Paul David At Last A Life - Anxiety and Panic Free - At Last a Life and Beyond ( 2 books combined )

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AT LAST A LIFE Anxiety and Panic Free

By Paul David

Acknowledgements This book is for all of you who are suffering from Anxiety and Panic, something I believe every doctor should have a better understanding of. In my opinion, too much needless suffering is caused through ignorance of the subject and a lack of helpful information when we first seek help. I am not condemning the medical profession but I believe that anxiety really is a specialised subject and, as I found out, not enough people are sufficiently qualified or equipped to help. It is for this very reason that I have written this book and set up my own website in the hope that I can bring far more awareness to the subject and help those, who like me, found help and guidance so hard to come by. My website, www.anxietynomore.co.uk, has now grown into something far bigger than I ever imagined and receives thousands of unique hits a month, which just goes to show how widespread this problem is. My heart goes out to all of you who suffer and I wish each and every one of you success in your recovery. Hopefully, what I have written in this book will finally bring you the answers you so desperately seek. I would like to thank my partner for helping me to achieve my goal of helping others. When I left my job, she never complained, but just told me to follow what I believed in. She has been with me every step of the way and I thank her for that. More than anyone, I thank my mother, who suffered with me through those ten years. She was the only person I felt I could turn to in my darkest days; the only person I knew would not judge me. She never told me to pull myself together; she just listened, watched the tears of frustration and never once gave me anything but support. She has helped and supported me in writing my book and setting up my website. She has supported me all my life and is the nicest person anyone could wish to meet. Mum you are a wonderful person and I dedicate this book to you.

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Copyright © Paul David 2006 This book is the copyright of Paul David. It is only available in the UK through www.anxietynomore.co.uk. If you receive the book from any other source then please let me know, so that I can take the necessary legal action. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

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FOREWORD As you read through this book, you may find some parts with which you can really identify and others with which you may not. It has been written to reach out to all of you who have suffered from all aspects and the various levels of anxiety, so there should be something here for everyone. Sometimes the only difference between individuals is the length of time they have suffered. Well, I can assure you that no matter how long you have suffered, you can recover and this book will show you how. I also run a blog and have lost count of the number of people I have spoken to and helped who have recovered or are on their way to recovering. I have included many of these communications in this book in the hope that people will read something in there that they can identify with and which will give them a better understanding and hope for the future. You will see references throughout these writings to an earlier edition of this book which was originally written in 2006 before being updated in 2009. I have had wonderful feedback over the years from people telling me how the information contained herein has changed their life. I even receive emails from GPs and therapists, telling me that they have recommended my work to their patients and it is something I am very proud of. I never wanted to write just another book on the subject, I wanted this book to be the only point of -3-

reference people would ever need and it means as much to me as the person who is reading it to know that it helps. My main consideration when writing this book was to make it as easy as possible to read and understand; to get my message across and break through all the jargon that you may have read and found hard to understand in the past. Every page is packed with what I believe to be the best information I gathered during and beyond my recovery. When I finally found the answers I was looking for, I knew that I had a chance of recovery because, for once, my condition had been explained to me and it all made sense. I had finally been given an explanation for why I felt like I did, and was shown a road to recovery that not only made sense, but also felt right. I am now fully recovered and I know that if I had not found the information that I am now going to pass on to you now, I would still be searching for the answers others still crave. I was just like you, the very people who are reading this book, thinking “yes, you got better, but I cannot; you must be stronger than me; you have not got the problems that I have”. Well, I’ve lost count of the number of times I said this to myself and my anxiety ruled my life for ten years. It was so bad that I had to give up my job; I lost friends and had no social life. I was constantly crying and frustrated with the person I had become. Most days I just did not want to get out of bed in a morning. Yes, that person really was me and as I look back, it is still hard to -4-

believe that I was this person. Anxiety robbed me of everything - my personality, my social life and my ability to be normal. Trust me, no matter how bad you feel or how far you have sunk into the depths of despair, you have the power within you to recover. You may also have been through every so-called cure out there and thrown money at treatment after treatment that never worked. Well that was me, I tried it all and nothing worked. I lost heart, I thought I would never get better, but I did. So read on and discover what I believe is the only true way to reach recovery. All that I learnt during my recovery and beyond is written for you in this book and by the time you reach the last chapter, you will have discovered what it took me years to learn.

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Contents Chapter 1:

My Story

7

Chapter 2:

So What Are These Feelings I Feel?

11

Chapter 3:

The Breakthrough

14

Chapter 4:

Understanding Anxiety

16

Chapter 5:

Give Up the Fight

22

Chapter 6:

Panic Attacks Explained

32

Chapter 7:

Understanding Feelings of Unreality

43

Chapter 8:

Scary/Irrational Thoughts

48

Chapter 9:

Other Symptoms Explained

76

Chapter 10: We Need One Road

82

Chapter 11: Born To Worry

91

Chapter 12: Some Final Points

98

Chapter 13: Coming Through Depersonalisation

108

Chapter 14: Frequently Asked Questions

117

Chapter 15 Summary

139

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Chapter 1 My Story Firstly, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Paul, I live in England and I suffered from anxiety for ten years. I am now fully recovered and this is my story. My first encounter with anxiety happened when I was 22 years old. I was young and, I suppose, naive and I started to dabble in drugs nothing too heavy, I was just taking them socially. I thought I was doing myself no harm, until, as inevitably happens, they took over my life and I reached the point were I relied on them just to get through the day. I started to see changes in my personality that I did not like. I would feel as though I was somewhere else. I did not want to talk to people and felt depressed for no reason, but the thing that scared me most was I started to panic. My whole body would shake and my heart would beat so fast, I was scared I was dying. This was the beginning of ten years of anxiety! It was at this point that I did what most people do and went to see my doctor. I will never forget that first meeting with him. I sat there chatting at what seemed like one hundred miles an hour and my hands were shaking. I just thought, “I don’t know what is wrong with me but, you’re a doctor, you should know; just give me my magic pill and I will be on my way”. Well, as I sat there, I was given no explanation as to what was wrong with me. The doctor just seemed to stare at me with a blank expression on his face, wondering why I was so agitated and talking so fast. He listened and then just told me to take it easy and come back in a few weeks. That was it – no explanation, nothing - but I knew it would take more than a week at home to cure me. I left the doctor’s surgery and spent all week trying to figure out what was wrong and why this was happening to me. I decided that if the doctor did not know, it must be something very serious. This was the beginning of my long journey, during which time I spent months being shifted from one doctor to the next and one therapist

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to another. I had needles put in me, was given different medication and once was even persuaded to part with my money to buy a contraption to wear round my neck and so many other so called cures, but nothing worked. From one day to the next, my mind was racing around, trying to figure out why I felt the way I did, but I always hit a brick wall and still could not find any answers. The only thing I knew for sure was that I was getting worse, not better, as the years passed. I constantly asked myself the question “When will somebody finally be able to tell me what’s wrong with me?” This went on for ten years - yes, ten years - during which time I lost friends, my job and my whole personality. Most of my family did not understand why I had changed from being a confident person into someone who they hardly recognised. How could they know what was wrong with me when even I didn’t know? I am sure that some of you reading this will have experienced the same personality disintegration as I did. Some of the most common symptoms I suffered are listed below: 1. Feeling strange, unreal, not with it. 2. Depression. 3. Shaking hands. 4. Fast heartbeat. 5. No interest in anything. 6. Tired and weary. 7. Tight band around my head. 8. Unable to concentrate. 9. Irritable 10. Mind constantly racing

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I had many more, but these were the most common symptoms. I could have saved myself ten years of suffering if only I had been given the right advice from the very beginning and an explanation as to why I felt the way I did. Now I can explain every one of these symptoms away as ’Anxiety’ - a condition that I think all doctors need to have a better understanding of, so that they can help to prevent so many years of unnecessary suffering. If you suffer from any or all of the above, don’t despair. In the next few chapters, I will try to explain to you why you feel like you do and reassure you that you are not going mad, but feel no different from thousands if not millions of others who are experiencing the same symptoms and thinking that they are the only person in the world who feels like this. Recovery is different for each individual. People who have suffered for a long period of time can be more entrenched in an anxiety habit than someone who has suffered over a shorter time period. A person who suffers from panic attacks, depersonalisation and anxiety may take longer to recover than someone who just suffers mild panic or anxiety. If only I had known what I know now when I first became anxious, my recovery would have happened far sooner. No matter what level of anxiety or panic you have reached, full recovery is possible for everyone. If anyone should know that, it is me. I suffered from every symptom of stress and anxiety and I struggled with them for 10 years. I tried method after method and medication after medication, only to get nowhere, I felt like I was just going round in circles from one disappointment to another. It was only after I learnt about anxiety and panic and put this knowledge into practice, that I was able to lead myself back to a life free from stress, panic and anxiety. Full recovery requires the correct information, an application of it and a little patience. Most have suffered for so long that they just want to be better now. Well, I was the same. I also wanted instant success. Unfortunately, our body takes time to recover; this is only natural, we have been through so much. Most of us did not begin to feel like we do overnight; it was a gradual process and this process takes time to

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reverse. But, trust me, what a journey it can be and it is well worth the wait. I have had many people come to me for help, almost in tears as they see no way out. Fast forward a few months and they cannot believe how far they have come. So don’t despair if you feel you have hit rock bottom or have suffered for a long time, no matter how you feel or how much anxiety has taken over your life, the real you is just waiting to resurface.

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Chapter 2 SO WHAT ARE THESE FEELINGS I FEEL? In my experience, there are normally three stages leading to how you eventually feel. Firstly, there is what is known as muscular fatigue (tired nerves) where you feel that you are dragging your tired body around all day, going through the motions of living, but having little or no interest in anything. This stage can come from a relationship break up or maybe bereavement, but it is usually created by long term stress and worry, which gradually tires your muscles and your whole nervous system takes a battering, causing the feelings mentioned above. I have been asked many times why anxiety sufferers feel so tired. The answer is that adrenalin affects your body by making it work much faster than normal and can totally drain the energy from your muscles. This is the reason your limbs may ache or you feel so tired and emotionally spent at times. This usually leads to the next stage - mental fatigue/tired mind. This is where people feel that they cannot detach themselves from their thoughts. They have a hyper awareness of how they are feeling and feel strange, sometimes described as feeling as if they are living on another planet. I have lost count of the number of times I have had to convince people they are not going mad. So if the above describes how you feel, trust me, you are not going mad. It is a just a tired old mind, battered with worry and bewildered by how you are feeling. The reason for this is that you have started to worry about the way you feel. You have entered this stage by all the ceaseless pondering, all the endless days of thinking “What’s wrong with me” and “Why do I feel like I do?” until such thoughts run automatically all day and your tired mind can no longer cope with all this information. It reaches overload and in order to protect itself draws on its inbuilt safety mechanism to shut down. This is why you feel strange at times. It is nothing to worry about and is just your mind

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telling you that enough is enough. Your mind can actually make you feel more tired than the muscles you use. It can drain you of all emotional energy and your thinking can become laboured and confused. You may find it hard to talk, as though you have to place each word in a sentence. This can then lead to the third stage, which is emotional fatigue. This is the one that hurt me the most and is the one thing that can eventually strip you of your confidence. This stage comes when you feel that there is no hope and you will never get better. Day-by-day, your confidence can disappear and you may not even feel like getting dressed in the morning. “What’s the point when I feel like this?” you may ask. Your spirit also seems to fade and you question how you ever became the person you are now, how you ever came to feel like this. You may have experienced only one of these three stages or you may have felt, or be feeling, all three. However, like me, you can recover from all of them, no matter how far you think you may have sunk. Your body is waiting to recover, it wants to recover and all of these stages can be reversed, until eventually you become the person you once were. Anxiety is not an illness; it is a condition, brought on mainly by long term stress or worry and is your body’s way of telling you that it is overworked. Your body is like a car that needs looking after in order to run properly. It also has its own limits on how far it can be pushed. I am contacted by more business men/women and people in the medical field than any other profession. These are people that tend to be under a great deal of stress at work. They don’t listen to their body and they overdo things, which leads to anxiety. Think of it like this. It I went out and bought a blender that had a maximum running speed of 1000 rpm, but I was not happy with this and wanted it to go faster, so I tweak it up and make it go at double that speed. What would happen? The motor would burn out and it would quickly break down as it was never designed to go at this speed. I have overworked it! Well, it is exactly the same with your body and this is why you feel anxious. Your nerves have become bad through over use and the

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stress and worry you have been piling on has taken its toll. That is why it is so important to take your symptoms with a pinch of salt and not get stressed or worry about them. If you allow yourself to worry and get stressed, you are working your body far too hard, a body that is crying out to be left alone. Let me explain…… You may have reached the point of suffering through too much stress or worry. That makes sense. But why does it continue? The answer is anxiety has then become your new problem and you now have something else to worry about. Just when your body needs a rest, it takes on more worrying thoughts and more stress about how you are feeling. ‘What is wrong with me?’, ‘Why do I feel like this?’ You may become bewildered and lost, and each day becomes a battle as you try to think and fight your way out of this hell. This extra stress and worry makes you feel worse, so you worry more and you fight more. Anxiety may be the last thing you think of at night and the first thing on your mind when you wake. Anxiety has become you. I am sure many people can relate to this. Do you see now why we stay in the cycle? This is the reason people find themselves going around in circles and getting nowhere, falling deeper into the condition, because they do the opposite of everything they should do. But with such a lack of information and help out there, what else can we do but fight this condition? In your desperation to get better, you have actually created the opposite effect and done everything your body wanted you not to do.

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Chapter 3 THE BREAKTHROUGH We can all experience anxiety at some point in our lives. There is a whole new range of stresses on society today. Finding the money to pay the mortgage, stress at work, an up and coming event - all of these things can contribute towards making us feel anxious and stressed. A certain amount of stress is only natural. The problems arise when it is continuous and our mind and body never get a rest from this endless onslaught of worry, which in turn can cause our nerves to become sensitised. Sensitisation of your nerves means that they become easily triggered and the slightest thing - something as simple as a door slamming - may bring a sweep of panic. The weeks/months of worry and stress have caused your nerves to constantly vibrate or become ‘bad’ and this can create feelings of anxiety for no real reason. Now you must be wondering how I managed to discover the key to recovery, the key that, had I known about it all those years ago, would have helped me to get better so much earlier. The day came after ten years of suffering. It came as I was seeing yet another therapist at my local hospital who, once again, could not give me any answers and did nothing to make me feel any better. The appointment lasted twenty minutes, during which time I told her my problems, she listened, asked about medication and if I wanted to try a new magic pill, and then I was on my way. I was given no explanation as to why I felt like I did and I don’t even think I heard the word anxiety mentioned. However, this particular therapist had been told of someone in another town who was supposed to be an expert on the subject of anxiety, and she asked me if I would like her to make me an appointment to visit. I agreed to go as I was desperate and was willing to try anything. I gained no more hope from the prospect of attending this meeting than I did from any of the other meetings I’d had with other so called experts.

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Much to my surprise, this meeting turned out to be very different from any of the others. In fact, I can remember the therapist’s first words to me. He said: “Paul, you will never get better until you stop trying to get better” This statement made no sense to me at the time, but over the next few months, it was to be the very statement that helped me recover. It meant more to me than anything anyone else had ever said to me in the previous ten years. During our meeting, I knew there was a real chance, a real hope that I would recover. For the first time, what he had said to me not only made sense, it also felt right. Of all the other treatments I had tried over the years and boy did I try them all, not one of them felt right. I would pay the money and go through the motions, but they certainly never made me feel any better and I was never given any explanation as to why I felt like I did, something my present therapist had managed to achieve on my first meeting. Every book I had bought on the subject was thrown in the bin, every treatment I was having at the time stopped. I knew I would never need them again and I now realise how much rubbish is written on the subject and how many useless treatments there are from people who just want to make money out of other people’s suffering. Not only did this therapist help me to recover by showing me the right path, it was through his help that I was motivated to begin studying the whole subject of anxiety and panic, so that I would leave no stone unturned in trying to help others who suffered in the same way as I did. What I discovered is what I am now going to pass on to you in this book. In my opinion, it is the only path that leads to success, so, read on, and you too can also have “A LIFE AT LAST” Footnote: Before I go on, I would like to explain why all these so called cures did not work. I tried treatments like acupuncture, homeopathy, hypnosis and many more. The reason they did not work is because I was trying to rid myself of how I felt instantly. This is the problem; so many people just want this ‘dreadful thing to go away’. They go from one treatment to another, sometimes spending a small fortune doing the exact opposite of what they should be doing, which is allowing themselves to feel the way they do.

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Chapter 4 Understanding Anxiety A key point is to understand that our body can only take so much stress and worry before it becomes run down, stressed, emotionally drained and feels totally battered. In fact, in most cases, too much continuous stress and worry is what brings on anxiety in the first place. This could be caused by the loss of a loved one, personal problems and working long hours without taking time out to relax. It could be caused by stress at work or any number of the many daily pressures with which we are often faced. Our body can only take so much and this is where the word breakdown comes in. The trouble then is that when we first feel the symptoms of anxiety, these ‘feelings’ can then become our new daily problem. Now, not only do we feel stressed out, but we don’t understand why we feel like we do. It may frighten us and we can feel like we are losing it or going mad. Now we may worry daily about how we feel and question it deeply. We may feel frustrated and fill ourselves with self pity. In our attempts to find answers, we have exhausted every avenue and nothing is helping, in fact we feel worse then ever. The way we feel has now become us This is a very common cycle and something I certainly did. The main reason that we are trapped in this cycle is because we don’t understand why we feel like we do. We become completely bewildered and what else can we do but to blindly try and figure a way out of this hell? In fact the worse we feel, the more we fight and the more frustrated and bewildered we become. It’s a vicious cycle, but one that is easy to reverse. The anxiety cycle is like pouring petrol on a fire and it will never go out until we stop adding more fuel to it. It’s a circle we need to break. A very important element in discovering the key to recovery is understanding why we feel like we do. “Why is it so important?” you may ask. “I just want it all to go away”.

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Well, it is so important because it takes the whole fear out of how you feel, and fear, together with the lack of understanding of why you feel like you do, keep you ill. If you fear something, it is bound to dominate your life. If you don't understand what’s happening, you will continue to go round in circles constantly thinking and worrying about your symptoms and how you feel. What I aim to do is help you to take the fear out of your illness, so that your day is not dominated by the fear of how you feel. Fear is the main factor that is prolonging your illness - fear of your disturbing symptoms, fear that you will never recover and there is no hope for you. In most cases, all that is really wrong with you is tired and over sensitised nerves causing you to feel anxious and irritable. You may also have a tired mind that gives you a feeling of detachment from the world around you. You may have expected a more detailed explanation of the way you feel - I know I did - but this is the reason you feel like you do. There are many causes of tired nerves, but they are usually the result of a build up of stress causing them to become sensitised. Although sudden sensitisation can occur and it has been known to happen after an accident or some other shock, in my experience, it is usually caused by a build up of stress. Once our sensitised nerves reach the point where they are on red alert, we can feel irritable for no reason. Some people refer to it as feeling as if there is a constant electric current running through their body - this is sensitised nerves. They then begin to worry about how they feel and sensitise their nerves even further. The result is that their heart may beat faster and their hands may shake. They may feel as though they have to gasp for air. Some people complain of feeling as if there is a lump in their throat and they have trouble swallowing. Some may feel unbalanced and light headed, or have the sensation of having a tight band around their head. Panic comes easily to some people, and for others, appears for no reason at all. If I had to describe myself, I would say that I felt most of the symptoms listed above and many others not mentioned. On the anxiety scale, I registered very high, but no two people will experience exactly the same symptoms. I had no trouble swallowing and did not feel unbalanced, but I have heard of these symptoms so often and feel that it is important to include them.

