PanicCured
01-23-2017, 11:03 PM
[I]I am referring to the type of anxiety I had which is frequent panic attacks and massive fearful anxiety triggered at the finest things.
I think some people here are missing some key fundamentals that MUST be grasped to really get better. I hope I can illustrate it here clearly. People with anxiety use tricks to fool themselves into staying in their safe spaces with safe people and avoiding things that trigger the anxiety. Here is the basic logic I used to get better and many of you will also get great results if you at least first understand this logic:
You don't get better AND THEN you do normal things. You get better by working through the anxiety. So what you need to do is pretend you do not have anxiety and just do the things you would do IF you did not have it. As soon as you say, "I want to go shopping, but because I have anxiety I'd be more comfortable if I just stayed home and watched TV" you are feeding the anxiety. You should think, "If I didn't have anxiety, I would go shopping, so a much as it will trigger me, that is the reason why I must go shopping." You go shopping BECAUSE you have anxiety about shopping. This is just an example, maybe shopping isn't a problem with you. But act as if you do not have anxiety, and when you tell yourself you can't do something because of anxiety, that is the sign to go ahead and do it. At least try to do it, or maybe do it part way or something.
Just keep trying to work through it, not avoid it. Avoiding due to anxiety is not how you get better, it further trains you brain to shape your life around anxiety. You need to retrain your brain that shopping will not kill you and that comes by going shopping, having it triggered, and doing a method such as my Quick Guide to Stopping Panic Attacks up in the stickies and getting past it. Even if you enter the store, and 10 seconds later you run out, those 10 seconds are way better than staying home. Next time do 20 seconds, next time 3 minutes, etc. If you can just power through a normal amount of time, than all the better.
You are in a battle with limitations you have told your mind to accept. But these limitations are fake. Not wanting to walk around a bad dangerous neighborhood at night alone is not fake. There is a real reason to avoid doing this. To use the shopping example again, avoiding buying new shoes because your mind tells you you are incapable of handling such a task is fake. It is real you may have major anxiety, but if you go past the anxiety there is no real limitation. So you go shop for shoes, the anxiety comes, and you let go, allow it to pass, and then you just trained your brain that you do not need to run to a safe space, you survived. The safe space is fake! What the hell is so safe about being alone in your home anyway? Surely being in public is safer if we think of emergencies. The shoe store is not a danger, it's just a fake reality your mind is accepting as real, and the way to fix this is go to the shoe store and shop for shoes and work through it.
And finally, learn to lose the fear of having anxiety. After 100s of anxiety or panic attacks, it is a bit strange to fear what you have had so many times already. There needs to be some type of who cares if you have anxiety anyway attitude.
The most important thing first, is to fully understand the logic behind this and get into the right mindset so you can apply all these things we are talking about here.
Read this again if you need to until you fully understand the core logic to getting a proper overcoming anxiety program going.
Good luck!
I think some people here are missing some key fundamentals that MUST be grasped to really get better. I hope I can illustrate it here clearly. People with anxiety use tricks to fool themselves into staying in their safe spaces with safe people and avoiding things that trigger the anxiety. Here is the basic logic I used to get better and many of you will also get great results if you at least first understand this logic:
You don't get better AND THEN you do normal things. You get better by working through the anxiety. So what you need to do is pretend you do not have anxiety and just do the things you would do IF you did not have it. As soon as you say, "I want to go shopping, but because I have anxiety I'd be more comfortable if I just stayed home and watched TV" you are feeding the anxiety. You should think, "If I didn't have anxiety, I would go shopping, so a much as it will trigger me, that is the reason why I must go shopping." You go shopping BECAUSE you have anxiety about shopping. This is just an example, maybe shopping isn't a problem with you. But act as if you do not have anxiety, and when you tell yourself you can't do something because of anxiety, that is the sign to go ahead and do it. At least try to do it, or maybe do it part way or something.
Just keep trying to work through it, not avoid it. Avoiding due to anxiety is not how you get better, it further trains you brain to shape your life around anxiety. You need to retrain your brain that shopping will not kill you and that comes by going shopping, having it triggered, and doing a method such as my Quick Guide to Stopping Panic Attacks up in the stickies and getting past it. Even if you enter the store, and 10 seconds later you run out, those 10 seconds are way better than staying home. Next time do 20 seconds, next time 3 minutes, etc. If you can just power through a normal amount of time, than all the better.
You are in a battle with limitations you have told your mind to accept. But these limitations are fake. Not wanting to walk around a bad dangerous neighborhood at night alone is not fake. There is a real reason to avoid doing this. To use the shopping example again, avoiding buying new shoes because your mind tells you you are incapable of handling such a task is fake. It is real you may have major anxiety, but if you go past the anxiety there is no real limitation. So you go shop for shoes, the anxiety comes, and you let go, allow it to pass, and then you just trained your brain that you do not need to run to a safe space, you survived. The safe space is fake! What the hell is so safe about being alone in your home anyway? Surely being in public is safer if we think of emergencies. The shoe store is not a danger, it's just a fake reality your mind is accepting as real, and the way to fix this is go to the shoe store and shop for shoes and work through it.
And finally, learn to lose the fear of having anxiety. After 100s of anxiety or panic attacks, it is a bit strange to fear what you have had so many times already. There needs to be some type of who cares if you have anxiety anyway attitude.
The most important thing first, is to fully understand the logic behind this and get into the right mindset so you can apply all these things we are talking about here.
Read this again if you need to until you fully understand the core logic to getting a proper overcoming anxiety program going.
Good luck!