The more you understand what is happening in the physical brain the more you will be able to say "I know what this is, it feels horrible, but I choose to ignore it and go about my business. This is just a behavioral conditon that I have fed the amygdala over many years, and it is time to change my behavior,to re route the nueral pathways that say "I have anxiety", and it is time to take control of this sitution right now"....and forever. This is a firm decision to make. You either decide to do this or not to do it. It really is that simple and anyone can do this. Speaking of which, let me introduce you to who I was five years ago.
I was then who I am now. I loved the internet, I loved to read, I loved good conversation and good people, and I loved to listen to and create music, but let me just say I was very affected by the condition that I have just described. No, I did not find a miracle drug or the perfect psychologist. What I did find is how the brain actually works. Up until the point of this discovery I was ravaged by panic attacks and anxiety and was taking up to five difference medications at once. Medications like valium, buspar, flurazepam, remeron, and xanax. Ill admit, there is immediate relief from the symptoms, but all these pills really did was mask the symptoms while allowing the condition itself to go septic.Only later did i find that you are not supposed to "treat" symptoms, but get to and remove the actual root of the problem. After a few months the anxiety was so horrid from masking the symptoms with pills that I was looking for alteranitive methods. I tried Reiki but that obviously was not my bag. Within a minute of being on the table, with the woman waving her hands over my solar plexus and it felt like something was trying to rip out of my stomache and I jumped of the table saying "thanks but no thanks". When I would run out of valium I would go to the liqour store, buy a big bottle of 18 year old Jameson, and start drinking to the point of seriously making my family afraid of me. I didnt care because I DID NOT want to have another panic attack. Then, in the morning during my hangover, I would have yet another extremely debilitating panic attack just like all the others. This is the definition of hell if there ever was one.
How did I change it? I fearlessly confronted it and said "bring it on" and started walking into my anxiety and panic instead of running from it and fearing it. It took a while at first for this to soak in. I said to myself "do I really have to confront this make it as bad as I possibly can on purpose?" Truth be known, yes. I stopped taking all my pills immediately and just waited until the next panic attack would arise, and when it finally came and started to wash over me , instead of fighting it, I bit it as hard as I possibly could. All the sensations, all the thoughts, all the fears, and all the phenomena that took place I chose to experience..keyword CHOSE, without being afraid. Transcending the fear of fear is the goal. Not only did I choose to be in that situation, but I made that situation as horrible, abbhorent, sick, and as terrible as I could possibly imagine. I cannot describe the depths that I traversed. In these depths that I consciously took myself through there were many permutations of my fear, both physical and psychological. The visions flashing across my mind while putting myself through this are left for Lovecraft novels, honestly. But, there is a trick to my ultimate victory. That trick is that I consciously, behaviorally, and willingly took myself to this place and when I came out the other side it collapsed into nothing; it just dissolved as I was confronted with the truth of my condition for the first time. I watched the sun rise that morning and was laughing at the sheer beauty of it. I was looking at the trees, the birds, and the sunlight pouring into my house with absolute conviction that this was the last time I would ever be here, and this was the last time I would ever have to go through this again, and it was the last time. I was laughing. I was laughing the laugh of a warrior standing on top of everything that had just been defeated. I will tell you that it really felt like I was painting the world with my eyes, and this is no exaggeration. A very large chunk of what I had been suffering with for years had literally vanished in one night. Everything I looked upon exploded with color and life, and it tickled ina joyous way. I never had another panic attack, and my anxiety abated and went away.
Now, this method can be applied to anything where irrational worries and fears manifest, not just chronic anxiety, OCD, and panic conditions. It takes consciousness to do it, and it takes awareness of your actions. I did not just give up and say "finally, all done". Yes, the worst was over, and I had finally overcome the deepest depths of my fears and experienced one of the most exalting moments of my life, but in reality there was much residual anxiety to supplant. It was regimental for me to relax and enjoy life, to get sunlight, to eat right and drink refreshing water, to totally negate and ignore irrational worries, to practice Qi Kung for about an hour each day, watch funny movies, and to practice hours and hours of drums ( Ive been a drummer for 17 years). Its so important to get a hobby and to get passionate about it, something that requires total focus and that you could miss an eathquake while doing. Again, this is not about escapism from actual things that you would naturally worry about, this about retrainging the amygdala to be non anxious and un afraid. It is about not fearing fear. One MUST have a constant attitude of "bring it on" if and when these old nueral pathways rear their ugly heads and always keep the right brain as active as humanly possible with creative activities which require focus. This WILL retrain the brain, eventually, and it really is the only thing that works in my experience.
