had anxiety for 6 years and now I've beaten it without meds.

[farhanryu]

This is a long post but it is absolutely worth reading.

The last couple of weeks I came to probably the most important realisation of my life so far, and the best thing is it is so simple yet it explains everything about anxiety for me. Anxiety is simply a feeling of dread. Anxiety comes due to a hormone that is released in fight or flight situations. You're either going to run away or fight. It's an emotion that is extremely valuable to us as a species, without it we wouldn't be here today.

What must be understood is that we live in a world where we HAVE to fight to survive. Our very purpose is survival. Here are two very common situations where people must either choose to fight or flee: 1. The work environment. 2. The social environment.

The work environment: Choosing to fight:

By fight I don't mean fists and left hooks, I mean perseverance, dedication, a good strong work ethic. The ability to take criticism and work on it. It requires you to be strong and to believe in yourself, which requires a great deal of effort and commitment. That is the price we must pay if we choose to fight and excel at work.

The work environment: Choosing to Flee:

When we choose to flee from working world because we fear things like hard work, criticism, evaluations then we have a problem. How do we survive without a job? Although it may seem easier to avoid the tough things that the work environment brings in the short term, we still have to live with constant fear of the future and constant anxiety. That is the price we pay for fleeing.


The social environment: Choosing to fight:

In social situations someone may tease you in front of others, oh the embarrassment! How can I deal with that? Well by teasing them back of course. It's all part of the 'fight back' mentality. We will often come across douchebags who have insecurities and will therefore try to prey on the weaker ones of the pack. Truly confident people don't need to do that. Defending yourself from douchebags is the price we pay if we want to be comfortable and confident in the social environment.

The social environment: Choosing to flee:

We all want an awesome group of friends and girlfriend/boyfriend. After all human beings are inherently social creatures, without being social we wouldn't exist today. People with social phobias choose to be loners because they are choosing to run away, but then have to live with constant anxiety and a feeling of emptiness- that is the price they pay for fleeing.

So as you can see it all boils down to a choice. Your anxiety is the result of a choice, be it a conscious or sub-conscious decision. The best thing about choosing the fight-mentality is that it is infinitely better than choosing to flee. Each choice has a price on its head but the difference is that a fighter will reap the rewards whereas those who choose to flee will live unfulfilled and frustrated lives.

To BEAT anxiety you must choose to fight. You must look at everything that scares you and choose to fight that fear.

As a side note, notice how celebrities and sports stars have a constant fight mentality about them. For example Beyonce has created an alter ego on stage by the name of Sasha Fierce. Fierce = fighter. Christina Aguilera released a song called Fighter. Notice when sportsmen and women are interviewed they always focus on the positive and work hard ethic. Go to youtube and type "hilarious andy roddick interview". It's not really hilarious but it does encapsulate everything I have been saying if you watch it till the very end (it's about 4 minutes long I think).

So that's it, that's all there is to it. Don't waste another second and tell yourself that you are a fighter. Choose to fight because ever since I made the change my life has been, quite simply, amazing. I feel strong mentally. I don't worry about the future any more and I have been a lot more successful with the opposite sex which feels great!

Good luck and thanks for reading this far, I hope this post helps you become stronger.

[Robbed]

Sorry. But as well-intentioned as this post may be, I did not find it helpful. The reason? You tell people what they need to do, and that's fine. BUT, everybody here probably already KNOWS what they need to do. This is NOT the problem. The problem is HOW to do it. As an example, you say 'believe in yourself'. EVERYBODY tells you that you should believe in yourself. But people are vague (at best) when it comes to saying HOW this can be accomplished. The fact is that this is a VERY difficult thing to do when you DON'T believe in yourself. This is particularly true when your life has been a string of failures, which is probably true for many of us here. I find that trying to get myself to believe in myself is a little like trying to have confidence that a Smart can beat a Dodge Viper in a drag race - not an easy thing. Then again, maybe at least part of the problem here is that there is really no specific way to get one to believe in themselves. Of course, this only adds to the difficulty and daunting nature of getting one to believe in themselves.

The same goes for social skills. Many of us here simply don't know how to properly interact with people. And learning this is neither simple nor straightforward. In other words, those of us here with social problems can HARDLY walk into a social situation and be graceful simply by 'putting our minds to it'. There are real, difficult skills which take years to learn, and which SO many of us here are lacking. So simply being told that we need to 'fight' and not 'flee' in social situations is not going to help us. We already know this. Rather, we need to be told exactly HOW to do it.

The bottom line? You can tell someone with a howling transmission in their car that they need to rebuild it. But chances are, they already know this. What they probably DON'T know is how to do it.

[farhanryu]

Hi Robbed thanks for your feedback. I totally understand what you mean by the vagueness of the post, my apologies for that. You seem to focus on the 'HOW', but the thing is, there is no one way of being in a social environment or at work or interacting in society in general. There is no rule book or guideline for being confident and having self-belief, it is something that is I guess different for each and every individual. For me personally the whole fight-mentality has helped me immensely because I guess I already have all the skills that I need for coping in work and social environments, I just needed to realise it.

My advice to you (and do with it what you will) is to start making things right. You said believing in yourself is difficult "when your life has been a string of failures", then I suggest you look up to someone who inspires you. It could be a celebrity, a sportsman or woman, anyone that you wish you could be like. Try to get into their way of thinking. How would they deal with any given situation? If you don't like yourself, then change, be like someone who you look up to if that will make you happy.