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The point is, no matter what symptoms you are experiencing or what stage you feel you are at, they all come under the same umbrella and recovery is possible for all of you. I am forever telling people not to separate each symptom and worry about them individually. You may feel many symptoms with anxiety and there is no need to feel the need to unravel them all, just place them all under the same umbrella of anxiety. The aim is to lessen the time you worry and obsess about how you are feeling and just go about your daily life, however you feel. When I recovered, all symptoms faded at the same time. Think of it as flu, you have a few symptoms, but you don’t worry about them all individually. Well, have the same attitude towards anxiety. Another symptom people often mention is a feeling of detachment from the outside world, almost like they are living in a dream. One of the main reasons people feel dull and unresponsive and unable to connect with the outside world is because they are suffering from a tired mind. They have thoughts running around in their head all day and feel so emotionally spent. The tired mind comes from all the “What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel like I do? What if it’s something really serious?” Day in, day out, they continue this constant battle with themselves as they mentally search for a way out of this hell, longing to be the person they were before this terrible thing came along and never giving their mind and body one minute’s rest. No wonder their mind is fatigued when they are thrashing themselves like this, day after day. The more they struggle with how they feel, trying to be the person they were before all of this happened, the more tension they add to their already oversensitised nerves and the more their mind tires. Let me explain by going back to that statement: “You will not get better until you stop trying to get better”. What does it mean? Well, let’s say that someone came to me and said "Paul I have these strange feelings all day, like pins and needles, and I can't concentrate. I feel unreal and I just don't know what to do. I feel anxious all day. What should I do? "

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The answer is "Nothing" “Nothing?” “Yes, nothing. Just allow yourself to feel like this. By doing nothing you will give your tired mind and nerves the chance to heal”. "But surely I should fight it”, you say. “I must get the better of this thing". “Okay, go ahead then, but you have been doing this for years and it has not helped”. "What do you mean then?" “I mean you can't control your body. Your nerves and mind are tired of you running around trying to find answers, worrying and obsessing about how you are feeling. You are just keeping yourself ill by adding fear and worry." Let me ask you a question. “When you break your leg, what do you do?” "Erm, well, it goes in a pot and I rest it and let it heal". "Well, why on earth don't you do that with your nerves then? You don't say, ‘my leg hurts, I must stop it hurting’ and then start running around in your mind every day, trying to think of ways you can stop it hurting and tensing against the pain.” This is the key! At first I feared my feelings because I did not know what they were or why I felt the way I did, until I was told: “All that is wrong with you is your mind is tired because of all the endless thinking you do, day in, day out. It is receiving an overload of information and can't cope with it, so it shuts down like a safety mechanism. That’s why you feel odd at times, as if you are on another planet. Your mind is just very tired. You are not going mad and these feelings will fade when you stop this pointless daily pondering. All the strange feelings you experience are caused by tired nerves, exhausted by the constant pressure you put on them - all the ‘oh my Gods' and ‘what ifs?’

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These feelings cannot be controlled. There is no magic pill out there. Your nerves need rest and will heal themselves if only you give them the chance. Just like the rest of your body, your tired mind and nerves will heal themselves”. Even when I had been convinced that all these feelings I was experiencing came from something as simple as tired nerves and a tired mind, I still had to remind myself at times, but once I understood what was wrong with me, a lot of the fear disappeared. Oh, yes, it still felt awful, but not as bad as before because I had stopped all the ‘What’s wrong with me’? Why do I feel like this? There must be a way”. Finally, someone had explained to me what the problem was. I lost a lot of the fear of my symptoms that day and saw them in a different light. A lot of recovery is to do with losing your fear of a symptom. While you still fear it, it is bound to dominate your day. You need to take the fear out of how you feel, so you can start to move towards your feelings instead of continually running away from them, as you may have been doing up until now. Look at it like this: If you have a cold, you don’t worry about it. It does not bother you because you understand it and why it’s there, so although it is a slight annoyance, you pay little attention to it and don’t let it bother you too much. This is the stage I reached with my feelings of anxiety. This change in attitude came through less fear and a better understanding of my symptoms and was the reason my body started to heal. With understanding comes less fear and less adrenalin, the very things that prolong your illness. I also stopped hiding away from how I felt and the difference was amazing! If I felt bad, I felt bad! You need to get up in the morning and say “However I feel, I feel, AND MEAN IT. One of the reasons I recovered is because I did the very thing I teach. I stopped making it my daily aim to get better. I may repeat this often, but I want to really get my point across. You don’t have to search for recovery, rather let recovery come to you. I used to go to work and feel odd and anxious, but instead of worrying about it and trying to make it right, I just got on with the task in hand. I found it hard to concentrate at times and my attention kept reverting back to me and how I was feeling, but I just got on with my day. Anxiety was losing its hold on me. This is the way forward.

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When you realise that there is no outside miracle cure and recovery comes from within, this can be a relief in itself. You no longer have to go from one treatment to another, hoping that elusive cure, the one you must have missed, is out there. This search for an instant cure is the one thing that keeps people ill. I was one of those people, certain that the quick answer must be out there somewhere. I now know this is not true and I wasted a lot of time and money trying to find it. Several people have asked me and how long it took before I recovered. The day I could say I recovered was the day that anxiety and its symptoms did not bother me any more. I had lost my fear of all my symptoms and knew it was only a matter of time until my body found its balance again and my symptoms faded. I knew then that I could never suffer again. At one point, the mere mention of the word “anxiety” would send me into a panic, but I had learnt enough not to be scared of it any more. Basically, I had de-sensitised. Some of my symptoms still lingered, but they had lessened and just did not bother me. Eventually my body just repaired itself and I have now become the person I was before I ever became anxious all those years ago. My recovery took some time with plenty of ups and downs and although I did not have all the information you have here, I used the same method. I saw someone who was fantastic for me and this person’s words put me on the right track. Also, during my recovery, I was advised to pick up a book by Claire Weekes. She also had an influence on me and my findings. But my real progress came from a combination of knowledge and trial and error. Also there is no better education than coming through anxiety. The only people I have ever respected on the subject are the people who have actually been through it and come out the other side. In the beginning I really just had to work it all out for myself. When I knew I was on the right track, I began to study the whole subject and was able to make my own mind up about what was good information and what was bad. When the penny dropped and I understood things fully, improvement came quite quickly. When you have spent ten years getting worse, then you know when you are on the right track.

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Chapter 5 GIVE UP THE FIGHT Firstly, let me explain the reason why so many people actually stay in the cycle of anxiety and, in many cases, feel they are getting worse. It is because they are fighting a constant battle to feel better and lose their symptoms. They may spend all day trying to ‘rid’ themselves of how they feel; fighting the feelings and trying to push them away. They may attempt to unravel the whole day, trying to work out what they did wrong or why they felt like they did. They may spend the whole time in deep thought, trying to find a way out of this hell and breaking down from time to time, as they see no way out. The harder they try to escape from their mental torment, the worse they feel, believing that no one understands and finding little or no help wherever they turn. I know this person was me. I thought so deeply each day, I was losing touch with the world around me. I fought these feelings and let them frustrate me so much that my anxiety certainly got worse. I thought of nothing else each day but getting better. I spent my whole time acting through it, hoping no one would notice how I felt and every day was a constant battle. I never once thought about doing anything else but fighting and trying to work out why I felt this way. What else could I do but fight and figure it out for myself, when I was given no advice or explanation for how I felt? Little did I know that I was doing the exact opposite of what I should be doing. Rather than run away and try to rid yourself of how you feel, I want you to actually go towards your feelings. Don’t run away from them or hide away. For once realise it’s okay to have anxiety. Remember, it’s only natural in the circumstances to feel the way you do. If your nerves and mind are tired, there is not a single thing you can do to make it all go away instantly. Maybe you find yourself withdrawing from the feelings, running away and not daring to face this big monster you have created in your

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mind, thinking that if you face this thing head on, it will swallow you up and you will somehow get worse. Well, guess what? You won’t! It is the very avoidance of the way you feel that holds you back. How much respect do you give a feeling, if you keep avoiding it? It will always be the enemy, the thing to shy away from and avoid at all costs. Below is an example of the moment of realisation received from a sufferer and my response to her: “After reading all the great information in your book, I am beginning to understand a few things that I was doing wrong. For instance, when I was feeling on edge, like not feeling quite right, like something was going to happen, I would have a couple of drinks to make the feelings go away. I realise that by doing this I was running away from my feelings and not facing them. Well, for the last week or so, I’ve stopped doing that and I’m beginning to feel better, not completely 100% but a lot better than of late.” My reply was: Marie, that was a wonderful insight into the fact that you were running away from your feelings and not facing them. While ever we shy away from or try and control how we feel, we are building up the respect we give to those feelings, like they must be avoided at all costs. We can never move forward with this attitude. Once you face them and nothing happens, they lose your respect. “Is that it”? you may say. However, you can’t do this until you do allow and go towards your feelings. To lose any fear, you must be willing to feel it. This is how I unmasked a lot of my anxiety and was no longer bluffed by it. This is a very important part of recovery. We get stuck in a cycle because we avoid anywhere where we think we may feel uncomfortable. It’s our natural instinct, but it is also the reason we stay stuck in a cycle. The only way to break this cycle is to quite happily go towards these places and feel anything. If we feel anxious, then so be it. It’s only a feeling after all. This is exactly what I did and in time these places were just like any other, because I willingly went towards them. I de-sensitised to them. I honestly could not care less how I felt, as I knew that this was the only way to

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move forward. I could never hide away at home and just wish it all away. Paul So, let these feelings come and don’t try to stop them. Allow yourself to feel the way that you do? Some people falsely believe that if they do this, they will somehow lose a grip on themselves and that they must hold everything together. You don’t need to fight and think your way back to recovery; you need to let recovery come to you. Okay, I will use my own true life case to explain what I experienced and all that I did wrong. I once walked around thinking deeply about how I felt. I was constantly worrying and questioning why I was getting worse and not better. I just kept going around in circles trying to figure a way out of this hell. I tried to keep a grip on myself when talking with others, acting a part throughout the day in an attempt to make sure that nobody noticed how I was feeling. I also felt angry and frustrated about how I felt, wondering when this thing would go away, and I was full of self-pity. Can you see how much extra stress and pressure I was putting myself under each day? Even a healthy body would have struggled to cope, never mind a body that suffered with anxiety. It makes total sense to me now why I got worse and not better over the years. I was thrashing by body daily, constantly trying to do something about it. Eventually I just gave up and said “it’s time to accept that, however I feel, I feel”. Okay, I still felt awful at times and this was understandable, but I did not feel as bad, and for once during my suffering, I was giving my body the break it so craved. If I could begin to learn to let go and give a free reign to my feelings, then I had no need to constantly try and figure it all out. I would no longer need to worry daily about how I was feeling and had no need to fight or try to push feelings away. Do you see that for once I had given myself a break and a chance not to add more and more stress to an already tired body? I had taken a step back and trusted in my own body’s healing system, the best healing system that exists. My body could not begin to recover until I began to give up this daily battle

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that I had created with myself and this is when the statement “You will never get better until you stop trying” made so much sense to me. It was once my daily aim to ‘get rid’ of how I was feeling. If my body could speak it would have said “Paul please step out of the way; leave me alone and let me heal myself”. What I am saying is let anxiety be part of your day and stop worrying/obsessing about it. Say it’s okay to feel like this for the time being. I am not saying you have to like it, just don’t create a monster out of it. Also, give your body and mind as much space as it needs to heal itself. Too many people are far too impatient and want instant success. I wanted instant success for 10 years and never found it. So I was very willing to give myself time to recover. I had been through so much; it made sense that it was going to take time. I just aimed for progress and was happy with this. I never demanded or expected anything, which, looking back, helped me so much. Remember, your body takes time to adjust and each day that you no longer fight how you feel and just go with it, you give your body another day to recover and repair itself. A broken leg will not heal in a day and neither will your nerves, but for the first time you will have started to give them the rest they so crave. Think about this: If fighting worked, you would be cured by now. So why not try the opposite? Abandon yourself to how you feel. Holding on to yourself and trying to keep a grip on this thing, just adds more tension. You may find yourself running away from your symptoms, telling yourself that you must not face them or you will sink deeper into the pit of anxiety. Or you may try to push them away and stop them coming, but this is all wrong. The only way to de-sensitise is to go towards these feelings instead of shying away from them. This is the only way to recover. By doing this, you are accepting them for what they are - just strange feelings. You may just find that nothing is going to happen to you and that when you let them come, the feelings are not as bad as you let yourself believe. In allowing them to come, you automatically relax your body and don’t add any more tension. Can you see that by letting them come, you are on the way to not fearing them any more? You have brought down the barriers that have been holding you back for so long. Face the feelings and let them come, until it does not matter if they are there or not. I

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blindly thought I had to get rid of my anxiety symptoms at all costs and that there must be a quick fix that had eluded me. Setbacks I have helped people to go with how they feel and everything is going well for them. They are improving and feeling better, only to wake up one morning and suddenly find they have a bad day. This can cause them to lose hope, they feel as if they are back at square one and start questioning everything all over again. Please don’t fall into this trap. Under normal circumstances, we feel happier on some days than others; we don’t know why, we just do. So why be surprised if on some days we feel more anxious than others? We don’t question why we are happier on some days than others, so why question the reason we feel more nervous and tense on some days than others? You just have to let the bad days go and use them as another opportunity to practice letting go and allowing feelings to be there. Allowing the sensations of anxiety/panic to go on without making any attempt to stop them, hide from them or stress or worry over them is really the way to lose them. In short, just live your life and don’t let anxiety make your decisions for you. Don’t let it stop you having a life. I will refer to other people’s words from time to time because I believe it helps to read what others have to say, particularly those who have been through the same experiences and come out the other side. These are from real people that I have helped in the past and it shows just how many of them have come through once they received the right help and guidance. Below is a post taken from my blog from Scarlet, who is now fully recovered, and it sums up exactly what I want to get across. Here she talks about the need to just live your life and not let anxiety make choices for you. Sitting at home hoping and wishing you will feel better just does not work. You just need to put Paul’s advice into practice as often as you can in order to get off the ‘hamster wheel’ of anxiety and get on with ‘normal’ everyday living. Even when you don’t feel like it, go out, go

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to work, down to the pub, cycling, whatever you fancy doing. Don’t be put off by inappropriate feelings or thoughts … do it anyway. For normal feelings to return we have to live as normal a life as possible. I made the mistake for the first year, of sitting and waiting to get well before I actually ‘lived’, thinking this was the way to do it. It took me the best part of a year to find out this was totally wrong. My anxiety levels shot up during this time also. I ended up ruminating all day and became almost housebound. Scarlet is right and this is something I try to get across early. Don’t hide away indoors, don’t wait until you feel better to go out and live your life. Don’t put off anything because of how you feel. Just live your life regardless of how you feel. You may even feel worse when you first do this because you are coming out of your comfort zones, but it is the actual doing that begins to take the edge off feelings. Normal feelings begin to override the feelings of strangeness. For normal feelings to return, we have to live as normal a life as possible; nothing is gained by hiding away. I always went everywhere at will no matter how I felt. I knew that this was the only way to move forward and I never allowed anxiety to make my decisions for me. Yes, sometimes I really felt like hiding away, but I never did. Sometimes I felt uncomfortable in certain situations, but I thought ‘so what, this is not me forever’. I knew deep down that putting myself in situations that I had avoided in the past would help me to recover. Avoidance just creates more problems and what was I actually avoiding anyway? It was nothing more than a feeling, a feeling that had once dominated my life. But I made the decision to no longer let it, and what a difference that had on my life. I am not saying I started running around like a headless chicken, I just started socialising more. I went running, took the dog for a walk, went swimming and just began to live again. Yes, at first it was strange and sometimes I had to drag myself there, but I always went. Eventually I felt more and more comfortable and more and more at one with the world around me. I had stopped sitting at home brooding, hoping that a miracle would come along and rid me of how I was feeling. One thing I quickly learnt is that the road to recovery is not all plain sailing. There are ups and downs. You should enjoy the good days

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and don’t get too depressed about the bad. The most important thing to remember is that in order to get better, you may have to live alongside the old you for a while, including the feelings of dread and anxiousness. This can’t be avoided, but while you are doing this a new you will begin to emerge, ready to rise to the surface. Below is part of an email from someone I helped. She was in a deep hole when she first came across my site and read my book. At the time of writing she is well on her way to recovery and in her own words ‘1000 times better’. The statement below is so very true and something I tried to get across to her very quickly – it is the ‘trying to control’ the anxiety that ultimately keeps us in the cycle. Hi Paul, I was having a think yesterday about how far I have come. There were times when I thought I was trapped with anxiety forever… but thinking about it, all the ‘fighting to control’ is what trapped me and not the actual symptoms. If I had left the stress induced symptoms alone then I would have never ended up in the state I did! But I persevered and now I am seeing big results. I don’t ever worry about whether or not I will recover now - it’s like it’s inbuilt that I just know I will. She had finally got it. It was the fighting, trying to control the anxiety that made her sink deeper into the condition. If she had just got on with her day accepting the anxiety induced symptoms, her life would have been far easier. But she did the exact opposite and spent her day trying to ‘rid’ herself of the way she felt and trying to think and fight her way better. I told her from a very early stage “When you wake up in a morning, don’t make it your daily aim to rid yourself of your anxiety”. It is a fight you will lose for sure as there is no battle to fight. Looking back to my own suffering, I don’t think there was a day that I did not try and rid myself of how I was feeling. This was obviously getting me nowhere, so I had to try a new approach. I began to realise that if doing this was making me worse, maybe then I should do the opposite. Referring back to the stress induced symptoms she mentioned, she also sees them for what they are. She has changed her attitude and understands that however she feels it is just an off shoot of anxiety stress related symptoms as she puts it. Symptoms that used to

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bother her and fill her with so much dread and fear no longer have the edge anymore as she understands why she feels like she does. I used to have many symptoms when I suffered, but once the anxiety left so did the symptoms and none hung around. At the time I thought I had to deal with each one separately, but this was not the case. I also received the following email, which I would like to share with you. It came from someone who was going through recovery, but could not seem to get over that final hurdle. Hello Paul, I just wondered if you could help me. With your help, I have been able to banish so many of my symptoms, but what I can’t seem to do is get over that final hurdle to recovery. I seem to have hit a brick wall now and even though I can do so much more and feel so much better, I still find myself being anxious in certain places and wondered if I should just maybe not go there until my body fully repairs itself? Like I say, I feel much better and full recovery seems so close, but I can’t seem to get over this last stage and don’t seem to be making any progress. I just wondered if you could explain why? Regards Ian My reply was: Hi Ian, I also went through this and felt the same frustration of being so close to recovery, but not being able to get over that final hurdle that I felt was in front of me. Here is how I overcame this. I felt so close to recovery and had come so far, that I decided I would stay in to help reach my goal of recovery, thinking this would take me over that final hurdle, as long as I did not put myself in the situations that still made me feel uncomfortable. I did not stay in because I wanted to stay in. I did it because I felt so close to

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recovery and did not want to risk feeling bad again. Like you, I also did not like how it made me feel, so I set up camp in my safe haven called home thinking this would take me over that final hurdle. I soon learned that it did not, and one day I said to myself: “Anxiety, you still hold the power over me to influence what I do, but today its stops. I am going to embrace you and take away that power. You are never going to stop me doing anything anymore. If you want me to feel bad, then so be it, but this is the last time you have any influence over what I do”. The next day I went to visit a friend and felt okay. I then arranged a night out and felt fine. I also went walking my dog and popped into my dad’s house and nothing happened. Okay, I experienced a little bit of anxiety but I embraced it. I did not see it as an obstacle any more, but accepted it as an opportunity to see what I could achieve. This went on for a few weeks. I went everywhere I wanted to and felt every twinge of anxiety at will. Within a short space of time, I had passed that final hurdle. It was as if my mind and body had overtaken my memory and habit and convinced me that I could do these things. Memory and habit were holding me back and the more I embraced anxiety, the more it died down. Anxiety loves avoidance, so take its power away and embrace it. Stop letting it influence what you do and stop running away from these feelings. This is the way forward.” This person replied saying that this is exactly what he had been doing and once he received my reply, he was able to overcome this and reach recovery. I wanted to include this email as it explains that the more you avoid the way you feel, the more it can drag you down. It may be the safe way to do things, but it does no good long term. That's the key. I felt like this once but then changed my attitude to thinking, I am sick of this now and I no longer care what happens - anything is better than having no life. So I went everywhere and did everything against my body’s instinct and, you know what, nothing bad happened to me. Oh yes, I felt uncomfortable at times, but I just gave into the feelings and stopped trying to control them. Whatever happened, happened, but nothing did. I felt awful - overwhelmed at times - but it always

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calmed down. I stopped adding avoidance and fear and the feelings had no fuel left to feed on. It is all about going through it and changing habits like avoidance. It’s not easy at times, but it brought me so many victories and this is where confidence is built. It is the continued doing that brings so many rewards. As one lady put it ‘It’s like re-training the brain’. The one thing I learnt is that you have to lose the need to be in control. At one time, if I did not feel right then I felt I had to fix it, but I eventually learned to go with the ‘craziness’ as I put it, and not fight against it. One lady who struggled with anxiety and let it dominate her day, recently sent me an email saying, “I feel anxious today Paul, but, hey, it’s okay”. This is the stage she needed to reach. More than anything else, the first step is to view anxiety in a different way and to change your attitude towards it, so that it does not dominate your every waking moment. It is never about how you feel - you can do very little about that - is more to do with your attitude towards it. If you want to fight, worry and obsess about it daily and let it get you down, spending the whole day in a battle you cannot win, then go ahead, but, trust me, you will feel far worse. You need to reach the stage where it no longer matters if those anxious feelings are there or not. They just become a nuisance in the background. I knew I was reaching recovery well before I did, as the symptoms no longer bothered me to the point that they affected my day. I had also given my body the break it so craved and my symptoms were far less severe, the good days far outweighing the bad. I went from having no good days at all, to some good and some bad. This proved to me that for the first time in years I was heading in the right direction and that it was only a matter of time before I was my old self once again.