I have so much more to discuss on this subject, but it is getting far too long. The Demons that seem to be tearing us apart can be transformed into Angels of Light very quickly if we consciously confront the "situation", no matter what it might be, and with the proper behavioral responses, and knowledge and interpretation of what we think is happen TO us in those moment of terrifying uncertainty, we can turn it all around instantly. I know my story and this information seems intense, but these conditions are not necessarily a picnic for anyone who has had experience with them. I nearly turned the whole of psychology and psychiatry on its head when I cured myself of panic attacks 5 years ago in only a few hours. The drugs provided, and the "help" offered never did me a inch of good and nothing progressed at all until I saddled up and passionately took the reigns of my own life with a sort of reverence that no doctor or "expert" can ever provide or prescribe.
A lot of people are terrified of this information, get very angry because it requires one to change their own behavior, and then attack the disseminator of it. Sometimes it is like having 3/4 of an audience just stand up and walk out in the middle of your passionate dissertation. I trully want to help people, but I dont want to make a situation any worse by seeming like I am forcing it on anyone. If it helps, great. If not, and if after investigation you really see no use for it, thats fine too. Dont fret. Im just outlinning what worked for me where nothing else would.
At first I was skeptical of this because I had already spent thousands of dollars on so many other things that simply did not work. But, this is the real deal. I will not say much more of it because it will only seem like I am lionizing Charles, but what I will say is that his story of recovery and how he came to discover this information is heroic to say the least. He isnt a doctor, and like me and millions of other people was just a normal person frantically searching for answers to this condition. The answers were surprising and not at all what I thought they were going to be.
Go to youtube and type "linden method" for videos of charles linden explaining the fundamentals and also to see the stories of recovered people like myself.
Youtube and anxiety forums are FLOODED with people who are making videos and talking about their anxiety and panic conditions and simply want answers and dont know where to turn. This is my attempt to help these people and to also educate people in the mechanisms of the brain that allow these conditions to develope, and the spectrum is WIDE from mild shyness all the way to full blown panic attacks and obsessive compulsive disorder. I was even experiencing hallucinations, both auditory and visually, insomnia, body dismorphia, along with many many other terrifying things. These things do not haunt me at all anymore, not one bit, and it is nothing short of a miracle because during those years I was convinced that I would have this the rest of my life. But, its not really a miracle, its straight up scientific how it works.
Any psycho physiologist who knows their stuff will ultimitely agree after reading the information here and familiarizing themselves with it thuroughly that curing a panic condition, permanently, requires confronting irrational fears and letting them wash over you, while at the same time consciously making those fears, and the thoughts and sensations associated with them, as bad as humanly possible. This will literally reprogram the amygdala to be non anxious and unafraid very rapidly because this is the only way to prove to the mind that you are the one perpetuating the situation on yourself and nothing else. This is a scientific fact, and I know from experience that it works. This is not a fancy form of escapism from moments of actual clear and present danger where fear is a defense mechanism actually built into us for survival. What I am about to describe is a method of freeing the mind from terrible amounts of worry, stress, obsession, anxiety and the mother of it all.....fear of fear.
We have the gift of consciousness, but how often do we really use this gift? Very often people find themselves to be slaves to their own autonomous hind brain for refusing to confront the unconscious mind with their conscious behavior. Behavior is the only thing that the hind brain understands. You cannot fight the hind brain, and you cannot yell at your amygdala, which is a small organ in the brain, for torturing you with its learned behavioral conditions. Actually you CAN but this will only create a situation of viscious cycling. If one is frightened of being frightened, or angry at being angry, etc., etc.. this will not solve, cure, help or free one from this cage of behavior. Bar by bar the amygdala learns to be this way making one feel like a prisoner in their own skin, but in reality it is only doing its job by recording and reflecting back what you feed into it. It is autonomous. It records memories and records behavior through operant conditioning.
Operant conditioning is what you use when you are learning to drive a car, learning a new language or learning to play an instrument. You get better with repetition. The amygdala is the mechanism in the brain which makes this possible. It records our behavior so that we dont need to keep learning things like driving a car. A person who has been driving a car for ten years doesnt have to think about it while doing it as it has become a mostly unconscious process. But, we need to realize there are two sides to this coin. Just as you can learn and get very proficient at driving a car or with any passion you may have by constantly emmersing yourself into it, you can also learn and get very proficient at behaving anxiously with severe detriment to the mind and body. A person can feel like they are not at all in control of their lives and are going slowly insane. Often, once this process has begun, the sufferer feels as if they have been cursed by god, have been dealt a bad physiological card, or are just suffering from a certain "disease" or "illness" like anxiety, panic attacks, OCD, phobias and so on. These are not illnesses and they are most certainly not diseases. They are behavioral conditions.