Of course this is easier said than done, but there is no quick fix. You have become so used to thinking from an anxious persons point of view that you have let it engulf who you are. I think you need to start with baby steps, practise the skills that you think you need to improve on and don't be discouraged if you make a 'mistake'. Mistake = feedback i.e. something to learn from, not something to beat yourself for.

I'm sorry that I can't be more specific, but I don't know you after all! I don't know what you struggle with so I cannot give you particular answers to your troubles.

Again, thanks for the feedback and I hope this has helped you at least a little bit. If you'd like to speak more and ask questions I'll be more than happy to help you. ;)

[Robbed]

For me personally the whole fight-mentality has helped me immensely because I guess I already have all the skills that I need for coping in work and social environments, I just needed to realise it.

My advice to you (and do with it what you will) is to start making things right. You said believing in yourself is difficult "when your life has been a string of failures", then I suggest you look up to someone who inspires you. It could be a celebrity, a sportsman or woman, anyone that you wish you could be like. Try to get into their way of thinking. How would they deal with any given situation? If you don't like yourself, then change, be like someone who you look up to if that will make you happy.

The fact that you already possessed those skills certainly made things easier for you. But keep in mind that many of us here don't possess those skills. That's the reason for our problems in the first place. As for trying to be like someone I 'look up to', the truth of the matter is that I don't really look up to anybody. Sure, I might admire someone's accomplishments. But that doesn't mean that I would like to be more like that person (and let's face it, unless you actually KNOW the person, they are probably quite different than you think).

When I step back and consider my situation, in many ways I really don't want to become a different person from the person I already am. I can be quite happy with myself in situations where I don't have to deal with other people. That's why I often like to go camping alone, hike alone, go on drives alone, and work on cars alone (which is kind of weird, because most 'normal' people REALLY fear doing the first two). It's when I have to be around other people that I start to feel like less of a person. Yes, I would like to find a way to change this. But unfortunately, this would probably require me to make changes to who I am that I would not be entirely happy with. See my problem?

[farhanryu]

"It's when I have to be around other people that I start to feel like less of a person. Yes, I would like to find a way to change this. But unfortunately, this would probably require me to make changes to who I am that I would not be entirely happy with. See my problem?"

I see what you are saying, you don't want to HAVE to change for anyone. But the changes you make should be changes that you want to make for yourself. You should be proud that you like going camping alone and going on drives alone, that's a part your personality. If you genuinely enjoy those things then power to you!

Let me ask you this, if you don't want to change your ways, then why are you here on this website? I mean you wrote earlier that you think your life is a string of failures and at the end of the day you wouldn't be here if you weren't completely happy with yourself. You shouldn't see making changes to yourself as diminishing who you are, you should see it as making positive and personal growth changes. Don't think about it in absolutes because quite frankly you are wrong to think like that. Your anxiety is making you feel this way and I know this because I used to think just like that. You can still do all the things you love doing while still changing other parts of your personality that you think might need tweaking.

No one is perfect and a fact of life is that we are all on a constant journey towards bettering ourselves. I'm going to make a bold statement and say that I think you fear changing yourself. My advice to you would be to just give it a go! Try to begin the first baby steps towards being the person you want to be for at least a week and then see how you feel. How do you know you won't be happier as a result without trying it?

Every time I have left my comfort zone and tried something new, even if it didn't work out the way I planned, I'm ALWAYS still glad I at least tried it. It gives me confidence in myself and increases my self esteem because I had the courage to give it a go. This is all part of beating anxiety.

To quote you again:
"Yes, I would like to find a way to change this. But unfortunately, this would probably require me to make changes to who I am that I would not be entirely happy with".

Notice how this is a vicious circle that will never end unless you just take the plunge. It requires courage to change certain aspects of yourself, but you might as well try it because in all seriousness it might be the best thing you ever do for yourself. You don't know unless you try. It's a win-win situation.

[Robbed]

I've been thinking quite a bit today about the issue of friends. And when I REALLY think about it, it is hard to know whether friendship is something I REALLY want. Certainly, at least part of my desire for friendship stems from that all-too-common tendency for people to want what they can't have. Along with this is that feeling that by NOT having friends, I am missing out on something - something which society generally says is VERY desirable. All of this is certainly going to make me (and other people in my position) look at friendship as something FAR for valuable than it really is.

But do I REALLY want more friends? Hard to say. Honestly, when I am around alot of people, they really don't seem very interesting to me (and I probably don't seem very interesting to them). So often, people talk about things I neither know about nor care about. And most people consider the things that I am interested in to be stupid and weird. Any changes I need to make in order to be friends with most people are going to be concessions, plain and simple. NOT changes that I would make for ANY reason other than trying to please people. Not only do I have serious doubts about my abilities to make such changes. But I don't even care to make such changes.

My unwillingness to change for others may make me a rather lonely person at times. And it may mean that I am looked at as an undesirable loner. But perhaps being a loner is not such a horrible thing in comparison to trying to be a 'people pleaser'. Maybe I would be a FAR happier person if I simply learned not to look at myself as 'lacking' because people don't like me the way I am.

[farhanryu]

ok well fair enough you're constantly anxious and you don't want to change whatsoever, good luck to you.