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Chapter 6 PANIC ATTACKS EXPLAINED Below I will try to give an explanation of panic attacks, so that you fully understand what is happening to you during an attack and will become less afraid. It will also help you to understand that they do not just happen to you because you have been chosen; there is always a reason behind them. What causes panic attacks? This can vary. During my own period of suffering I only ever had one full blown panic attack. Some people suffering from anxiety experience none at all and for others, they become part of their lives. Some people’s personality can be a contributory factor. The person prone to worry a lot throughout their life may suddenly go from been anxious to having a panic attack for no real reason apart from a continuous build up of worry. Sometimes they are born out of a childhood event, possibly emotional or physical abuse or, as in my case, substance abuse or withdrawal. They can be caused by many different factors but, however they develop, they need to be addressed in the same way. They can rule a person’s life to such an extent that the person becomes unable to do what other people take for granted - a simple trip to the shops can become an ordeal - and can rob them of their very freedom. The reason I only suffered one full blown panic attack is because I understood them and was not afraid of the feelings. Some people are not so lucky and may see their life become more and more restricted, not knowing why they feel so dreadful when they try and do things that other people take for granted. Understanding why you feel like you do is the way forward to recovery. It is the very ‘not knowing’ that brings our fear of how we feel, thus creating more panic. At times, we are merely scared of what might happen next. Below I will explain why at first you may have felt panicky and try to reassure you that nothing bad is going to happen to you. I will also tell you how to deal with your subsequent feelings of panic.

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Feel the fear and do it anyway You may have come across this saying before, but it’s a very important statement and one that I feel needs explaining fully as it helped me so much through my own recovery. You may have reached the stage where you dread going to social events for fear of feeling panicky, or just meeting a friend in the street for fear of making a fool of yourself. In some cases, just going to the shops can create feelings of panic. It’s not what will happen to you that sends you running back home, it’s the fear of what may happen. There is one thing I want to get across to you very early and that is: in order to recover and move forward from feelings of panic, then we have to feel them. This is how I came through and how everyone I have helped in the past has been able to overcome these feelings. If we run away, not going here and avoiding there in case we feel panic, then we have little hope of overcoming them. In the past, many people have said: ‘You know what, I am sick of this fear holding me back, from now on I no longer care, whatever is lying at the other side I want to feel it’. I was the same, I was no longer going to avoid, but allow these feelings to come and I soon found out that they only had the power I gave them. I remember the first time I did not run for the door to escape and as soon as it hit a peak it calmed, I did not collapse, faint or run around wildly. Then in the future if I ever felt a little nervous or panicky it was fine, I was no longer scared or bothered by these feelings. I did this many times, refusing to run away or avoid and sometimes I felt nothing and other times a little panic and then nothing, the whole point though was to not care if these feelings came or not. They were not harmful and always calmed, so bring them on. Before I never had the chance to find out where these feelings would take me as I ran away from them, but I understood this was my normal body mechanism, the fight or flight we are all born with.

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Why do we first feel panic? When we have a cold, we know the symptoms and we don't worry about them. We may have a headache or an upset tummy, but we don’t have a problem with that; we all get them from time to time. But what happens when, for no apparent reason, we experience the feeling of panic for the first time? AGGGHHHH … No-one told us about this, so this really must be something bad. You have no-one you can really talk to about this, but: “Oh my God, what happened there? Well, think about it this way: If you came face to face with a dangerous dog that you feared in the street, your heart would race and start beating very fast. You would feel panicky and very uncomfortable. But when it was all over, you would start to relax and your body would return to normal. No problem there. You would expect to feel like this in that situation, who wouldn’t? But, this is different - you felt panicky for no reason - WHY? Imagine a cup that is gradually being topped up with water until eventually it fills up and cannot hold any more, so it overflows. If you are stressed or worrying over a long period of time, be it through bereavement, relationship break-up or long term problems, adrenalin is constantly being released into your system until eventually it overflows. Suddenly, wham, you feel panicky for no apparent reason when, in fact, your body is actually protecting itself and releasing that overflow of worry and stress that has been building up over the previous weeks/months. My actual overflow was all the stress and worry about my initial anxiety. This is the reason I first suffered with any issues of panic – my anxiety became my problem. If I had just lived with it and not worried and stressed about it daily, then the cup would have not overflowed and I would have been just left with my feelings of anxiety. Now if you had been told the above at school or by your parents, you would still have felt panicky, but, you would have been able to say to yourself, “Hey, I have been grieving/worrying for a while now and this is just an overflow of adrenalin”. But because nobody does warn you, you tell yourself that this must be serious. You go home and question everything that happened to you and you can't understand it. Not only that, but you then start worrying that it will happen again. “Oh no, what if I feel like that again?” you say to

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yourself. Now you really are caught in a trap because your whole day/week is going to be lived in fear of another feeling of panic coming. You might as well have a big hat on that says, “Panic, please come again”, because fear brings panic and your day is going to be full of fear. The more the cup fills, the more you fill it with “Oh, my God, what if? What’s happening to me”? This continues all day, every day, and all because of that one day when your body was just releasing an overflow of adrenalin. Now what? Your mind starts racing around and all the worrying thoughts come rushing in. “I might panic when I go out, and what if I see someone I know? Now I am going to stop in. I am safe within these four walls.” The only difference inside these four walls is your attitude -THAT’S ALL. You don't worry inside, so you feel a lot better. But, oh dear, when you go out, off you go again: “Oh, I don’t know if I can do it”. “What if”? “No, I can’t do it”, “I’m going back”, I am safe here” These statements can be the first step towards never going out at all. Believe me, more often than not all of this was caused by the events of that one day and not having an understanding of what was happening the first time you felt like this. If only someone had explained to you exactly what was happening, you could have been spared all those years of suffering - so simple, but true. My own recovery from these feelings of panic came because I understood what was happening and I began to lose my fear of how I felt. Eventually if just turned into a feeling that I was no longer bluffed into running away from. This is the stage you really need to reach, where you no longer fear another attack - easier said than done when all you may have done so far is avoid and run away from how you feel. Although I only had one severe attack, I had many episodes where I wanted to run away or escape. I remember a being on a flight where I was really poorly on the way out. Flying had never bothered me in the past and I had no problem with this. But I was extremely poorly on this flight and just wanted to get off. I really thought I was going to faint. I finally

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reached my destination and was poorly for 4 days and had to see a local doctor. Well, on the way back, I was in the airport and I started with all the ‘What if I feel poorly again’ I became so anxious that I reached the point where I said to my partner ‘I can’t get on’. After speaking to a lady representing the aircraft company, I was told that the plane would have to be held up while they pulled my baggage off. Then all of a sudden I thought: “if I don’t fly, then once again I am giving in to how I feel. Whatever happens, happens”. So I just got on that plane and I flew back with no problems at all. Fear did surface a little as I stepped on, but I just thought ‘come on then, I don’t care’. I arrived at my destination and was so proud of myself for having passed through all those negative thoughts. Fear surfaced, but it died down as it always does. It was only adrenalin being released into my system and could not harm me. That day gave me so much confidence for the future and it was better just to see it through and discover that there really was nothing to fear. I used to feel very uncomfortable in social situations, but always stayed put and allowed myself to feel anything. What was the worst thing that could happen anyway? I knew that if I felt uncomfortable it didn’t matter, I could cope. It was just a feeling, something I had been through many times before. As time goes by everything becomes easier and as you allow yourself to go through difficult situations over and over again, you gain the confidence of knowing that nothing will happen. It is important to accept that the feelings you feel are caused by excess adrenalin and I will say this again because this is all it is, a release of adrenalin. Your body may be sensitised, which is why you may get a stronger reaction to this release of excess adrenalin than a healthy body, but that truly is all it is. The technique is to come out of your safety zone and try to see panic through without attempting to control it or put a stop to it and just go with the feelings. Let your hands shake. Let yourself feel unbalanced. Allow your heart to beat if it wishes. All that’s happening is your body is releasing adrenalin, creating a feeling that can do you no harm. Are you really willing to let a feeling dominate your life?

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When you start to move towards these feelings and say “Okay, come on, do your worst. Do what you have to do, I no longer care”, you stop adding fear to fear. Instead of avoiding or running away, I used to say: “Okay, I am not going to get in your way. Just get on with it as I am very busy today” and to my surprise nothing really happened. Fear rose purely through habit and then died down. I thought: ‘Is that it? Is that what I have been running away from and avoiding for so long?’ When I started to do this I soon realised there was no dark place in which I would lose control. This can take practice and I am not pretending it is easy, but it is the way forward. The key point to remember is that when the fear ‘peaks’ and you feel the need to escape, the need to escape just comes from your in built fight or flight mechanism. I just went against these instincts to escape, as there was nothing to run away from. I stayed put or carried on with what I was doing and after the peak, there was always calm - nothing happened. What confidence that gave me for the future. I knew that if I felt like that again I could cope and my confidence just grew and grew. I am not telling you to go here and there, putting yourself in every difficult situation straight away. Small strides will do at first, as long as you go out with the attitude that you are going to allow yourself to feel any feelings that may surface, not caring if they do or they don’t. If you do this, you will have dealt with yourself and not the situation you find yourself in. In time it will not matter where you find yourself and every situation will be like all the others. You will realise for the first time that you do have some control over the way you feel and that there is hope of overcoming these feelings. ‘Feel them and be free’ was always my motto. To expand on this, I once watched a T.V programme that caught my attention. The program started with a woman who had been burgled and met the person face to face. Two years down the line she never went out, was constantly living in fear and suffered with anxiety/panic etc. This was having a terrible impact on her life and she wanted help. There was a doctor/therapist speaking on the same programme and he talked a lot of sense. He happened to mention something that had a huge impact on me and with which I could identify. He said ‘I went through something very similar, but I refused to let it rule my life’ He went on to explain that he understood the concept that if he did not get straight back out there and face his fears, he would encounter far greater problems, so he

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went towards what he feared and refused to hide. He was actually mugged and wanted to get straight back out there, realising that it was better to do this than allow the problem to grow. The most important thing is he did it straight away rather than build up any avoidance behaviour habits that could cause more problems in the future. His advice made so much sense to me. He went on to say: ‘The answer to your problems lies within you and you have to go towards what you fear to get your life back’. He never said it was easy, but suggested that the habit this lady had developed of refusing to go out and needing someone with her constantly, were counter productive and she needed to do the exact opposite in order to move on from this experience. What she did wrong was to never allow herself to feel any fear or try to get through it. For her it was about avoiding fear at all costs. She would ring her boyfriend 20 times a day and when he got back he was never allowed to go out. She would not go out because of how she felt and the problem just escalated. What she needed to do was feel those feelings of fear and insecurity and go through them. She only need take little steps, like not ringing her boyfriend so much, but she had to feel some fear and discomfort in order to release herself from her prison. Only then would she begin to feel more comfortable. She could never expect to live life with someone constantly by her side. I am not blaming this lady, she was just going along with her instincts, but it was avoidance behaviour that led to her having no life and needing constant security. I want you to remember the following statement because it is very important ‘To release yourself from fear, you have to become present to the experience of fear itself rather than simply trying to get rid of it or running away’ I always went towards any uncomfortable situations and refused to get into avoidance behaviour, even during the days when I had little knowledge, because I knew that this was the worst thing I could do. Trust me, this is what de-sensitises you. I know we want the easy way out, but I realised that if I didn’t do everything at will and allow myself to feel some fear, then my life would just become more and more restricted. If that was the case then the opposite had to be true - to release myself from a life of fear I had to experience it.

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I once had to go to a job interview and as the time for the interview drew near, I thought ‘I can’t do this’ and felt extremely anxious’. I then had a realisation: ‘I would have felt like this in the days before I suffered from anxiety, but I would not have let it bother me as anyone would feel like this before an interview. Also my nerves were sensitised so the feelings may be a little stronger than most, but they’re the same feelings, it’s only my attitude to them that has changed.’ So I just carried on and went to the interview. Once I was in the room and got chatting, I soon felt a lot calmer. Once again I nearly let a common feeling of excess adrenalin (which is all it was) bluff me into avoidance. The more I went towards my feelings of fear the easier things became. I was beginning to build up a real inner confidence and have a far better understanding of how my body worked and reacted Avoid your fear and they will grow, move towards them and they will subside. This condition wants you to hide away, don’t let that happen. A lot of people caught up in the cycle of panic have merely been tricked by their mind into avoidance. It has tricked them because a healthy body which is not affected by anxiety only feels the effects of adrenalin when faced with danger. This is our body’s way of preparing us to escape or act, otherwise known as the ‘fight or flight’ syndrome. Once the danger has passed, our attitude changes, the adrenalin subsides and we begin to calm down. The people who first felt panic for what they believed to be no real reason may have been worrying for weeks/months about a particular problem, not knowing that the adrenalin cup was filling up and about to overflow. Those first feelings of panic may have had them scurrying for home wondering what had just happened. Then they may inadvertently believe that it was the place that made them panic and avoid going there again. But now, not only do they avoid this place, but they may also fear another attack coming. Every time they go out, they start watching their body, tuning in, waiting for a sign that tells them it is happening again. With all this worry, is it any wonder that the cup overflows again and the feelings return? Then it is not the place that worries them any more, it is just the fear of how

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they will feel. They may just decide to stay at home within the safety of their own four walls and avoid going anywhere. They are now caught up in what I call the full fear cycle. This cycle is the only thing that keeps feelings of panic alive, the reason why people can suffer for years. They need to understand why they feel like they do and have a plan of recovery that can break the cycle of fear. So, the next time you go out, just say to yourself: “If I feel panicky, I feel panicky” these feelings are just caused by the effects of adrenalin on sensitised nerves and that’s it, nothing else. Nothing dreadful is going to happen it never does”. Don’t add fear to fear with all the “Oh my God, I must get out of here”. “What’s going to happen?” etc. Trust me when I say that nothing dreadful is going to happen to you, it’s just the effects of excess adrenalin. Again your body may be sensitised, which may exaggerate these feelings, making you feel unbalanced and causing your hands to shake, but don’t worry, the feelings will calm down, they always do. Don’t try to control them or stop them coming but just stay calm in your attitude towards your feelings. Move towards your feelings of fear and see them through. Say: “Okay, come on, do your worst. I no longer care”. What have you to lose? You won’t collapse or die. Just build up that ‘whatever’ attitude. There is no point of no return and peace is always waiting at the other side. You would be amazed at the amount of people who go ahead, face their fears and say “Paul I did it and nothing happened. I felt a bit anxious and panicky, but the feelings calmed down after they had hit their peak. I was even inviting them to come again”. I often felt fear rise, which I knew was just the effects of excess adrenalin on sensitised nerves and it truly did not bother me at time went by. I just saw it as a feeling and understood it. I knew the fear was not real and I no longer cared if I felt it or not - my fear had gone. That is the stage you get to when you see things through and don’t spend your time running away from situations. You need to go through the storm to reach the calm, until one day you get to the point where you can say, “It doesn’t matter any more if panic comes”. This is your aim. Try to embrace your fears instead of avoiding them and you may find you only thought you could not do something and you realise that your body had tricked you into believing this. This method brings so many rewards. Avoidance just

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brings more feelings of failure, more feelings of hopelessness and continued suffering. At first, you may feel worse when practising this way - putting yourself into situations and places that you feared - but this is understandable. Up until now, you have been avoiding these situations and places, letting your world become smaller and smaller, but now you are trying to broaden your horizons, and coming out of your safety zone is the way to do this. So don’t feel disheartened if you feel more exhausted than ever when you do go out there; this is only to be expected. Even if you fall off the bike from time to time, just brush yourself down and try again. Some days may be better than others. Don’t question why - they just are. It is the same as any other feeling. Some days we feel sad, some days we don’t, but we never question why. How we feel can differ from day to day, so don’t waste time and energy trying to work out why one day was better than the next. If you do breathing exercises to calm you down, then that’s fine, use them. I used to slowly take big, deep breaths, and not fast, shallow breaths, even though this is what you tend to do when you feel panicky. Sometimes I found that just a calm attitude saw me through when I felt panicky, but if you feel yourself getting breathless, then just take long deep breaths and don’t gulp for air. It never surprises me when people come back to me and say, “I did it! I felt a little fear, yes, but it was not too bad. I really did it! Now I understand. I just thought I could not do it.” They may only have driven around the block in the car, but their achievement has shown them that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and given them the confidence to believe that they can get better and live life to the full again. So there really is no point of no return. I have seen so many come through once they have decided not to let these feelings dominate their life anymore. They have gone through them enough times to no longer let them bother them. The people who maybe cry at home, wondering why they can no longer do what they did before because of these feelings, need to know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and they can go back to how things were before all

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this happened. You can do anything, as long as you no longer run away from how you feel. This is the way forward, no one can hope to hide away at home, hoping for that miracle where they wake up and no longer feel any fear. Trust in what worked for me. I never took the easy way out. I wanted to live again and I was not going to let these feelings hold me back. If I had to feel them to recover, then so be it. Anything was better than having no life at all.