If you suffer from an anxiety condition and once you have absorbed this information that I am presenting, it may be as if you are seeing the world for the first time with new vigour and resolve to take control, at least that is how it felt to me when i came across this information. This onion of behavior that is wrapped around the amygdala can dictate peoples actions, thoughts, lifestyles and so on. Your power lies in your ability to consciously and bravely take the reigns of your own mind, brain and body. And now it comes to that horrible word.....responsibility. You are responsible for your actions and not just in a karmic way, but in a very real and physical way. This is how the brain works, and ones conscious behaviors are like the power lines that connect the conscious and the unconscious mind. It is very much a two way street. One cannot escape this, though many have tried to their utter ruin. That is, to live a life on the constant offensive and to see it about to strike at any moment, or that the universe is sneeking up behind you to say BOO. They call the hind brain the reptilian brain for a reason. When it is in control of you, instead of you being consciously in control of it, you do not blink, you do not think, and you see nearly everything as a threat. And I do mean everything. Every thought, sensation, situation, memory...everything and anything. The amygdala, through operant conditioning, has been switched to anxiety ON...24/7, day in and day out, until you die. That is unless you take control.
There are many things to keep in mind and to pay strict attention to during this "process of recovery". Many times people have a poor diet which in turn makes the body very acidic which in turn may let the mind have grotesque but very imaginative fantasies about itself. Nutrition is important, but it takes a very firm second to ones own behavior. Someone else may have a very poor diet but still may be as jolly as old saint nick while still having a good dose of colon cancer. He is rotting from the inside out but he is content and happy. Why? Because we need to focus on behavior, consciousness, and the mechanisms of the physical brain. Think about it. When have you ever "talked" yourself out of an irrational and physically arresting fear? Never. You cannot rationalize the irrational. But what you can do is behavioraly take control over your life, immediately. Understand what is happening, understand what these disturbing thoughts are, understand where they come from, and understand what you have to do to reverse it right now.
Some people worry so much that it just can get annoying after a point because of the seemingly inane repetition of it, and we often think "why dont they just stop worrying". They worry so much that they even begin to fear that their worry alone will literally create the situation they are worrying about! What I tell these people is what I am telling you. The more you understand what is happening in the physical brain the more you will be able to say "I know what this is, it feels horrible, but I choose to ignore it and go about my business. This is just a behavioral conditon that I have fed the amygdala over many years, and it is time to change my behavior,to re route the nueral pathways that say "I have anxiety", and it is time to take control of this sitution right now"....and forever. This is a firm decision to make. You either decide to do this or not to do it. It really is that simple and anyone can do this. Speaking of which, let me introduce you to who I was five years ago.
I was then who I am now. I loved the internet, I loved to read, I loved good conversation and good people, and I loved to listen to and create music, but let me just say I was very affected by the condition that I have just described. No, I did not find a miracle drug or the perfect psychologist. What I did find is how the brain actually works. Up until the point of this discovery I was ravaged by panic attacks and anxiety and was taking up to five difference medications at once. Medications like valium, buspar, flurazepam, remeron, and xanax. Ill admit, there is immediate relief from the symptoms, but all these pills really did was mask the symptoms while allowing the condition itself to go septic.Only later did i find that you are not supposed to "treat" symptoms, but get to and remove the actual root of the problem. After a few months the anxiety was so horrid from masking the symptoms with pills that I was looking for alteranitive methods. I tried Reiki but that obviously was not my bag. Within a minute of being on the table, with the woman waving her hands over my solar plexus and it felt like something was trying to rip out of my stomache and I jumped of the table saying "thanks but no thanks". When I would run out of valium I would go to the liqour store, buy a big bottle of 18 year old Jameson, and start drinking to the point of seriously making my family afraid of me. I didnt care because I DID NOT want to have another panic attack. Then, in the morning during my hangover, I would have yet another extremely debilitating panic attack just like all the others. This is the definition of hell if there ever was one.