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Chapter 7 UNDERSTANDING FEELINGS OF UNREALITY Feeling Strange The one question I get asked more than any other is, “Why do I feel strange/unreal. It’s as though I am detached from people. I feel like a shell walking around in a dream?” Many people find this the hardest thing to accept. Okay, I feel anxious and can see that my nerves are tired; that makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is this dull head, feeling like I am under water, not with it, I feel detached from the rest of the world around me as if I am going mad. This can’t be due to me being anxious, can it? This must be something else. First of all, let me clear up one thing, which is something that I get asked so often. “No, you are not going mad”. This feeling comes from being constantly worried about your own problems. You are so used to watching yourself, questioning your illness, day in, day out, that you start to feel detached from the outside world. You may find that when you talk to people it feels as though you are somewhere else. You can hear them, but what they are saying just is not sinking in. Your thoughts are more inward than outward looking, causing you to focus on yourself while trying to follow the conversation. I took some convincing of this when I was anxious and this feeling of strangeness was the last thing to disappear. Now I know that it was caused by nothing more than a tired mind because I am living proof. I felt so detached that I could not read a book or follow a conversation. I felt as if I was taking part in some sort of movie, having to act my way through the day. I just could not connect with people or anything outside of my own little world. I now know that I was just in the habit of watching myself all day and was so concerned about how I felt and how I could get better, that I had no interest in the outside world. My anxiety consumed me. I was living my life, while at the same time watching myself and doing neither very well. When I was talking to people, my thoughts were

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constantly on myself and I found it hard to listen to, or concentrate on, the other person’s conversation. Is it any wonder we can’t follow a conversation when we are so concerned about how we feel? We have become withdrawn into ourselves and our mind becomes worn out and tired with all the ceaseless pondering about how we feel, day in day out. Everything feels grey and muzzy, our mind becomes less resilient and concentration can be so hard to achieve. The more we brood about our feelings, the more tired our mind becomes, continuing this cycle. A person who has suffered may have spent months, even years, studying the problem. Is it any wonder their mind feels dull, unresponsive and so very tired? Even someone with a healthy mind would struggle with this, yet we keep on thrashing our already tired mind, day in day out. Just as your arms and legs can tire with overuse, so can your mind. Sometimes you feel so tired and spent that you have to drag your weary body around with you. This is as much a tiredness of the mind as it is a tiredness of the body. If we over exert ourselves, we rest our arms and legs. Imagine how weary they would get if we just kept on going, as tired as our mind is now perhaps. You only have to go on a forum on the subject to see the many posts nearly all stemming from people worrying about their symptoms. Questions that regularly appear are: Am I going mad? Is this more than just anxiety? When will this ever end? Why do I seem to be getting worse and not better? It really pains me to see people suffer in this way, as they just crave for answers to their condition and are unable to find them. This in turn sets them on the worry merry-go-round that continues the cycle of anxiety. I will give you one vital piece of advice: YOU MUST NOT WASTE ANYTIME TRYING TO WORK ANY OF IT OUT. This helps to make your mind so much more flexible and gives it the breaks it needs. There is nothing to work out. If you do what I say and just carry on with your day however you feel, allowing yourself to feel

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anxious if need be, then what is there to say? You may feel your mind chatter away but that’s fine, this is only habit. Let it ramble on. With time this subsides when we stop all the constant worrying and questioning about how we feel. An explanation like this helped me to recover from this habit. I knew that I did not have to keep running around in my mind all day, looking for answers, questioning every feeling I felt. This is one thing that I constantly have to reassure people about as they are convinced it has to be more than this. The main reason people want an answer is because they find this one of the hardest things to accept. They believe there must be an immediate answer for them. But, remember this: A healthy mind would not be able to feel like you do in one day and neither can your tired mind recover in a day. You did not start to feel like this overnight. It may have taken you months, or even years, to reach the dull, unresponsive mind you have now, so don’t expect it to be responsive and clear overnight. Someone who came to me who is now fully recovered said ‘I did not wake one day recovered, it was a transition’, and this is exactly what it is - the old you comes back in layers. So don’t despair, in time it can and will return to the normal clear mind you once had as long as you step out of the way and give it a rest from all this worrying introspection. I have said all the things you are probably saying, e.g. “It won’t. I know nothing else but this now. This is me”. Yes, and at one point, you could probably never imagine feeling like you do now. I will not lie to you and tell you that if you accept this strangeness for two weeks, it will go! Never, ever put a time limit on how long it will take for the feelings to go away. It took me a few months before I was totally back to normal and achieved the clear mind I have now, a mind that allows me to think and function just like I could before I developed a tired mind (notice I say this often because that’s what it is). Recovery comes at its own pace, but I did notice myself gradually improving and becoming more alert, less clogged up. Recovering can be just as rewarding as the actual recovery and the little improvements that you will begin to notice help to build up your confidence.

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All those treatments that promise to make you feel better within two weeks, offering the new miracle cure, just give false hope. It just can’t happen because it takes time to recover, to thaw out and feel emotions again. If there were a miracle cure out there, we would all know about it and someone would be very rich!! What you must do, for the time being, is accept this muzzy head and the feelings of strangeness. Do not question them, but accept their true cause which is the constant worrying about the very symptom itself. The less we concern ourselves with how we feel, the more we let other things into our day. This is how to integrate back into normal living, which is impossible while you spend all of your day worrying and obsessing about how you feel. You need to care less about how you are feeling and the more you do this, the more you allow other good things in. At first you may still find your attention reverting back to you and how you are feeling. It will do through memory and habit, but the more you involve yourself with other things, the more outward looking you will become and the cloud will begin to lift. It may only be for a few fleeting moments at first, but in time it will begin to lift more and more. In my case, I began to understand why I felt this detachment from people. I believed what I was told and then I stopped worrying about feeling strange. I went into difficult situations, which meant talking to people and friends, expecting to feel strange and detached. My motto was: “If I feel strange, I feel strange”. I stopped worrying about it and trying to analyse the feelings. I still felt them, but I stopped worrying about them, and because I stopped anxiously watching myself, I found I could follow a bit more of people’s conversation. As time went by, I started to become more interested in what they were saying, rather than worrying about myself. I had started to connect with the outside world again. Can you see how this happened? My habit of watching myself in these situations lessened and not worrying about how strange I felt replaced the habit of worrying about how I felt. It became my new habit. If you are in similar situations, truly accept the strangeness you feel and do not question any of it. It is temporary and not important. Even if you have not felt like that for a while and it returns – don’t worry about it. Memory alone can bring it back, but just live with it for now and, in time, the accepting gives your mind the rest it needs and enables it to become clearer and more responsive.

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What you must not do is try and force normal feelings. You must wait for normal feeling to return of their own accord, which, in time, they will. In your efforts not to feel the way you do and by questioning why you do, day in, day out, you have been burdening yourself with more thoughts and putting more pressure on your already tired mind. I used to say, “My mind is a little tired at the moment, there is nothing I can do about it and worrying about it does not help. Anyway, it will not be there when I recover”. The mere acceptance of this condition can bring with it a mind that feels clearer than it has done in months. You may feel normal for a while and believe that you are fully recovered, only to suddenly feel engulfed again by feelings of detachment and disorientation. This is normal; it takes time for your mind to adjust. Just experiencing a brief moment of clear thinking is enough for you to know that you are on the right path. To sum up this chapter, accepting feeling strange means not trying to work out why you feel like you do, not trying to get rid of these feelings and not running away from them. It’s about being prepared to carry on with your life despite them and understanding that it’s totally normal in the circumstances to feel this way.

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Chapter 8 SCARY/IRRATIONAL THOUGHTS This is another symptom of anxiety that crops up quite often, so let me try to give you an explanation. "Why do I seem to have so many thoughts in a day and why are my thoughts so irrational and scary?” you may ask. Well, don’t worry, you are not ‘losing it’ or going insane, this is just another off-shoot of anxiety. The reason you seem to have your attention on yourself all day and it feels like there are endless thoughts running through your mind is twofold. 1. It is all the confusion about how you feel. Your mind spends all day looking for answers and trying to find a way out of this hell. Some people may even stay up all night, reflecting on the whole day and trying to figure everything out. Eventually, thinking just becomes automatic; it becomes a habit. All day, every day, these thoughts seem to enter your head before you even think them. Look at it this way: when people meditate, they stop thinking for hours on end, until it becomes a habit and they can go all day without a worrying thought. This is why they feel so refreshed. Not you, your thoughts just carry on and on, and when your mind is tired, as it is now, it grabs hold of every thought, pulling them in and making them stick. 2. Why are some thoughts so bad? When you are in an anxious state, emotions seem to be tenfold, everything magnifies and a little problem becomes massive. Something that you could dismiss when you were healthy, can stick around all day. Anxiety is really just caused by adrenalin that needs an outlet, a release if you like, and this includes manifesting itself into scary,

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strange thoughts. They are not important and should be seen for what they are - anxiety just playing its tricks. Below are just some of the irrational thoughts on anxiety that I have come across. I call them the ‘what ifs’! What if no one can cure me? What if it’s not anxiety, but a different mental problem? What if my old self is lost forever? What if there is something else wrong with me - brain tumour etc? What if I lose control? What if I can't breathe? What if I have to live like this for the rest of my life? What if this feeling never goes away? What if it’s just me that feels like this? What if I'll never be able to enjoy the things I used to? What if I have an attack and pass out? What if I cannot be the person I used to be? You may have asked some of the above questions or recognise a fear you have. Well, I did too. It was always ‘yes, but what if?’ Well, all of these ‘what ifs’ usually amount to nothing. They prove to be just an overactive mind playing its tricks on you. Thoughts seem to come uninvited and always hold such power when we are anxious. Also, a lack of understanding of anxiety can bring these fears. Like me, you may have suffered for a long time without anyone explaining to you why you feel like you do and you may not even have been told that it is anxiety. Can you see why these fears can build up in people? A lack of understanding of their condition,

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coupled with the habit of always thinking the worst compounds their fears. Add this to a tired mind that has lost a lot of its resilience and you have a whole host of ‘what ifs?’ Some people worry to the extent that they believe everything they feel is life threatening. A headache becomes a brain tumour; a stomach ache can become cancer and so on. No matter how many times their doctor tells them there is nothing wrong with them, they are never quite convinced. If this is you, then realise these thoughts of illness are just figments of your imagination, mainly created by your anxious state. Everything becomes magnified when we are anxious. Let these thoughts go. Don’t react to them and see them for what they are - thoughts that carry no weight whatsoever, no matter how loud they shout. I truly let my mind chatter if it must. I allowed myself to think anything and just did not react. The thoughts were not real, but just built up through my anxious state. The more we try to push them away, the longer they linger and the stronger their impact. When we welcome and give room to unwanted thoughts, they lose their significance and quickly diminish. When you attach a false sense of importance to a thought, it will often appear more serious than it is. Remember they are just thoughts and are of no significance. Pay them no respect. Just say to them: “come if you wish, it’s just anxiety playing its tricks. Just as my legs wobble when I drink alcohol, with anxiety I may have silly irrational thoughts but they’re not real”. The following statement came from a lady who did as I advised and clearly explains what I’m saying: “I really did have no control over my own mind before. The more I tried to over control the less control I had.” This is very true. In my case, the more I tried to stop thinking or felt the need to take every thought seriously and unravel it, the less control I felt I had. It was only when I took my thoughts with a pinch of salt and just got on with my day, whatever the chatter, that I noticed a big improvement. They no longer had the fuel of fear to keep them going.

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The best way to alleviate these intrusive thoughts is to allow them their space by NOT trying to force them out. Why not try following a negative/scary thought through and ask yourself the question “What is the worst thing that could happen? Then ask yourself if it is really going to happen? Is this thought rational in any way? If you do this, you may find the answer to a thought you have been so frightened of, so that next time these thoughts enter your head, deep down inside there will be a part of you that can see them for what they really are and let them go. Some people say they have thoughts about harming people close to them. They know that they won’t, but the thought is there at times. Again, this is just adrenalin finding a release and creating these thoughts. That’s all it is, so don’t worry or feel guilty for thinking them, just see them for what they are - anxiety letting off a little steam. If you are having trouble sleeping, then this can be caused by your mind being too active when your head hits the pillow. If you are caught in this trap, try not to go to bed analysing the day, trying to unravel it all and hitting one brick wall after another. However your day has been, just accept it. There is nothing to work out. You may find it hard to switch off the constant thoughts that fill your mind, but don’t try. Just let the thoughts come and let them go. Don’t grasp them like they are important - they’re not. You may even find you will drop off to sleep more quickly and get the rest your tired body so craves. What do you do then? I found an explanation for the reason why I felt like I did and I believed it. This in itself brought a lot of my fears to a halt. I realised that these scary thoughts would continue to come for a while. Not only did my anxiety bring them, it had also become my habit to think them, but I learned that all I needed to do was to pay them no respect. I saw them for what they were - just thoughts, brought on by anxiety and habit. They were not important. I know that giving little respect to a thought that seems so bad and comes with such force is hard, but realise it is only the state you are

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in that magnifies them and makes them seem important. Accept they are only thoughts that hold no power and can do you no harm. Just let all negative, destructive thoughts float away. Smile at them if you like. You have total control over how much respect you pay them. Do not try and get rid off scary thoughts or stop them coming. By doing this, you are telling them that they are important, which they are not. I often get asked ‘How I do I stop thinking in a certain way’. My reply is “DON’T try”. If it’s not important whether your thoughts are scary or not, why try to stop them. The way to lose them is to give them their space. Fighting thoughts and trying to rid yourself of them is the wrong thing to do. It is a battle you will lose for sure. Some people say they only have to hear something on the news about a new illness and they are convinced they have it. Many can't understand why they get such a reaction to some bad news which may not even concern them. The answer to this is simple and sums this chapter up. Your body is just in a sensitised state at the moment and this is the only reason that thoughts exaggerate themselves. This section from an email sums up what I am trying to say. Hi Paul, I understand now about the need to not let thoughts bother me or doubt and question them. Whatever goes on in my head is fine. I realise that in my present state I SHOULD have anxious thoughts, I am anxious after all. I have learnt to not accept the thought as truth and accept it as just a thought brought on by my anxious state. Thank you for your explanation. I also explained that when anxiety fades, so do the anxious thoughts, but the above is exactly what I wanted to hear. It just needed an explanation that he could understand and relate to. The following explanation came on my blog from a lady I had been helping. She had recovered and decided to post how she managed to get over this particular symptom of anxiety. I understand now that all that we are doing is tuning into our over active imagination, which has probably always been there and popped various thoughts into our mind, but in the

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past we’ve always ignored them. It’s as if once you have suffered from anxiety you listen to every negative thought and then question why it’s there and why it won’t go away, whereas if you just ignore it, it actually does goes away. What I am trying to say to give some help and support to people is try not to over analyse everything, question every thought, or worry what’s wrong with you. There is actually nothing wrong with any of us, we’re all human and naturally experience thoughts, feelings, and moods, so just accept them and try not to question then or consider them as being weird. I receive a lot of visits to my site from ladies who have recently been through a pregnancy and then go on to suffer with irrational thoughts. This lady is now fully recovered. Here is her story: I understand now that a negative reaction to just one thought can lead you into a downward spiral of obsessive thinking. It did for me. I was 7 months pregnant at the time and had never encountered anything like it before in my life/nor with my first child who was 9 at the time. I was on bed rest for pregnancy complications and had ‘normal’ pregnancy worries, but it was very difficult being alone all day. Then, out of the blue, something was said which I couldn’t get out of my mind and this lead to obsessive thoughts about my unborn baby’s health, which then developed into more obscure obsessive thoughts about harming my own child. I was in such a bad state I walked to the local hospital and they kept me in for 3 months. At the time, I hadn’t found this site, and had never heard of antenatal anxiety/depression before, so didn’t know what I had. I thought it was the deterioration of my mental health and that I was becoming schizophrenic or going crazy. The hospital weren’t much help to be honest, and I spent much of my day on my own in bed obsessing, and became afraid to leave my hospital room. I convinced myself that I was a bad mother, would never be

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able to look after my own child, and would need psychiatric treatment for the rest of my life. Then when my baby was born, they sent me packing with my newborn and some ADs, which I took for 4 months…and very little else. During the first year I plodded along without knowing (or believing) what was actually wrong with me really, and I avoided ‘normal’ situations with which I felt uncomfortable. In hindsight, this was the wrong thing to do, as it wasn’t until I actually faced my fears that I started to recover. But, of course I didn’t know this is what was necessary to recover. I thought I needed to rest and one day I would wake up and be back to normal, but it never happened. It was a very difficult year, and I had the most terrible thoughts which I couldn’t control and I walked around with DP for most of the day, barely functioning really, trapped in my own little world with my terrible thoughts. It was after the first year that I came across very helpful information on the internet and read stories of those who had recovered. I joined a forum for those suffering from Post Natal Depression and this has helped me enormously. This is when I came across Paul as well, and the start of my recovery began. What you must do is NOT avoid your fears. In fact if you fear something, DO MORE OF IT, pay no heed to the intrusive thoughts, they are not actions. When a thought enters your head, the moment a negative emotion is attached to it and you are probably having that sickly feeling in the pit of your stomach, you need to get rid of this emotion and adopt a ‘whatever’, ‘as if’ attitude to your thoughts. It takes time and effort, but the rewards are huge and if you can recreate this new emotion - a ‘don’t care’ emotion - then you will be able to dismiss the thoughts as utter rubbish and they will diminish. At the moment, the fear

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you feel for the thoughts is what is keeping them coming. Once the fear has gone they will have no hold over you whatsoever and you can also adopt this new attitude to chronic worries as well. At first, this don’t care/whatever attitude may ‘feel’ false as if you are having to fake it, but like one doctor said in an article I read, you need to ‘fake it to make it’. Kiss, cuddle, smile, talk to your kids/grandkids, even if you have no feeling or inappropriate feelings/thoughts, and it will come naturally in time. This is so very true and I can personally vouch for it. You must practice the behaviour you want to achieve - in your case it means no ‘negative’ emotion attached to an intrusive thought. I promise you that in time, if you just follow these few behaviour changes, you will notice less obsessive/intrusive thoughts. It won’t happen overnight because you will have doubts to begin with, but in the weeks and months ahead, your mind will slowly clear and you will begin to notice a difference. At the height of my suffering, I was pushing my baby in his pram to pick up my other son from school and I saw a knitting needle on the ground. I immediately panicked and went into a series of ‘what if’ thoughts. Following is the dialogue I had in my mind at that time: “Oh no, I wish I hadn’t seen that” “Mustn’t look at it as I might pick it up” “What if I pick it up” “What if I do something to my baby with it in an irrational moment”, as I imagined myself doing something terrible. “What if people knew what I was thinking. They might take my kids away from me” “What if I’m like those I see on the news” “What if I am like this forever and never recover” I am having heart palpitations by this time and have made myself scared to death

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“What if they lock me up in a psychiatric ward and I never come out again” “What if I never see my kids again” “I am a waste of space and not fit to be a mother” Just look at my irrational thought pattern. I don’t remember the exact thoughts I had during this scenario, but they were in a similar vein to the ones I have mentioned and in fact lots of my thoughts contained elements of the above. What I should have said to myself (with a contemptuous response) when I saw that knitting needle was “What a load of rubbish, as if” and I should have walked on. This would have saved me from spiralling into what was a downward spiral of continual obsessive thoughts for the rest of the day and making myself utterly miserable. I suffered more with paranoid thinking than scary thoughts. I became a people pleaser, worried about what everyone thought about me. I may have said something to someone and then I would spend my day worrying about whether or not I had upset them. Again it was my anxious state making me think this way. I began to understand this and let these paranoid thoughts go. They were not real and so they were getting no respect from me. I stopped being a people pleaser, stopped worrying about what people thought and stopped worrying in case I had upset someone. I was back in control and not my anxious thinking. This helped me so much in the future and brought some much needed confidence back. Here is an email I received that I wanted to share with you, again from someone who suffered after her pregnancy. Hi Paul, I am suffering from post natal depression according to my doctors, but I don’t feel depressed. I feel anxious all the time, my head is racing with scary, irrational, bizarre thoughts and visions and I got so bad that I couldn’t be on my own with my children because the thoughts would always come and scare the hell out of me. Your site and your book, especially the section about obsessive thoughts, have helped me so much. I cried when I read it! I seriously thought I was

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going mad or turning into a nasty person thinking such awful scary things about me and my loved ones. These frightening thoughts raced around my mind all day and the anxiety and panic would flare up as soon as I let a thought scare me. They are still there now and sometimes still do scare me a little as they seem to come from nowhere at times, but with your advice I am learning to just let them be and it has helped me so much. For once I can see light at the end of the tunnel. I no longer let a thought stop me doing something; in fact I go against them. If a silly, intrusive thought comes telling me not to do something, I do it all the more and I feel I am back in control. This has been a real insight to me and I can only thank you. My reply was: TRUST me with a capital T, that there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. This is very common with anxiety and it is all the hormones and stress that cause these thoughts. Anxiety just needs a release and this manifests itself in strange, scary thoughts. TRUST me 100% and just do as you say. Smile at them if you wish. Say 'yes, as if' it’s just my anxiety finding an escape route. I had such thoughts and just paid them no respect. In time, without the fuel of fear, my anxiety levels dropped and became weaker and weaker. I was so used to not letting them bother me that they just became a very slight annoyance and lost their importance. Regards Paul In the past I have helped people voluntarily, answered emails and also run a blog. Below are some of the posts, replies and conversations from that time which I thought were worth saving. A lot of the replies are from people who have recovered or were well on their way to recovery. A few words from Diane, who started to really understand the message I was passing on to her. The post comes from my personal blog.

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I remember a few months back reading a post from a lady who said something like “today I have done as Paul says and finally given up the fight” and she mentioned that she was now ready to let the anxiety be there for as long as it needed to be. I would read and re-read that post because it gave me a lot of hope. I can finally say that after two years of suffering from anxiety, I think I am at that place and truly understand what this lady was saying. I used to wonder how I would get there or when I would find peace. Lately I have been focusing on just living my life for me and not the anxiety and then the other day as I was walking up to the front door of my house, I felt this sense of calm and understanding. The anxiety was still there but I truly felt as though it was OK. It was there but it meant nothing and it wasn’t going to hurt me. I have since experienced moments in the day when I realize I don’t feel it at all and there is a feeling of space in my chest where there was once a painful tightening. It really takes practice too to spot when I automatically start adding fear to my anxiety symptoms, but I am getting much better at that too. My mind still churns out some silly thoughts and the sleeping thing is at times not great, but all of this is starting to not matter that much. I was making recovery way too important and just focusing on how to rid myself of how I felt instead of just living and seeing what came along naturally, I was definitely trying to fight my way to recovery! I am sure that there are going to be moments in the future when I will need to re-learn this, but I have more confidence in my ability to come through it now. John’s story, again a post from my blog: Anxiety just does not seem to matter to me anymore. If, for whatever reason, I feel a wave of anxiety, I just let ‘whatever’ happen to me and I have definitely had many rewards during recovery. At the moments when we are feeling at our worst, we have a choice. We can either (a) make ourselves worse by worrying, fighting and trying to think our way out, or (b) let

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‘whatever’ happen to us and with a small amount of time we’re fine again. It always sorts itself out. Regarding what Paul said about little things not bothering him anymore, I have realised how much I have worried in my life about silly, insignificant things. If somebody spills a pint down your new jeans - aah, it’s slightly annoying but it really doesn’t matter. It starts raining as soon as you’ve put the washing out …bummer, but at the end of the day these things happen. This is my new attitude to many aspects of my life, and the best thing is I don’t have to try, it’s coming naturally! Another point I’d like to mention is that recently my girlfriend has been really stressed about exams and revision and has been losing sleep through stress and worry. One day she said to me, ‘I’m lost; whatever I try to do I just can’t get to sleep’. So I said to her, don’t try to get to sleep, just let everything go and if you sleep well then great and if you don’t, you don’t. She couldn’t believe that something as simple as ‘not doing anything’ had eased her sleeping troubles. It felt strange to be the teacher instead of the pupil on anxiety, ha ha! Now that I have finally let go of the battle, I know it is not one that can be won. It is no longer important to rid myself of the anxiety. When I have bad thoughts or feel anxious, it’s not important to me to try to rid myself of them anymore. I don’t feel the need to repeat sayings in my head, such as ‘I accept this’, hoping that if I believed it enough this awful thing would go away. I can’t explain it so I won’t try, but I am feeling positive. I have finally let go of the battle and found peace regardless of the fact that I still have anxiety. Each day was a struggle before, wondering when this awful feeling would go away. Now I couldn’t care less if it takes months or years and I truly mean that. I know 100% and believe this thing will pass in its own time when my body has recovered. Anxiety may have filled the past few years with fear, but the future is mine now and I am

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not going to spend a single day worrying whether or not it is going to be there. I also believe that striving for acceptance of this condition can become a battle in itself. As soon as I let go and started to live anyway with this thing beside me, the acceptance of my condition came to me automatically. Below is an email from Jeff, someone that was almost housebound when he first read my book and landed on my site. This e-mail is not to question anything. This e-mail is not to try to figure anything out. This e-mail is just a response to everything you have been helping me with. Paul, you have saved my life and helped me begin to recover. The physical feelings of anxiety are SLOWLY beginning to subside. Believe me when I say it is slow, but I cannot explain it, I just feel different, and a good different at that. I have faith in myself now. It's crazy; it's very difficult at first. How in the hell am I supposed to get through the day with how I feel? If I just accept it and go on with my day, this will overtake me. I must try to control it so that it does not do that! That is the attitude I used to have. I was just stressing my tired body out more! So I finally said ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! I woke up this past Monday morning and I said to myself, "Okay Jeff, you may feel crappy today, but you have these things you need to do at work. You need to get the binders done, you have to make all these copies, you have XYZ projects to work on, get these things done and don't just sit at your desk all day and worry about the way you are feeling". My goodness was it hard to do that. It was so hard because I have being doing the opposite for so long. Then I did it on Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday, and today! I went out with my roommates on Wednesday and Thursday night, and not because I floated there, but because I actually WANTED to! And tonight I look forward to the same. Paul, the hardest part of allowing

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yourself to feel like this, is at the beginning, doing things anyway even though the "Devil" inside of you is screaming STAY HOME!! IT'S EASIER! SIT AT YOUR DESK, IT'S EASIER! Practicing what you preach is very difficult at first. It just does not feel right, it feels gross, and my body feels like absolute garbage. I felt like my entire body was rotting or something. I never knew anxiety could feel so crappy. I thought it was just something that people get when they are stressed, and then it goes away. But this is a snowball affect. Once you learn the correct method towards recovery, it gets easier to accept, and then the feelings don't come quite as strong or as often. Your personality comes back and then it gets even easier. Then the feelings come less often and more of your personality returns. Eventually it snowballs, you start to feel physically better and then you aren't as tired. And so the cycle continues. That is the true way to recovery. I'm not 100% better yet, but at least now I know there is hope. It's like John Mayer writes in his song, "I'm in repair, I'm not together, but I'm getting there" Thank you. God Bless. Jeff Again this email came from Jeff a few weeks after the one above. Last night was unbelievable. I think I've finally figured it out. It's not about forcing yourself to accept it every second of every day, it’s about your attitude towards it. I admit, these past three days, there have been times when I have felt absolutely HORRIBLE, but I kept saying to myself “do it anyway. Talk to your room mates. Go to dinner with a friend. Get your work done at work. What has anxiety done to me so far? It hasn't killed me. It hasn't allowed me to topple over and pass out. It hasn't given me an infectious disease. Okay, so I feel crappy during the day but am I really going to let this stop me from doing what I want to do? What I have figured out is that your attitude can determine A LOT! I can either a) cower to this and sit in my basement all day watching movies and wonder why in the world this happened

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to me or b) I can accept that I feel this way, and then do anything and everything I want to, regardless of whether I feel like doing it or not, or whether it feels like a huge effort. There are times when it’s hard to convince myself that I am Okay. But then I just look at these amazing quotes that come from your book and I can just keep going. I must say, my co-workers are wondering what in the world I am taking about with these quotes. "Come on do your worst, I no longer care?" Sounds rather disturbing if you didn't know what I was talking about. But they help me, and that's all that matters. I have had some good days in the past, but I always fell back into the giving up attitude. There was actually a period last night of about 20 minutes where I felt NOTHING at all. It was a very short period of time, but I was stunned, shocked, amazed. And I wasn't even aware of how I was feeling because I was so caught up in the project that I was working on (a get well card). And yes, then it came back, but I kept my attitude positive. And yes, like you mentioned, I still think about it all day, every day, but that is okay because it has become my habit. Habits are hard to break. If I'd spent four months biting my nails, I wouldn't be able to stop in the first day, week, or month even. Paul, you have become very therapeutic to me already, more so than any therapist has. My psychologist has been rooting through my past trying to figure out why I might feel this way. But that's not it. I'm an emotionally stable, social butterfly who just had a HUGE build up of stress over time (perceived medical problems, worries about relationships, loneliness at times, final exams etc.) No wonder I've gotten to this point! But it stops now. And starting to stop began with you... Thank you. I hope you don’t mind me emailing you my progress, it’s just I feel I want to share the realisations and progress that I am making. Jeff Below are some words of comfort for others, posted on my blog:

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Hi, I’m 21 and a 4th year nursing student. I suffered an anxiety attack in April of 2008 and went down the road of deep thinking, constant worry of how I was feeling which left me with constant anxiety and feelings of depersonalisation. I found Paul’s information in the summer and started applying it to my life. It took a while to understand the information and truly apply it to my life. I just want to say that my anxiety has been leaving me layer by layer. I want to tell you all, or reassure you all, that it is TRULY a process. The key is to LIVE as normal as possible and focus on outside OUTWARD tasks like reading, exercising and socialising. This stops the constant inward thinking of your condition and gives the mind the break it needs. As I applied this behaviour, I noticed moments of normality that keep adding up as the days passed!!!! I am not fully recovered. However I feel it is just around the corner. It’s just a matter of keeping my mind busy and focusing on outward tasks rather than me. This does not mean I run around frantically doing things to forget my anxiety as this would be running away. No, if It’s there, it’s there. It is just sensitised nerves that I can do nothing about anyway, apart from giving them the break they need. Everyone worries that they may be the only one who doesn’t recover; it’s part of the self-doubt that we all have when suffering, but keep following Paul’s advice. Live your normal life alongside anxiety, accept the thoughts and let them be in the background. Try not to analyse them (it takes practice I know - but small steps at first) and face any fears that you may have head on. Do not avoid doing things, going places that you would have done before the anxiety, even if you feel strange. You are changing behaviour and to do this you need to live alongside the old behaviour for a while, until the new behaviour overtakes the old one. I also now understand that if I do TRY to feel better then it is actually causing me to care about how I am feeling, which causes the worry and obsessing habit to return. I think I am on track with

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something here. It’s that basic need to be in control that holds us back. I promise you Paul’s method works, it has been a life saver for me. I truly hope this encourages other people. My reply to this post was: Yes, that is exactly what I try to get across. I am really glad you were able to apply it and also keep the faith that this would work rather than going for the quick fix. Too many people are so influenced by the way they are feeling at the moment, that they don’t see past today. Rather than searching for recovery or demanding it, you have let it come to you. There has been a lot of talk on here about people having a bad day and again thinking they are back to square one. “It’s back, so this is me forever then” is their attitude. You may have to go through these bad periods many times. You will have many setbacks and you will have some up and down days, but just enjoy the good and don’t get down about the bad, they will pass. Don’t be influenced by how you feel at any given time, it’s not important. It’s the continued ‘living’ that will bring peace. And you’re right, it is a process. It’s not about how you feel today or tomorrow, it will come in its own time. Another post from my blog, encouraging others: I know how awful it feels to wake up to a new day feeling like nothing gives you joy and everything you do seems meaningless. This is the hard part to accept and it is very easy to start going against the stream again without even noticing it. But you should have seen me 6 months ago before I landed on this site and compare it to what I am now, there’s a huge difference. What I did was nothing more than I jumped in the stream and stopped fighting back. The key thing for me was to become more active. It was REALLY difficult at first because everything felt so meaningless but the more I left home the more meaningful things became and everything started feeling more natural. There have been up and downs for sure but, hey, that’s what life is like anyway. Don’t expect an instant salvation just because you have

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found the key to recovery. Stick to the course and keep the faith. This post came from someone who, within two days of reading my book, went from being a complete wreck to viewing how she felt in a completely different way. As she makes some very good points and understood truly what I was trying to get across, I thought it was important to add it. Hi everyone. Well I guess I am kind of new to anxiety in a certain sense. I have always been a bit of a worrier and used to freak myself out that I had every illness in the world. My biggest fear was (like many) going mad or “losing my mind”. Well this site and Paul’s book has been a wonderful help to me, and it’s only been TWO days since I read the book. I suffered a very tragic loss in Oct 07 (stillbirth at 25 weeks) and it tore my reality apart. Literally, I went into tremendous shock and was so upset that what I was feeling was happening to me, to ME!!! The world terrified the holy crap out of me and I had no idea who/what/where/how I was. Somehow I held it together, after so much falling apart it didn’t seem possible. Anxiety was HUGE at the start, I had no idea what was happening to me at all. I was terrified I was going to get postnatal depression/post natal psychosis (because others did) etc. etc. I convinced myself at one stage that I actually had it and, of course, cue the scary thoughts which fuelled that belief. I got so depressed thinking I had it and so the cycle went on. We moved house and I went back to work. This lifted my spirits for a few weeks but I felt the down-ness coming back again and it kind of spiralled up until a few weeks ago when, on a Saturday, the feelings and scary thoughts got SO bad that I honestly thought that day I was having a nervous breakdown. The scary thoughts were the worst for me. I was convinced I could do some harm to my partner - so bad that I was terrified of my kitchen knives (ALL BECAUSE OF ONE

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THOUGHT) and because I pondered and completely obsessed about that thought, I was convinced even more that I had post natal depression which made me worse and so it went on and on -cycles of anxiety, fear, depression, adrenalin, frayed nerves…not sleeping…EXHAUSTED physically and mentally!!! How I continued going to work I will never know. I was going around like a ghost, like a shell; it was awful. I was beating myself up constantly because I SHOULD have been feeling better…I just should have. But I shouldn’t! I found Paul’s site. Believe me, I am a true information gatherer and, of course, like many of us, convinced myself that I had every symptom, disorder etc. The amount of times I asked my partner if he thought I had this or that. No amount of convincing would pacify me. Then I found Paul! It’s only been a few days, but now I finally realise what’s causing all of this. Yes, I went through a terrible trauma. Of course my poor mind and body wanted and needed to shut down. But did I give it the break it deserved and needed…NO! Of course I didn’t. Now I finally realise where the bodily feelings come from…adrenalin people…adrenalin!! That’s simply it. I thought I was doing okay until we were on our way back from Manchester on an early morning flight. My stomach turned once at the thought of going back home and BAM that started me off thinking “oh no, it’s starting again” and I was messed up for weeks. Then I came across Paul’s book (Thank You). I have learned that no matter what I’m feeling it’s okay.. It’s okay. And that’s all there is to it. Whatever I am feeling, I am feeling and that’s okay. If I feel derealism…is it any wonder? My mind is tired and shut off and needs a break…so it’s okay. If my stomach churns (which it still does a lot) that’s okay. My body has developed a habit and my memory believes that somehow I’m not safe - that’s okay too - habits

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take time to change. It’s all part of it, and that’s okay. If my hands shake, sure, that’s okay too…I’m still working away. Scary thoughts…I’ve learned a lot from this one… I didn’t believe that if I just followed Paul’s advice when the thoughts came, it would work. Believe me, I’m a sceptic when it comes to ME!…It worked. I know I am only 2 days into it but when they come, let them in, see them bounce around in there, let them have a stretch and roar and shout at you…that’s okay...that’s the over production of adrenalin needing an outlet. That’s where the thoughts come from in the first place and because you placed so much importance on them when they first came, your mind thinks there is seriously some danger in that thought. There is NOT! Let it in…pay it no attention. Give it space and time and let it run alongside your day. I didn’t believe it would work, but it did. The thoughts just don’t seem as scary. They are still there but just a teeny bit less scary. Just don’t stress over it. Take the fear out of it and what have you got? A thought and nothing else. I have many scary thoughts, that’s my difficult one, but if I keep following the advice, understanding where they come from and letting them have their space and time…they eventually lose their edge and I find I can go an hour and then think ‘oh I haven’t thought that in a while’. Then it comes back and I do the same all over again: “come on in…take your time but I am not going to pay you much attention” It’s been working so far and I am only starting this journey. I believe it will help me with previous scary thoughts that I had. I now realise that they too came when I was going through some tough times. Yes my friends, anxiety. Accept whatever you are feeling. Don’t “try” to let it go, don’t force it away and don’t try to make yourself feel better. Don’t try to talk yourself down but invite every bit of it in. Live it, experience it, realise that it’s all a part of what you are going through. Don’t fear it. You WILL NOT collapse and die. So what if you look a bit weird in front of people? This is you now (just for now and

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that’s okay) getting better and you will soon be back to your old self. Remove the fear and you remove the problem. It lives on fear, but through understanding and perseverance I believe we all can come through, just as Paul has, and will never have to worry about anxiety again. Shirley The following is a post from someone who is now fully recovered: The problem is an anxiety/depersonalisation sufferer is so desperate to get better he dives into the subject and wants to know everything about it, like other sufferers, people’s stories and experiences, side effects, medical help, cures etc. However, the answer to anxiety does not lie on an internet blog or forum, in a pill or expensive psychiatric help, it is about distancing your thoughts from the initial problem of anxiety, and then after time your thought patterns alter and you begin to de-sensitise to TV programmes about depression, and, in my case, the word ”crazy”, as our minds begin to engage on other elements of life outside of anxiety. After this, you will get better, maybe for an hour, a day or a week, then it will come crashing down again (a setback), but the memory of that moment of improvement (memory now acts in your favour) keeps you moving on until the your next break from anxiety. It’s this incremental process that will finally take you through, and it does get easier. Just remember, there is nothing wrong with you or your brain, it’s just your thoughts are obsessed with your illness and negativity that is causing your whole body to react. You have trained your mind to worry, now it’s time to alter it’s focus, socialise, play sports, video games, puzzles, exciting movies, anything to re-engage your mind. Below are a couple of posts from my blog written by me: This was a post explaining how the anxiety loop continues in many cases.

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Hi everyone, I was talking with someone the other day about his anxiety and how it came about. He told me that, at the time, he was under a lot of pressure at work and one or two things in his home life were also a factor, although he could not really remember what. He said “I have cut my hours down and the other problems no longer exist, so why do I still feel like this”? I replied saying that just like me when I first suffered, he now had a new problem and this is the problem that was keeping his anxiety going, to which he replied: “What new problem”? I replied: “Anxiety, these feelings have become your new problem and this is the reason you stay in the cycle”. I further explained that initially he may have worried about his job and the problems at home, with which he agreed. “Right”, I said, “You put your body under too much stress and worry and it sort of broke down and you ended up with anxiety. Now what you are doing is worrying and stressing about how you feel and this is the reason the anxiety stays around. It has a new worry to feed on. I did exactly the same; in fact my initial problem did not matter. This anxiety was far bigger than what brought it on. I worried daily about it, fought it and tried everything to make the damn thing go away. How could I ever recover putting this much stress and worry on myself? I could not”. He said “I really understand what you’re saying here and I realise that I am doing all of the above so why I am getting nowhere” So I told him that he could not hope to banish these feelings, so why not live with them the best he can for the time being. “If you decide to do this then you will not add any more fuel to the fire. You will begin to break a cycle. Anxiety is like a fire that you throw petrol on. It won’t dampen down until you take away its fuel. It may burn for a while, but it will begin to go out if you stop feeding it. I did the opposite for 10 years and it got me nowhere. I now understand completely why I got worse and not better. If my body could speak, it would have said ‘Paul just leave me alone and I will heal myself’” This post was entitled “Moving forward with Anxiety”.