How did I change it? I fearlessly confronted it and said "bring it on" and started walking into my anxiety and panic instead of running from it and fearing it. It took a while at first for this to soak in. I said to myself "do I really have to confront this make it as bad as I possibly can on purpose?" Truth be known, yes. I stopped taking all my pills immediately and just waited until the next panic attack would arise, and when it finally came and started to wash over me , instead of fighting it, I bit it as hard as I possibly could. All the sensations, all the thoughts, all the fears, and all the phenomena that took place I chose to experience..keyword CHOSE, without being afraid. Transcending the fear of fear is the goal. Not only did I choose to be in that situation, but I made that situation as horrible, abbhorent, sick, and as terrible as I could possibly imagine. I cannot describe the depths that I traversed. In these depths that I consciously took myself through there were many permutations of my fear, both physical and psychological. The visions flashing across my mind while putting myself through this are left for Lovecraft novels, honestly. But, there is a trick to my ultimate victory. That trick is that I consciously, behaviorally, and willingly took myself to this place and when I came out the other side it collapsed into nothing; it just dissolved as I was confronted with the truth of my condition for the first time. I watched the sun rise that morning and was laughing at the sheer beauty of it. I was looking at the trees, the birds, and the sunlight pouring into my house with absolute conviction that this was the last time I would ever be here, and this was the last time I would ever have to go through this again, and it was the last time. I was laughing. I was laughing the laugh of a warrior standing on top of everything that had just been defeated. I will tell you that it really felt like I was painting the world with my eyes, and this is no exaggeration. A very large chunk of what I had been suffering with for years had literally vanished in one night. Everything I looked upon exploded with color and life, and it tickled ina joyous way. I never had another panic attack, and my anxiety abated and went away.
Now, this method can be applied to anything where irrational worries and fears manifest, not just chronic anxiety, OCD, and panic conditions. It takes consciousness to do it, and it takes awareness of your actions. I did not just give up and say "finally, all done". Yes, the worst was over, and I had finally overcome the deepest depths of my fears and experienced one of the most exalting moments of my life, but in reality there was much residual anxiety to supplant. It was regimental for me to relax and enjoy life, to get sunlight, to eat right and drink refreshing water, to totally negate and ignore irrational worries, to practice Qi Kung for about an hour each day, watch funny movies, and to practice hours and hours of drums ( Ive been a drummer for 17 years). Its so important to get a hobby and to get passionate about it, something that requires total focus and that you could miss an eathquake while doing. Again, this is not about escapism from actual things that you would naturally worry about, this about retrainging the amygdala to be non anxious and un afraid. It is about not fearing fear. One MUST have a constant attitude of "bring it on" if and when these old nueral pathways rear their ugly heads and always keep the right brain as active as humanly possible with creative activities which require focus. This WILL retrain the brain, eventually, and it really is the only thing that works in my experience.
I have so much more to discuss on this subject, but it is getting far too long. The Demons that seem to be tearing us apart can be transformed into Angels of Light very quickly if we consciously confront the "situation", no matter what it might be, and with the proper behavioral responses, and knowledge and interpretation of what we think is happen TO us in those moment of terrifying uncertainty, we can turn it all around instantly. I know my story and this information seems intense, but these conditions are not necessarily a picnic for anyone who has had experience with them. I nearly turned the whole of psychology and psychiatry on its head when I cured myself of panic attacks 5 years ago in only a few hours. The drugs provided, and the "help" offered never did me a inch of good and nothing progressed at all until I saddled up and passionately took the reigns of my own life with a sort of reverence that no doctor or "expert" can ever provide or prescribe.
A lot of people are terrified of this information, get very angry because it requires one to change their own behavior, and then attack the disseminator of it. Sometimes it is like having 3/4 of an audience just stand up and walk out in the middle of your passionate dissertation. I trully want to help people, but I dont want to make a situation any worse by seeming like I am forcing it on anyone. If it helps, great. If not, and if after investigation you really see no use for it, thats fine too. Dont fret. Im just outlinning what worked for me where nothing else would.
At first I was skeptical of this because I had already spent thousands of dollars on so many other things that simply did not work. But, this is the real deal. I will not say much more of it because it will only seem like I am lionizing Charles, but what I will say is that his story of recovery and how he came to discover this information is heroic to say the least. He isnt a doctor, and like me and millions of other people was just a normal person frantically searching for answers to this condition. The answers were surprising and not at all what I thought they were going to be.
Go to youtube and type "linden method" for videos of charles linden explaining the fundamentals and also to see the stories of recovered people like myself.
Youtube and anxiety forums are FLOODED with people who are making videos and talking about their anxiety and panic conditions and simply want answers and dont know where to turn. This is my attempt to help these people and to also educate people in the mechanisms of the brain that allow these conditions to develope, and the spectrum is WIDE from mild shyness all the way to full blown panic attacks and obsessive compulsive disorder. I was even experiencing hallucinations, both auditory and visually, insomnia, body dismorphia, along with many many other terrifying things. These things do not haunt me at all anymore, not one bit, and it is nothing short of a miracle because during those years I was convinced that I would have this the rest of my life. But, its not really a miracle, its straight up scientific how it works.