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A lady whom I knew from a couple of years ago got in touch with me last week. She sent me a lovely email saying how well she was doing and now realised what really held her back in the old days, and this was that she realised she had wanted to get better before she lived her life rather than go out and live it while she had anxiety. The fact is she was right The whole point of this post is to help you to stop seeing anxiety as the enemy. Don’t wait or demand to feel well before doing things you want to do. Trey sent the following reply saying that he had just about recovered and these are his words: I finally “got it”. I understood what everyone has been saying and I let everything go. I did whatever a normal person who didn’t have anxiety would do. I travelled, hung out with friends, anything, no matter how bad I felt. I do feel normal again after years of anxiety and depersonalisation. What he has done is gone towards his feelings of dread and not let them stop him living his life. Not only that, but he kept believing that this would work in the long run. Too many people think “Well I have been there today and I still feel bad. I just need to get rid of these damn feelings. That’s the only way I can get on with my life again”. The trouble is this is why so many stay in a cycle. Anxiety will always be the enemy if you spend your time trying to get rid of it, as it always has your fear and respect to feed on. Let me show you how the anxiety loop works in many cases. Feel awful - spend all day trying to rid yourself of these symptomsfeel awful - worry about how long this will go on - feel awful avoidance - feel awful - feel a failure - feel awful - get frustrated - feel awful - fight - feel awful - again start to Google - stay bewildered. The way to break this loop is to stop seeing anxiety as the enemy and truly allow yourself to feel this way, so then it goes:

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Feel awful – nothing - there is no avoidance as you are going everywhere at will. Pride that you did not let anxiety rule your life there is no going round in circles trying to rid yourself of the way you feel as you have not allowed yourself to feel anything. There is no worry as you no longer care how you feel. The anxiety loop is beginning to break here. You have done nothing to keep your anxiety going. You may still feel symptoms and that’s fine, but there is a lack of worry and fear to add to the mix. If there was an anxiety shop and someone came in and said “I have anxiety mate, not sure why but it has been there for a few years now, how come?” I would say “Do you worry about it?” “Well yes, I do, I want it to go away” “Do you go towards or try to avoid these feelings?” “Well, I mainly avoid them as I don’t want to feel them’ “Do you try and figure a way out of this or just get on with your day?” “Well, I try and figure a way out. It’s tiring and I do go around in circles, but I have to get rid of these feelings don’t I?” “Have you ever thought about allowing yourself to feel like this, good or bad? This will stop the worry cycle, the tuning in, the fighting to ’rid’ yourself. In fact it will break this loop you are stuck in”. “Actually no, I have never thought of doing that” ‘Well you should as this is why it’s been around for a few years. You have been stuck in a loop of trying not to feel this way”. This is the day a light went on for me. I had tried so hard to get rid of the way I felt and worried about it and the only result was I felt worse. Why didn’t I just give up and allow myself to feel this way. I needed to do what someone who did not suffer from anxiety would do. The average guy in the street is not going around worrying all day; if he did he would feel awful and drained. No wonder I felt the way I did and seemed to be getting worse, not better. My body was just not having the chance to recover. Never have the attitude “I am not going out, I feel awful. What I need to do is get rid of these feelings then I will have my life back” The only way to have that life back is to totally embrace how you feel and feel every symptom at will. I felt awful for weeks during my own recovery, but for once I had broken the loop. Don’t misunderstand me, I had some testing days. I remember going out to a quiz each

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week and sitting there feeling dreadful and just wanting to go home. I would feel apprehensive at times and almost give in to the temptation, but I never did. I knew this was anxiety testing me. The KEY point for me at these times was the point where I wanted to go home. It was at that stage that I just bought another drink and stayed. Anxiety had lost my respect. I had said: “Do what you want, I no longer care; I am in charge from now on”. As time went by I actually loved it when I was tested. It was a case of “yes we have been here before and I always win. I am staying, so do whatever you want”. Prior to this, as soon as I was feeling uncomfortable I would go home, feel sorry for myself and mentally try to find a way out of this hell, when, ironically, I had just left the very place that would have helped me to move forward. Instead I had given my feelings loads of respect, run away from how I felt and anxiety had won again. I knew that if I wanted to get through this I had to learn not to care if I felt anxious or not and this is the point I finally reached. By not avoiding and running away, I had unmasked it as just a feeling. My body no longer felt apprehensive about going anywhere and my nerves had settled as I had not bombarded them with worry and self pity. Freed from the daily onslaught it used to receive, my mind had begun to clear and my confidence had returned. I had proved I could do anything and that I was in charge and not my anxiety. I was beginning to take charge again and the old me was returning. By living like the average man in the street, I was becoming like the average man in the street. I was getting my life back. Paul I do try to include my own real life situations in the hope that it will help people to understand a little more, as I believe that it is much better than just writing down information. The following post is entitled “Taking a Break from Anxiety” I hope everyone enjoyed a bit of ‘off topic’ in the last post. We did seem to go back on topic from time to time, but we shared some stories and some laughs and got to know a little more about each

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other. This was not just an off topic subject, it was also designed to give people a break and leads me on to my next topic. I know Scarlet has mentioned the need to take a break to others and I have mentioned it a lot in my book and in the past, so I thought that if I put up a post about it and explained it in a little more detail, it may help people. It is very important to take some time out from the subject of anxiety. It’s great to finally find helpful information and read up on this topic, but sometimes people can immerse themselves far too much in the subject, searching on Google for symptom after symptom and spending hours looking for the answers that will make it all go away. People who have been here for a while will know that last year I set up a forum and within a few weeks closed it down. Not only had I taken on too much, but I felt that in the long run it was not helping people on here. I have never liked forums as they can become addictive and people spend far too much time on them, talking about their problems and trying to help others with theirs. They reading about other people’s symptoms, day in, day out, and miss out on the vital time outs that we need. It is the same if someone is depressed and goes on a forum hearing other people’s stories of depression each day. It tends to just drag you down even further. The mistake so many make is that they chase recovery and don’t let it come to them. By this I mean they will spend hours every day looking up all their symptoms and chasing that elusive cure that will make a symptom go away instantly. I can’t tell you how much time I wasted trying to ‘rid’ myself of anxiety rather than just living with the anxiety there. I never considered just living and allowing my body to regain its balance. I fought with myself daily and as far as I was concerned, I just had to get rid of these feelings. I kept asking myself “Why do I feel like this? Why am I not getting better? Will this ever go away? What if I do this, that and the other – will it help? I never gave myself a break from the subject and made the mistake of trying to fight and think my way better. This has the same effect as hitting a broken leg with a hammer, it will never recover.

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It is also very important to place all symptoms under the umbrella of anxiety and not try to separate and work on each one individually. Nothing saddens me more than people asking for advice here on a certain symptom, then asking about another the day after and then another a week later. I just know that they are going to go round in circles finding something else to worry about and something else to Google. You don’t need to separate each symptom, just see anxiety as one. Worrying about each symptom individually will create 20 different things to worry about. By putting it all under the umbrella of anxiety, you can never have more than one. I went from being a person who did nothing but consume himself with how he felt, hiding away from everything and spending my days feeling sorry for myself, to one who just said ‘enough is enough’. The only way to feel normal again is to live as normal a life as possible. So instead of feeling sorry for myself, I would go for a swim. Instead of worrying about how I felt, I would get my bike out and go for a ride. Instead of spending hours trying to figure a way out of this hell, I would take a walk. Instead of hiding away, I began to socialise again. Doing these things felt odd at first as I was changing a habit I had developed, but by just living my life and not living it trying to rid myself of anxiety each day, I felt the old me returning and I began to feel more normal. My day consisted of something else other than being immersing in how I felt. My mind had been given a break and had something else to concentrate on. I remember going for a swim when I was probably at my worst, full of anxiety and D.P. I just wanted to shut the world away and not go out, but I went. I arrived in the changing rooms and felt weird, but I got changed and went into the pool. I was somewhere else half the time, my mind reverting back to me, but it was OK. I knew that things would not change overnight. I finished my swim and got changed and again felt odd and a little anxious, but that was fine. When I arrived home I was happy that I had done what I did and felt just a little better; nothing major, just a little better. I went every week after that, never demanding or expecting anything, and within a few weeks I felt almost normal at times, when at first it was the other way around.

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I remember when I first felt as though I had recovered, I had an odd feeling of strangeness. That’s because feeling normal felt strange, a bit like a prisoner feels when first freed from jail. My body needed time to adjust to feeling normal. This is what I mean when I say recovery comes in layers. A lot of people don’t want to go through anxiety. They just think ‘yes, yes, that is all well and good, but I would rather have the quick route and find the answer to make it all go away today’. So off they go on their merry way, googling again, going on numerous forums asking questions on how to get rid of this damn thing and they just end up going around in circles, chasing their own tail and getting nowhere. On the subject of forums, some are good, but there are many that are poorly moderated and people who are looking for help often end up trying to help others, the result being that you end up with lots of conflicting advice that helps nobody. Also, as I have previously mentioned, I believe they can become addictive and people can end up spending too much time on there and not just living their life. So, to sum up, live your life however you feel. Don’t let anxiety make decisions for you. Go out and do things. Doing so may seem weird at first, but that’s OK as you are changing a habit. But living a normal life is where normal feelings, emotions and your body’s reactions will return. Do everything you would normally do if you did not have anxiety or depersonalisation. That is the key. It’s OK to have anxiety, its OK to have depersonalisation. This needs to be your attitude which is the opposite of spending your day trying to rid yourself of it.

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Chapter 9 OTHER SYMPTOMS EXPLAINED Here I am going to cover different symptoms which hopefully will help to ease certain worries that people have. It is important to realise that all symptoms subside and merge into one as our anxiety levels go down, so don’t fall into the trap of thinking you have to deal with each symptom individually or that one symptom is more important than the other. Headaches There are two types of headache. Firstly, there is the common headache from which we all suffer from time to time and then there is the headache that can feel as if you have a tight band around your head, which is something I suffered from. The most common question I have been asked when this happens is: "Have I got a brain tumour?” What people need to realise is that our head is full of scalp muscles and when we are tense, these muscles tighten and we develop a headache, or what I would describe as a feeling of tightness around the head. Again, it is nothing to worry about. When you learn to accept this and give it as little attention as possible, you may find it eases as your muscles relax. I always tell people not to try to do anything about it. Symptoms hate to be ignored and this applies to them all. Learn to question none of them. Trouble sleeping Many people tell me they have trouble sleeping when suffering with anxiety and they try everything to get a good nights rest, but to no avail. I also went through this and a lot of this is the result of an over active mind. What I did was to let my mind chatter away if need be and not ‘try’ to get to sleep. I had the attitude that if I sleep, I sleep and if not, well so be it. This attitude of not putting pressure on

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myself to sleep helped enormously and is the advice I give to everyone. Don’t put pressure on yourself to sleep, but just let you mind go where it wants and you may find things much easier. Trouble swallowing Some people say that they have trouble swallowing or feel a constant lump in their throat. Below is some advice I once gave to a lady wanting help with this symptom. Do not try and control your swallowing because by doing this you are fighting and trying to do something about it. It is the same with any symptom. The more of an issue it becomes and the more you fight it, the tougher things can become. If you have a little trouble swallowing then accept that you do and you will find it easier. Don’t try and make your swallowing perfect. Accept the fact that you find it difficult at times and as you automatically relax with this attitude, you may find things become easier. This is quite common as we have many muscles within our throat and when we are anxious, we can find it difficult to swallow. Just take the advice above and see how you go on. Blurred vision A lot of people complain about this and it was one of the more bewildering symptoms that I suffered from also. Everything appears to be covered in a haze or objects look blurred and you feel as if you can’t quite focus on them properly. The reason for this is that our eyes contain muscles and when we are anxious, these muscles tighten which affects our vision and causes the symptoms described above. This is merely our body playing tricks on us and is nothing to worry about. I know this is a sentence that I use often, but it is true. People who are anxious have a tendency to worry about everything, as I did. Everything gets magnified in our tired mind and we need to realise that when we are healthy again, these fears will hold no weight whatsoever.

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Churning stomach/shaking hands You may wonder why I have covered two symptoms in one here, but I feel the explanation for both is so closely related that there is no point in separating them. First of all, let me explain something to you. If anybody, healthy or not, had a job interview or a driving test on any given day, they would probably suffer the symptoms described above. However, they would not see them as too much of a problem as they would expect to feel this way. And that’s the point - these symptoms are just created by our excited nerves. It’s your nerves that make your hands shake and your stomach churn. There is no need to see them as anything different. They are merely there because your nerves are sensitised, so don’t shy away from them or try to control them. Take a look at them and see for yourself. Is it that serious that these feelings, which are only natural in the circumstances, should consume your day? Is it such a bad thing that your stomach should churn or that your hands should shake? If you had sprained your wrist, you would be able to carry on with your day without much attention to it, so why pay attention to something that is only normal in the circumstances. You may find that the less attention you pay to your nerves, the less you excite them. In other words, if your stomach churns, let it churn and if your hands shake, let them shake, paying them as little attention as possible. I used to say “my nerves are sensitised and I am going to feel like this for the time being - it is only natural”. Again, taking the fear out of how you feel helps them to settle and adds no more adrenalin, giving them the space to start to recover, or de-sensitise as I like to describe it. Ringing ears This is another common symptom and one I also went through. It is said that this symptom can be due to a side effect of anti depressants or other medication. The reasons as to why people with anxiety can suffer from time to time with ringing ears are still inconclusive. I put it down to the fact that the body is a little out of balance due to anxiety and stress. As my anxiety left, so did this

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symptom. In fact it did not last long at all and after talking to others who suffered with this symptom, they also spoke of it as being temporary. Feeling guilty A lot of people who suffer from anxiety experience feelings of guilt and somehow think that this means they are weak. This guilt is brought about by the realisation that someone who at one time could do things so easily, now struggles to get through the day. They may be in a relationship, or have children, and feel guilty that they can no longer do the things they once could with their partner or children. They may even fight their way through the day, putting on an act to prove to themselves that this thing will not get the better of them, only to go to bed at night more tired and anxious than ever. Anxiety can affect people from every profession, even doctors, the very people we first go to for help, so let me stress that you have nothing to feel guilty about. Some partners may be very understanding about how you feel, but some may not. They may put pressure on you to ‘pull yourself together’ and the constant strain of trying to cope can tire you further, your partner’s lack of understanding hindering recovery. Thankfully, I did have an understanding partner and I explained to her that the person she could see was not the real me. I asked her to bear with me and told her that I wanted to be the person I once was and that, in time, I would be. I lost a few friends, as I was never available to go out. Certain people at work would snub me as I hardly spoke, but I did not wallow in self-pity! I knew I had to let all this negative stuff go and because of what I had been taught, I was not going to add any more worry to the mix. I also knew that I could sort all those problems out later when I was better. At times, I felt like I was playing a role in a film, acting to try to appear normal while other days attempting to hide how I felt. The pressure I felt trying to maintain this act, day after day, was immense and eventually I stopped trying to be the person I thought I should be. So if you see yourself in this way, learn to put yourself first. You cannot keep trying to be the person you once were. You need to stop putting on an act, admit that you are no longer the person you

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used to be and tell yourself that you don’t have to keep up this pretence any longer. If you have an understanding partner, then great, you have the support you need. If not, I would suggest that you start talking to each other and ask your partner to listen. You can even suggest that they read this and explain to them just how much you need their support while you recover. If they truly care, then they will understand and give you this support. A lot of their anger is caused by frustration, frustration that the person they see is not the person they fell in love with and they want you back as much as you do. A little more understanding from them may give you the freedom to start recovering. Self-pity is another emotion that can drag you further into your illness. Again this stems from a reluctance to accept the way you are as you ask yourself the question ‘Why me?’ Constantly feeling sorry for yourself can only eat away at your self-confidence and cause you to feel more and more depressed about the way you feel. It is very easy to fall into this trap and I cannot stress enough just how important it is to accept how you feel and harbour as little self-pity as possible. Self-pity is a destructive emotion that will only prolong your negative feelings. You don’t need negative thinking during your time of recovery, so let all the negative thoughts go and build on the positives. LOSS OF CONFIDENCE When I was ill, my confidence plummeted. I felt as if I was worthless and had nothing interesting to say. I did not see the point to anything and felt as if I just existed. That is what anxiety does to you. It robs you of your personality, robs you of your confidence and robs you of your identity. My own experience caused me to feel as if my emotions and feelings had become frozen. Some people say they can’t even feel love for the people they really care about and others don’t feel any emotions at all. This is exactly how I felt. Nothing anyone could do or say could make me happy. They could have put a million pounds in front of me and I would not have even smiled. I felt numb and there were times when I thought I would never smile again. My only thought was recovering from the way I felt. I can tell

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those of you who feel like this that your emotions do come back in recovery. Your confidence and personality gradually return in little strips, building up in layers, until eventually you feel like the person you were before you became ill. If you do suffer from a lack of confidence, then there is no better boost to your self-esteem than getting on the road to recovery and feeling the joy that comes with it. If you were a confident person before, that confidence will return or become even greater. I feel more confident now than I was before I became ill. All the hurdles I have passed and the experiences I have come through have helped me to grow into a stronger person. Can I just share with you a sentence that I believe helps to build confidence, and it really works: Never say yes when you mean no, and never say no when you means yes - simple but effective. I am sure most people can identify with this statement. Trying to find a cause Too many people spend too much time trying to find a reason for why they feel like they do, searching for that childhood memory that they believe must have triggered it off in the first place. In some cases, something may have happened in a person’s earlier life that they may need to talk through with a professional and, if this is the case, then it may help to do this before they can start on the road to recovery. In a lot of cases, however, too much importance is placed on finding a root cause. Surely the only thing that really matters is, not why we began to feel like this in the first place, but how to recover. So if you find yourself back tracking in an attempt to find a root cause for the way you feel and you believe that gaining this knowledge is an important part of your recovery, then go ahead and find a professional with whom you can talk things through. If, however, you are like me and it no longer matters how it all started and all you want to do is recover, then let it go, just move on and concentrate on what is important to you - recovery. You have no control over the past but you do have control over your future.

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Chapter 10 WE NEED ONE ROAD One point that I think is extremely important, and I really would like to get through to you all, is that we need one way, one road and one that feels right. You can't have three different therapists, numerous different books and two different programmes all running alongside each other. All this does is to confuse you, putting more pressure on your tired mind, which needs rest more than anything else. Your mind is just too tired to be bombarded with different information every day. Find one way and put all the rest to one side. Find one road, one that feels right, and stick to it. Do you see how this works? Yes, we all want to be better today, not tomorrow, but this is what keeps us ill - impatience. We search around thinking there must be something out there, something we have missed, so we go from one idea to another, praying that each will work and within a couple of weeks/months, we feel we are back to square one. Do not be impatient with yourself, watching the weeks go by and thinking you should be better by now. You are just putting more pressure on yourself. Let your body recover at its own pace and do not watch anxiously for recovery. Just choose one road to follow and stick to it. It stops all that searching around in your mind for an answer, tiring your mind even further and putting you under more stress, when this is the last thing you need. Forget that miracle cure that has eluded you, it is not there. You did not feel like this overnight and you won’t be cured overnight; your body needs time to heal. This statement can sometimes help people as it makes them finally realise they don’t have to keep searching for an answer or looking for that elusive cure - the cure lies within them. Once you are on the road to recovery, it can be great just to experience the improvement in the way you feel. Before I recovered I was the same, searching for that elusive treatment, and I can honestly say that I tried every treatment going and not one of them felt right. At times I felt as though I was taking

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my driving test again as I struggled to learn how to get on the road to recovery, but the more knowledge I gained, the more everything made sense. Recovery will come, but let it happen in its own time. Please do not put a time limit on it. Everybody is different and some people will recover more quickly than others. Trust me, just be patient and your body will take care of itself. Look at it another way: If five million people around the world had a broken leg, not one of them would be healed within 24 hours. If five million people around the world had anxiety not one of them would be anxiety free in 24 hours whatever treatment they found - FACT. But this is what you are asking of yourself when you search for that miracle cure. When I first heard the words “Paul you don’t have to fight this thing”, I felt so relieved. It was such a weight off my shoulders. I said, “Oh my God, that’s such a relief. I thought if I didn’t fight this thing and try to stop it coming, I was somehow failing myself”. It was like the end of a war, the battle with myself was now over and it was such a relief. Can you see how this one sentence took away so much stress from me? It meant I did not have to tense against it and constantly search around in my mind, day in, day out, trying to discover the miracle cure. I could also stop running around from one therapist to another, one treatment to another, wasting more and more money and being deflated yet again as treatment after treatment failed. I am sure most of you will recognise this pattern. It is the people who make it their daily aim to get better, who may find they are getting worse. This makes total sense, as their whole day/week becomes a battle. This is a very important statement to understand. So, don’t try and rush recovery; your body will heal in its own time. Do not fall into the trap that can keep you ill, wanting to escape from the way you feel today. Don’t let impatience hold you back. Even deep into my recovery, old fears kept resurfacing, but I knew that I just needed to let them go and they did not hang around for long!

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Sometimes this new way of thinking will make sense and come easily one day and then the next day it will be gone. This is something that happened to me, but it is just your memory trying to suck you back into old habits. Accept these days and keep practicing the new way until it becomes your new habit. Just stay on the road and as your memory fades your new habits will take over. Trust me, it works. When we seem to go backwards This is one of the most important things and is something I failed at more than anything during my recovery, even when I had been warned about it. Since I have recovered, I now know how important this is. Setbacks - what are they? When I knew I was on the right path, I had days when I felt better than I had ever felt before, but I was warned: “Paul you may have had a week/month of feeling great and think you have finally cracked it, then, wham, you have the worst day/week ever and think you are back at square one. This can happen, so do not think you have not moved forward - you have”. Well, I listened to this advice and what did I do? The exact opposite of what I was told to do. I started questioning it all over again, falling into the trap of telling myself that this was not working. I thought I had recovered and now I felt worse than ever. I did this on numerous occasions, feeling great one week and terrible the next, until it was eventually drummed into me that this was only to be expected and is part and parcel of recovery. Once I started accepting these setbacks, they occurred less frequently; I had finally got it. I now know how much not accepting these setbacks held me back and I cannot stress enough that if, as part of your recovery, you are experiencing days when you feel you have made no progress, then just accept them and don’t let them throw you back.

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It was also explained to me that there was a period when I had felt terrible all the time, so surely this up and down affair should make me realise that for once I was moving forward. Trust me, even during your deepest setback, you never lose what you have learnt or the progress you have made; it is always there stored away. Old memories can still be fresh in your mind and return at the most unexpected times. This is only to be expected, but just let them go. Don’t question why you feel so bad today, when you felt so good last week. It is not important so just accept these days as part of your recovery. Also, when I first received the help necessary to put me on the path to recovery, I was told that I might feel worse in the beginning. I did not understand this because, as far as I was concerned, getting help should have made me feel better. Well, I was wrong again. The reason for this, as I now realise, is that when you are scared of anxiety and in fear of it through lack of understanding, every mention of the word can be enough to make you feel more anxious. So by putting yourself in the front line of battle, you are putting yourselves in situations you may have avoided for a very long time. I was also told that when anxiety has been explained to you and you fear it less, gradually you will be able to think about it and talk about it more without feeling any worse. The more you learn, the less you fear it, which is how it worked for me. That is why I teach understanding, which I believe is one of the most important parts of recovery. I can now talk about anxiety all day and read as much as I like without any bad feelings whatsoever. I have no fear of it anymore and I live in a body that is no longer sensitised and a mind that is no longer worn out through worry. Nerves are easily triggered When people find themselves in a state of anxiety, the slightest noise or incident can trigger their nerves and make them feel anxious. There is a simple explanation for this. When your nerves are tired, they are already vibrating. Compare them to a tuning fork. If you hit a tuning fork on a table, it would vibrate, wouldn’t it? If you hit it again while it was still vibrating, well then it would vibrate even

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more - agreed? Well, in your case, your nerves are the tuning fork and the vibrating is your nerve endings, so another little knock on the table or the slightest trigger sends them off to a higher level. Something that you could just have dismissed when your nerves were healthy, i.e. a sudden shock, maybe a door slamming or just seeing something that slightly scares you, now makes you feel panicky. Because your nerves are sensitised your nerves are on red alert and little fears become exaggerated. A healthy body resembles the tuning fork that has not been hit on the table and is very still. The slight knock on the table would hardly be felt and you would not experience any symptoms. That is why your fears seem out of proportion - your nerves are sensitised and you feel anxious and panicky for very little reason. This is the only difference. Your nerves just need time to calm down, until the slightest knock will no longer send you into a wave of panic. That is what happens when you decide to just get on with your day and not add more worry and fear to how you are feeling, it is the letting go that calms them. It calms the tuning fork so that it does not vibrate as readily and once more your nerves become just like those in a healthy body. The above explanation is one that I used to help me understand. It is the one that helped me to recognise that my bad nerves were just vibrating and, in time, they would calm down, until they vibrated no more. I seem to have lost who I am, how do I begin to feel like me again? This is a question I get asked a lot and the answer is just live your life as normal. Your anxiety wants you to hide away, avoid situations and make excuses. It wants you to become a hermit and a slave to it, but from today I want you to do the opposite and go towards it. It is never caused by the lady you meet in the street. It is never the social situation you have made excuses for. It is all about avoiding a feeling and I know for a fact I recovered because I stopped avoiding and did the exact opposite. I used to hide away at home, hide if it looked like I may have to talk to someone in the street that I knew

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and make excuses not to go places. Eventually the light came on and I decided that I was never going to move forward by acting this way? I knew I had to do the complete opposite of what my instincts told me and just thought ‘I don’t care how I feel - what happens, happens. I am just going to go everywhere at will. This is no life’. So I did go everywhere and interacted with people again. I was putting myself in places and situations that I had not been in for a while. Things gradually improved as my body was saying: ‘Hey there is no danger here. You were avoiding a feeling, not the neighbour, not the friend’s barbecue, just a feeling! There’s no problem here Paul’. As time went by, I began to desensitise, and going places and meeting people just became easier. So keep moving forward. If your anxiety makes you think there’s no point to anything, don’t let it bluff you. I had to go through many things I had once loved doing, feeling anxious and wondering what the point was, but the more you do it, the more normal feelings will return to that area of your life. If you don’t feel like doing something because you’re anxious, just see it as a negative thought caused by your anxiety. Go against it, do what you used to enjoy doing and eventually you will enjoy it again. The worst thing you can do is to tell yourself that you will make an effort to enjoy yourself once the anxiety has gone. You have to go through the motions while still feeling anxious in order to bring back the normal feelings of enjoyment again.

Paul How do I stop it? This little section came up because of the amount of emails I receive that start with the phrase ‘Paul, how do I stop it’. Well this is something that I get asked about all the time. Examples of this would be ‘How do I stop these feelings of panic? How do I stop myself thinking scary thoughts? How do I stop feeling anxious? The list goes on and on. What I want to get across is that it is all about ‘don’t do’ than ‘do’. My answer is always the same ‘Don’t try to stop feelings of panic

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coming – just let the adrenalin come without fighting or pushing it away. Don’t try to stop scary thoughts coming - give them their space. Don’t try to stop anxiety coming - you cannot control it anyway. Let the feelings be there and try not to let them frustrate you’. I rarely, if ever, tell anyone to ‘do something about it’ or try and ‘control how you feel’. If you just let feelings and thoughts be there, you stop fighting, worrying, controlling and trying to figure it all out. Basically you stop the very things that keep you in the cycle.

Refresh your mind During my recovery, I indulged in too much self-pity, which is easy for me to admit to now. It caused me to refuse to bother with anything - getting dressed, my appearance, going out and meeting friends - and I was generally left feeling sorry for myself. Try not to wallow in any self-pity. It only causes your mind to become less active, when it really needs something to concentrate on and something to freshen it up. The same routine, day in, day out, can make it stale. If you are one of those people who stay in bed or mope around the house all day without getting dressed, this is for you. Just try to take an interest in something, no matter how difficult it is to motivate yourself, and do as much as you feel you can. In my case, I drew a little and went for walks with my dog, which did refresh me and gave me something else to concentrate on apart from myself and how I felt. If you are housebound, I know this may be out of the question so soon, but just get out of that bed in the morning, take a shower and take a little interest in the day, even if it’s just cleaning the bathroom or starting a job around the house, a new hobby, anything that gives you a new focus. Give your day a meaning and you may find it refreshes that dull, tired mind of yours. Doing this breaks up the day and stops you going through the same routine day in, day out. Just as people with healthy minds need to stimulate them, so do those of us who suffer from anxiety. It helps to give you something else to think about and uses a part of your brain that you may not have known existed. It also breaks the chain of habit. Too many people want to hide away at home and just ‘wish it away’. Unfortunately, it does not work like that. Recovery comes through changes and a break in habits and no amount of self-pity

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and wanting something to happen will help. You need to come out of the safety zone and make some changes. What I really don’t want you to do is wallow in self-pity all day, asking yourself “what’s the point?” Just do something you used to enjoy, even if at first it feels like a huge effort. When you are feeling so anxious, everything does feel like an effort. Don’t wait for that moment when you feel like going out, that moment never comes. Do something today and you never know, you just might find you actually enjoy it. The above really helped me to recover. I had become stuck in a rut, going through the same routine every day. Going out and doing something different with my day refreshed my mind and broke through the habit of constantly thinking about myself. My mind became refreshed within its new surroundings and it was given another focus which helped rid it of that dull feeling. It really is important to shake those cobwebs from your mind and give it the chance to refresh itself. People sometimes say “But how can I get up and do things when I feel so numb and empty? I just want to hide away”. My answer is always the same. Go along with the numbness and emptiness, it’s a normal progression of the condition. Don’t wait until you are better to start living. Living your life is what brings back the old you.

Accept recovery can take time This is a very important point, so please read through this section very carefully and absorb the contents. No matter how many times I tell people to step back and let recovery take care of itself, they still try to stop symptoms coming and try to rush feeling better. Let me explain something. What I had was a nervous breakdown. This basically occurs because your body can only take so much. When you are going through a prolonged period of stress and worry, your body cannot cope so it shuts down. It has reached breaking point and has said enough is enough. This may lead to feelings of anxiousness, feelings of panic and feelings of detachment. It does

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not matter what the symptoms are, it is your body saying “I can take no more”. This is where the word breakdown comes in, because that is really all it is. Now all your body is asking for is a rest and time to rejuvenate itself. Do we give it that time? No! Through no fault of our own, we then worry about these symptoms, worry we are going mad and wonder why we feel so tired and emotionless. This puts more worry and strain on our already tired body and we may begin to feel worse. We tell ourselves we must get a grip of this thing, so we fight it and worry even more. Well I think you can now see why these symptoms persist. This is exactly what I did for all those years while I suffered. In fact I was worrying because I had been ill for so long and my days were filled with fighting and worry. One day I just accepted that okay, this is me now. I actually understand why I feel like this. I need to give my mind and body a rest. I need to stop trying to make myself feel better and stop worrying about how I feel. So I just started to accept it and, not only that, I also accepted it may take a long time for my body to repair itself. This is exactly what your body needs - ‘a break’. It did take time for me to feel better and it came in layers. Sometimes I experienced the worst day I’d had for a long time, but I never let it bother me. I just accepted the good days and the bad ones equally. What I did notice over time was that my mind became a little clearer. The odd emotion would return and my anxiety eased a little. This is when I finally realised I was doing things the right way and it all made sense to me. The feeling of strangeness was the hardest to accept, but I became an expert at not letting it bother me. So, remember, it does not matter how long it takes to feel better, just start to give your body the well deserved break it so needs and it will take care of itself.

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Chapter 11 BORN TO WORRY Some people have a strong tendency to worry from a very young age. Every day they find something to worry about and as soon as one problem is resolved, they move on to something else. It’s as though they don’t feel happy unless they are worrying. People in this category tend to strive for perfection in their lives, bending this way and that way to please others, putting tremendous pressure on themselves to be perfect, both at work and at home. They are constantly seeking approval from other people and want to be a success, forever plaguing themselves with questions such as: What if I lose my job? What if my new mother in law does not like me? What if my partner gets bored of me and leaves? What if I upset my neighbours with the barbecue on Saturday night? They spend each day worrying about things over which they have no control, but at what cost? All the worrying builds up and can put a tremendous strain on their bodies - day in, day out, worry, worry, worry. When will it ever stop? How often have you heard people say, “I don’t know why I worry, I just do”. What they need to realise is that worrying does not change one situation. That’s right, you can worry about something but the outcome will always be the same, so all that negative energy is a total waste of time. Worry is the most useless, destructive emotion we possess, but as I found out, like any other habit, we can change the worry habit. Those who don’t have a tendency to worry are much calmer people. They mainly enjoy a better, stress free life because they understand this concept. This is not to say that if there is a major drama in your life that you should not worry, this is natural, but do not waste precious energy worrying about those things that are just not worth worrying about. Worry just brings stress, and it was one of the first

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things I stopped doing when I was on the road to recovery. I knew it was just counter productive and it would do me no good at all. The less I worried, the easier it became. Now I have reached the point where, if I know I can’t change an outcome, I just let it go. I just tell myself ‘what will be, will be’ and, nine times out of ten, these worries come to nothing anyway. Below, I have given an example of two different people facing the same scenario. Two friends start a job on the same day in the same office. Mrs X, who tries to please and has a tendency to worry about things and Mrs Y. After they have settled in, their boss approaches Mrs X and says, “Hello Mrs X. I know this is your first day, but I wondered if you would like to come out for a few drinks tomorrow night. We usually get together once a month and tomorrow is that day”. She thinks, “Oh, I can’t, I have promised my friend that I would go round tomorrow as she has just separated from her partner and needs some support, but I don’t want to appear ungrateful and boring on my first day and let my boss down. Oh dear, what shall I do?” She thinks about it and then says, “Yes, OK then, thanks”. Immediately, she starts to worry, thinking, “oh no, what did I say that for? I promised my friend and now I am going to have to let her down.” She is now angry with herself for feeling weak and saying yes. She goes home and rings her friend telling her what has happened and apologises for having to cancel her visit the following evening. Her friend is not really happy and tells her she really needed that chat. When Mrs X comes off the phone, she feels awful and then worries that she has let her friend down, fearing that her friend will have fallen out with her. She hardly has any sleep, worrying about her dilemma, and considers telling her boss that she can’t make it, but worries that doing that would make her feel worse - oh dear! She arrives at work the next day, feeling tired through lack of sleep and guilty for letting her friend down. She goes out with her work colleagues, as arranged, and enjoys none of it. Her mind is elsewhere and she just wants to go home.

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The same day the boss approaches Mrs Y and asks the same question. Mrs Y replies, “No thank you, I have promised my friend I would go round tomorrow and comfort her as she is having a bad time”. Her boss replies “Oh that’s very good of you, no problem at all, we will see you tomorrow”. She then goes round to her friends and they have a good night. Her friend then thanks her, she goes home, has a good nights sleep and is at work the next day, ready and refreshed. There is a story of two very different people facing the same situation. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what the best approach was. If you see a part of yourself in that story, remember that you can’t please everybody, so don’t try. Don’t strive for perfection; it’s not worth the effort. Just be happy with who you are. Do not worry about things you cannot change and ask yourself the following questions: Has worrying about something ever done me any good? Has worrying ever changed anything? Has worrying ever made me feel better? I think we all know the answer to these questions! To quote a lady who once wrote to me: “Paul I have just realised I can live and survive without worry”. You have more power than you think to change your thought patterns. You may not think so as you probably always see the worst in every situation, but that is just a habit that you have developed and you have the power within you to change. Let’s look at some examples of were we could change our thought patterns: Instead of saying, “Oh, I will never be better, I will always feel like this”, why not say, “Many others have recovered, why not me? I now have the tools to do it”.

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Instead of saying, “I hate feeling like this”, why not say, “Yes, it’s not great, but I can’t do anything about it for now. In time, with a new approach, these feelings will subside, just as they did for the author of this book”. Trust me when I say that positive thinking can become your new habit and in time it will overtake all the negative thinking. Through my recovery I was told the importance of positive thinking and climbing out of the rut of always thinking the worst, but I never understood how thinking positive could make me feel better. Well I am far wiser now and realise how closely your thoughts are connected to the way you feel. A lot of the depression we may feel is because this condition has dragged us down. We have had nothing to think positive about and hence we feel depressed. Well begin to let the positive thoughts back in and you may be surprised by how they can become your new habit and your whole outlook towards the way you feel can improve. It takes a little effort, but being positive instead of negative can have a great impact on how you feel and it can also give you that extra incentive to recover. Also adding positive things into your life can have the same effect. I decided to get fit and went from not being able to run 20 yards to eventually doing a half marathon. I felt great for getting fit and a real sense of achievement when I crossed that line. I am not going to dwell too much on the subject of negative thoughts as it has been written about before, but I want to show you that you do have the power to change the way you think and to feel better about yourself. When you first attempt to alter your thought processes, your positive thinking will feel very weak and come without conviction, but the more you do it, the more it overrides the negative thinking and becomes your new voice, your new habit. Remember positive thinking is far more productive than negative thinking. Think of the child that plays so happily without a care in the world. Well this is because, at that age, they have no reason to worry, so they enjoy life. People who keep this principle going into adult life have the right idea, so next time try and replace the negative thoughts with something more positive - you do have the power.

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Let this be your new motto: It’s time to ‘stop worrying and start living’. Recovery can be an up and down affair I always feel that it is important to let people know that when they are on the road to recovery, it can be a bit of an up and down affair. Sometimes I would think that I had taken one step forward only to take two steps backwards. Here are some of the mistakes I made, so hopefully you can avoid them. You may not come across them all during recovery, but I have included them just in case you do. I felt so good yesterday, why do I feel so bad today? It is often said that recovery means taking two steps forward and one step back, which is basically the way the body recovers. It takes a little patience to allow for this adjustment, but is well worth it. This is why it is imperative that you accept how you feel at any given time and just carry on with your day. Eventually you will wake up and a day will be just a day, with few ups and downs. It will happen once you take that step back and allow your body to find its own sense of balance. It’s funny, isn’t it, how I was always able to accept the good days and not question them, but as soon as I had a bad day, I was back to square one, repeating those old mistakes and believing that there must be something wrong! I also learnt that when I had a good day I expected the following day to be the same, almost putting pressure on myself to make sure it would be. I was constantly watching myself, trying to hold on to how I felt and worrying that if I let go, the good feelings would be gone forever. Well they won’t. Good days come and bad days come, and you need to accept this. Don’t waste time trying to work out why, like I did. Don’t think you are back to square one and start with all the self-pity again. Don’t hold back on your goal of achieving recovery by not allowing yourself to feel how you feel at any particular time. It is not important, as I eventually learnt.

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I remember everything one day and not the next! A lot of people say everything makes sense one day and not the next. I soon discovered that this was caused by the old memories of not being able to cope and being pulled back in to fighting purely through habit. I had spent so long on the wrong road that it was only natural for me to feel lost again. One day I would understand my new direction and the next I wouldn’t. But this was just caused by the habit of doing things the wrong way. That’s why I say re-read if need be until this new point of view becomes you. It is just like going back to school to learn a new subject. You don’t just have one lesson and pretend to know it all. You forget a lot of what you have been taught and you have to revise. It takes time for information to be absorbed and it is no different when you first learn about the right road to recovery. I am losing faith; I want to be better today Sometimes when I encountered certain setbacks, I did not feel like putting any effort into recovery. I suppose I just wanted to ignore the world again and drift back into self-pity and, at times, I was very tempted to give up. Even though I had these moments and you may be having them too, the desire to recover always overcame them and I now thank God that it did. If you find yourself in this situation, please do not wait for the times you feel great to make the effort to do something. No matter how bad you feel, when you have decided to do something, just go ahead and do it. I fell into the trap of thinking “oh, I just don’t want to do that today, I will wait until tomorrow”. Well, most of the time, tomorrow never came because I just wanted to hide away again. I was avoiding situations where I thought I might feel uncomfortable, the very places that would have helped me to recover. Many a time, I remember being asked by friends to go to the racecourse and always refused, as I knew I would not really enjoy it and that I would feel uncomfortable. Then one day I just thought, “no

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matter how I feel, I am going. If I feel uncomfortable or strange, then I do. I don’t want this to hold me back any longer. I need to take a step forward.” This statement helped me many times and is one that I want you to take particular notice of. Your memory and habit work together saying “Don’t go you will feel uncomfortable; you know you will”. These are the very statements that hold you back, you need to go against your instincts and float past these negative thoughts and suggestions. Recovery lies in these places and situations and will never be achieved through avoidance. I went, and even though I didn’t particularly enjoy it, it was not as bad as I thought it would be. I then made it a regular practice and every time I went, I began to feel less uncomfortable, less strange and more able to enjoy it. At first, it was just the unfamiliarity of doing something different that made me feel uncomfortable and a bit strange, but I accepted how I felt, which allowed other feelings to come through. Gradually I felt as though I was part of what I was doing and forgot about how I was feeling. As time went by, I became more outgoing and less introverted, while at the same time being able to enjoy and take more notice of what was going on around me. So, don’t put off doing things until you feel like it. Float past all the negative thoughts that say you can’t and tell yourself that you can. If you can’t, then you will find out for yourself, but don’t listen to that voice that constantly holds you back. If going out for the first time in a while makes you feel fearful and anxious, it’s only to be expected, just take those feelings with you. I used to ignore what by body was telling me and did it anyway. I didn’t try to stop these feelings - there was no point because I knew that they would be there. It was only natural to feel like this in my present state, but I was determined not to let them control me any more. You will be amazed by what you can achieve that you just did not think you could. Sometimes it’s just feelings and negative thoughts that hold you back. Float past them and continue to move forward.

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Chapter 12 SOME FINAL POINTS Anxiety genes There have been some studies done into the theory that people with anxiety can have a gene that causes them to feel the way they do. I was not going to mention this, because, firstly, it is only a theory and there is no concrete proof. Secondly, all that this theory does is cause certain people to worry more and, thirdly, people who do suffer from anxiety, gene or no gene, need to know about the subject in order to lead a better life and go on to fully recover. Telling someone that they may have an anxiety gene is like telling them that this is how they are, there is no cure and they can’t do anything about it. So I would never say this to anyone. I have helped many people and not one of them has told me that they think there may be a genetic cause. They have all recalled some flashpoint from where they think their anxieties stemmed. In my opinion, everyone can recover, and I mean everyone. I believe that a lack of knowledge on the subject is what keeps people ill, which is why I try and help people to understand why they feel like they do. Don’t analyse how you feel A lot of people start accepting their feelings and then, when they do not feel better within a short space of time, they start to question the whole way forward. This is exactly what I did, but I now realise I just wanted to feel better straight away. Don’t try and work out any of your symptoms, your day or anything else about your condition. Someone once said to me “I have now realised that I don’t have to analyse the hell out of this”. Never has a truer word been spoken.

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Don’t try and rush recovery. Some people do this without even realising it. They want to be better by the summer or for their holiday, but this only sets a time limit and puts pressure on them to recover. When they do not achieve their target of feeling like they think they should, they set themselves up for agitation, frustration and disappointment. Never put a time limit on recovery. We are all different and it is something you just cannot rush. I had great difficulty accepting that recovery takes time and even considered trying another route. I was just impatient to be better or sometimes wanted to get further quicker, but I knew it made sense and it felt right. There are no short cuts to recovery. As so many people say to me, “recovery did not come overnight Paul. It was a transition back to the old me”. That’s exactly what it is and you have to accept this. It’s like layers of the old you coming back. Any doubting occurs because you don’t see immediate rewards for your efforts, but they are adding up in the background, I promise you.

Don’t be influenced by how you feel There are so many different symptoms that people with anxiety can feel and because they have not read about them in a book or not seen them mentioned anywhere before, they think they must be suffering from something else. Anxiety can play many tricks on your body, and to list here all the symptoms that I have heard about would be impossible. All I ask is that you are not discouraged by anything that you feel. When I shut my eyes at night, I used to feel as though I was floating away from my body, but I just put it down to my tired mind playing its tricks on me. I accepted the feelings and did not question them. I stayed calm in my attitude and eventually they disappeared. If you really believe that something you feel needs checking out, then go ahead, but 99.9% of the time it is just anxiety playing its tricks on your mind, so ignore it and avoid all the ‘what ifs’! Going with how you feel can take time before it becomes your new habit. When you start learning to drive a car, you have to think about

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each new manoeuvre until it happens automatically. You eventually drive without thinking and it becomes a habit born out of practise. Once I had practiced the whole ‘whatever’ attitude it came naturally. I just got on with my life however I felt. If someone stopped me and asked how I felt, I would have to stop and think about it because I was so used to just getting on with my day. So do not worry if at first you find going with how you feel difficult to achieve. As time goes by, it gets so much easier and the best thing about accepting how you feel is that you don’t have to do anything - just let go and give up the daily battle. Personally, I just gave up the daily battle and stopped putting all this pressure to feel better on myself, fighting my way through each day. I now realise how all this just increased my feelings of anxiety and added to the way I felt. I was not giving my mind and body one minute’s rest. Is it any wonder I was so tired and emotionally spent? All this makes so much sense to me now, even though it didn’t at the time as I was so desperate to make the whole thing go away. By trying to fight and think my way better I was doing the exact opposite. Tired nerves/tired mind I hope you now realise that all that is wrong with you is tired nerves, which are ready to be triggered far more easily than those in a healthy body because of all the stress that you have placed on them. They are just sensitised and that is why you feel the funny sensations in your arms, legs and other parts of your body. Some people complain that their tired nerves stop them from wanting to do things or go places, but the reason this happens is because they have been tricked into thinking that there is danger where there is not. People become afraid of their symptoms not the places they visit. Sensitisation is just your nerves over-reacting to adrenalin so that something small can bring on a stronger reaction. There is no more danger there; you just have a greater reaction to adrenalin, which makes you feel more flustered. This makes you feel more stressed than you really are and the problem seems bigger than it is. Once you can begin to understand that all that’s happening is you

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are experiencing an exaggerated reaction because of sensitised nerves, it puts things into perspective. As I have already explained, the strange feelings and the constant thinking are also caused by a tired mind that you have thrashed day in and day out. Just like your nerves, these feelings can be reversed if you just follow the advice given to you in this book. Your mind is waiting to think more clearly again. It has picked up some bad habits but nothing that cannot be reversed. No matter how many years you have suffered with your nerves and the effect they have had on your mind, you haven’t done yourself any permanent damage. The longer you have suffered, the more bad habits you may have picked up, but no matter how long this suffering has lasted, your body is just waiting to recover. We’re anxious because we’re anxious! One question I am often asked is “How do I give my nerves chance to rest when I feel anxious?” Well, yes, your nerves are sensitised at the moment and they may seem as though they give you no rest from your feelings of anxiety. The reason this cycle continues is because we’re anxious because we’re anxious. Do you know what I mean? All the “Oh God, I hate this, I just want it to go away. When will this ever end?” This is what keeps your nerves tense; you are not giving them chance to calm down. It does not matter whether you feel anxious or not, your nerves will have a chance to rest as long as you don’t fall into this trap. This can be especially true if a person has had a taste of freedom from how they feel, like a lady that once emailed me. She felt better for a while and that was good, but when the bad feelings returned, she fell into the cycle of being anxious because she was anxious again, especially as she thought this dreaded anxiety had gone for good. That is why I advise that any return of symptoms should be treated with a pinch of salt. Nerves take time to calm down and return to normal. You may feel tense one day and not the next. You may feel more nervous than you did the day before. Accept it all, question

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none of it and, above all, try not to be anxious because you’re anxious. Let me explain it another way. Anxiety can be due to a period of worry in our lives that makes us anxious. So then we worry about being anxious, which increases our anxiety, so we worry even more about new symptoms that seem to have appeared, which makes us worry more. We become experts at watching our bodies, worrying about every sensation that anxiety brings. This is exactly what happened to me. I worried constantly about how I felt. I now realise just how much pressure I was putting on my already anxious body. I was caught in the anxiety cycle and it’s no wonder I spent ten years getting worse rather than better. My body was telling me to slow down and stop worrying and I did exactly the opposite. Can you see the cycle we can so easily fall into?! Don’t worry about how you come across to others This was one of the things I struggled with during my recovery. I was so keen to come across as normal that I would hold on to myself, hoping that I would not crack and that people would not notice how strange I felt. Most of the time, I would just try to avoid meeting people, full stop. I just told myself not to care how I came across in front of others. If I came across as strange, then so be it. When I recovered, they would see the real me. This avoiding was getting me nowhere. It felt strange at first trying to accept feeling odd in front of people, but I did it, and once I had convinced myself not to care how I came across, I did feel better. It was like releasing a cork from a bottle and I no longer felt I had to keep a grip on myself. I stopped feeling like two people, one trying to hold a conversation and the other watching myself and my reactions. This in turn allowed me to feel more involved in the conversation. I did this in every situation, however I felt, and I found it got gradually became easier and I was able to overcome this part of my anxiety.

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This is a very good example of changing a habit. A lot of anxiety is caused by habits that need to be reversed. I had practiced avoidance for so long that this avoidance had become me. I reversed this by ignoring what my body was telling me to do and just went forward anyway. This then became my new habit and eventually it felt less strange and easier to put myself in the front line of battle. I had gone through my fears, faced the bogey man head on and finally achieved something. This realisation helped me with so many other parts of my anxiety. I became conscious of the fact that I did have some power over the way I felt and I could take some control. Eventually I learnt to stop worrying about how I came across to others. I stopped holding on to myself and putting on an act, hoping I could bluff my way through. I let go, despite how I came across and, for the first time, I could follow a little of the conversation. I did not crack like I thought I would. Through letting go, I relieved some tension and felt more at ease. I had been convinced that I had to hold on to myself, otherwise I would crack and the game would be up. How wrong I was. I still felt tense and strange during conversation, but I was okay. I knew that I had to go through this many times before I felt more in touch with reality. Still feeling apprehensive This is the sensation that something bad is going to happen even though you are no longer afraid of how you feel. One lady described it as like being in no man’s land. I also experienced this feeling of apprehension a lot during recovery and it seemed to hover over me as though it was waiting to drag me back under. This is just another habit that I had developed from my years of suffering. I felt as though I was improving, but the feeling of anxiety hung around. I accepted that anxiety had been part of me for so long it was only natural to feel this way and it was actually the transition between my suffering and feeling normal again. In other words, feeling normal actually felt strange and I was stuck with this in between feeling. I let this feeling of apprehension be there and saw it as part of recovery and in time it faded.

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Step out of your own way It's time to put your fear aside, and allow your mind/body to find its own natural balance. It will do so when and only when you begin to step out of your own way. This will happen. Trust your body by stepping back and allowing the natural process of rejuvenation to occur. Without worry, the fuel for continued distress is removed. A saying that stuck with me about releasing fear was: Invite it if it wants to come. It hates been invited because then it has no fear to feed on. This is the very thing that keeps it alive. Again it is only adrenalin being released on a sensitised body. There is nothing to fear and the way to realise that is to go through it. This is how you unmask the truth, not by avoidance. Move forward What has gone has gone. It does not matter how long you have suffered, how many years you think you have wasted, or how many times you have felt you failed in the past, now is the time to move forward to your goal of recovery. Don’t look back. You have a new goal and with your own courage and determination, you can achieve anything you want. Have faith in what you have been told and trust in your own body to heal itself. Will my anxiety return? Somebody once asked me if anxiety would return once it had left them. Anxiety does not pick on certain people. It’s not something that can come back out of the blue. It is not an illness but a condition brought on by ourselves. The person most unlikely to suffer again is actually someone who has suffered in the past. I can honestly say I know what brought me to that terrible place and I know I could never go there again. My whole outlook on life has changed and I would always put my health before anything else; nothing is more important. I am also far more

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laid back. I understand that worry is the most useless emotion we have and I tend to just live life for today and worry about nothing past or present. My life is actually a lot richer for suffering from anxiety and it has put a lot of things into perspective. Medication A lot of people ask about medication and as I am not a doctor, I cannot comment on any particular medication that anyone is taking. I believe that medication is thrown at anxiety sufferers far too easily because of ignorance on the subject. Some doctors appear to have a lack of understanding of the condition and therefore the only solution they know is to throw medication at it. I’m not saying this happens in all cases, but I feel I was just given medication because the doctor knew no better. I was given tablets to slow my heart rate down, when all I suffered from was anxiety and these tablets did nothing for me at all. Then I was put on anti-depressants that just made me feel worse. Neither did me any good, so I came of them gradually and felt better for it, but I accept that there may be a need for medication in a lot of cases in order to take the edge off anxiety/panic and give people some room to recover. The reason I sometimes worry about medication been thrown at the problem is that I believe it can create other problems. For example, people can also get addicted to the very medication that was supposed to help them. I also believe that medication can become a crutch for a lot of sufferers. They become so dependant on the tablets that they feel they can’t go out without them. They need them just to get through the day, even after they recover. It becomes their crutch and in a lot of cases you could give them anything disguised as their tablet and they would be fine. In other words, it is not the medication that is helping them but the change in their attitude. What happens when you take this crutch away? That is why I wanted to recover without medication. I needed to know that when I recovered, there would be no other obstacles to overcome.

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Obviously, each individual is different and you may have a different opinion on the subject. If you’re taking sedatives or any other medication and it helps, that’s fine. If you truly believe it helps, this can make you feel well enough to attempt to recover, which is good, as long as they don’t keep searching for that magic pill that’s going to make it all go away. In every case I believe that the underlying problems of anxiety need to be addressed for recovery to begin and unfortunately medication cannot achieve this. That’s why people may find themselves coming off medication only to go back on, or constantly changing their medication. I am not a doctor and don’t pretend to be. These are just my views. You must talk to your doctor about how you feel and let him advise you. If you are taking medication that has been prescribed for you and you feel you are having more problems than before, then please return to your doctor and talk it through with him. Diet and Fitness Exercise can also be a great help to people who suffer from anxiety. Something that really helped me was going for a swim a couple of times a week and going for the odd run throughout the week. It really helped bring my body back into balance. When I could afford it, I also went for a massage to relieve a lot of the tension in my body. People sometimes say things such as: “I went for a swim today and still felt awful”. Again, they are demanding instant success. It takes time to integrate back into normal living. It is a gradual process, but it does come as long as you stop demanding instant results. Exercise not only helps to bring your body back into balance, it produces endorphins which lift your mood and give you a sense of well-being. It also burns off the chemicals produced by stress and worry and re-absorbs that adrenalin that has built up, as well as giving you a focus other than yourself, which helps to stop the constant brooding about how you feel. Exercise is an excellent way of relieving some of that stress, so if you are in a position to take up some form of exercise, I would suggest that you do. Some people say that they could not possibly go for a walk or a run because they are far too tired and would not

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make it to the top of the road. Again, they are being tricked by their tired mind and body into thinking they can’t. Float past these thoughts and try it. You have nothing to lose. Don’t start getting yourself into a state thinking about all the pros and cons, just go ahead and do it. Diet can also help. It is not the only answer, but can certainly enhance feelings of well-being. A good diet can be helpful and I would suggest eating healthily, with plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables. If you go to my website, you will see a list of foods to avoid and foods that are good for you. I believe that a good diet is nature’s medicine and can give you everything medication can give you without the side effects and other problems. When I changed my diet, I was not perfect, so you don’t have to get too hung up about what you do and don’t eat. Don’t think one cup of coffee will set you up for an anxious day. The more changes you make to your lifestyle through diet and exercise, the better you will feel; it’s as simple as that. Alcohol There is nothing wrong with drinking alcohol in moderation to help you unwind, but it does not help to relieve anxiety. In the short term it can be good, but it dehydrates the body, leaving you feeling more anxious than ever. If you feel unable to give up altogether, then just try to drink alcohol in moderation. I spent a great deal of time drinking alcohol to block out my feelings of anxiety until I realised that all I was doing was running away from how I felt. I decided to stop running away and face my problems. It was very difficult at the time, but the rewards gained were well worth it.

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Chapter 13 COMING THROUGH DEPERSONALISATION Earlier in this book I covered the feeling of detachment from oneself, otherwise known as ‘depersonalisation’. This is an emotional disorder where you lose touch with your own personal reality, accompanied by feelings of unreality and strangeness, as well as the sensation of ones environment looking or feeling strange and unusual. This is one symptom that keeps cropping up, so I decided to add an extra chapter on this annoying, yet harmless sensation. Depersonalisation is a common and understandable offshoot of the anxiety condition. I can also tell you that it is in no way a mental illness. It is not serious or harmful in any way and has a totally logical explanation. It is temporary and, with patience and understanding, eventually passes like any other symptom. This is really no more than a tired mind, a mind that craves a rest to refresh itself. When your limbs tire, they begin to ache. These feelings of unreality occur when your mind tires of all the stress and worry, all the introspection and tuning in to how you feel. It can do you no long term harm, but will hang around for as long as you constantly worry and obsess about how you feel. This means your mind gets no rest and cannot heal itself. The key to recovering from this feeling of detachment is to surrender to this strange feeling. Pay it no respect and realise it is just the product of an over-tired mind, fatigued by your constant worrying thoughts and the constant checking in on how you feel. This symptom relies on your fear of it to keep it alive. When people are caught up in the worry cycle, they begin to think deeply and constantly. They study themselves from deep within, checking in and focusing on their symptoms. They may even wake in the morning only to continue this habit, “How do I feel this morning? I wonder if I will be able to get through today. What’s this new sensation I feel?” This may go on all day, exhausting their

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already tired mind further. This constant checking in and constant assessing of their symptoms then becomes a habit, but like all other habits this one can also be changed. All this worry is bound to make your mind feel dull and unresponsive. You are so concerned about how you feel that you are letting nothing else into your day. Is it any wonder you have come to feel so distanced from your surroundings? Is it any wonder you find it so hard to concentrate? When people are studying for exams for hours on end, they reach the point where they can no longer take in any more information, so they take a break and carry on the day after. For you, there are no breaks and no time outs. As I have already mentioned earlier, your body has a safety mechanism that protects it from all this worry and slows the mind down to safeguard itself. It takes a step back from this onslaught and shuts emotions and feelings down. This can then produce your feelings of detachment. The world around you may become hazy or out of focus and you feel empty, like a walking shell. Again this is your body saying enough is enough. I am not built to take all this worry, this constant deep thinking and questioning, so I will take my own break. Once you understand that you are not going mad and this symptom is being caused by an over-tired mind, exhausted through worry and introspection, it makes sense. These feelings cannot harm you in any way. With the fear factor taken out, it begins to hold less power over you and does not have the same effect. Although it is still annoying, you now know why you feel these feelings. Once you learn to accept them and stop adding worrying thoughts to the mix, this is another symptom that you will be able to overcome in time. Taking a step back and giving up the worrying thoughts, gives your mind the chance to rest, rejuvenate and refresh itself. When it happened to me, I recognised and understood what was causing it. I realised that I was checking in and worrying about how I felt and I did fear this sensation, so I just stopped doing it. I also learnt to get busier and stop brooding on this and other symptoms. Being active gives you another focus. Having too much time on your hands can open the door to too much needless thinking. With less worry and fear of this harmless but upsetting symptom, I was

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eventually able to overcome it. It merely became a nuisance and because I knew the reason for its existence, it no longer held any power over me. When a worry or fear loses its importance, it loses its power and that is why it is essential to realise these symptoms are neither harmful nor serious. Gradually, without all the checking in and worrying, this symptom that so dominated my life began to diminish and eventually disappeared completely. This symptom is like any other. All symptoms are still being fuelled by your fear of them. As long as the fear continues, so will the symptoms. When we start to understand why we feel like we do, we automatically fear them less and they start to lose their edge and importance. We don’t pay them as much respect, we worry about them less and we don’t feel the need to work each one of them out. This is when symptoms gradually start to fade. One lady emailed me recently after I had been helping her with this symptom and said to me: “Paul, I actually did a lot better today. I simply did not care how weird, not with it, in a dream and disconnected I felt and it actually made the day easier”. This is exactly what I wanted her to achieve. Because she stopped concerning herself all day with how she felt, she was able to start looking outwards instead of inwards and invite other things into her day, while giving her mind the rest it needed. A statement that came from another lady, which I believe is relevant to all aspects of anxiety was: “Paul, on a positive note, I'm fine now! I got through a lot of depersonalisation and other aspects of my anxiety by trying to 'engage' with the real world and I stopped focusing on how weird I felt’. This is why I always say ‘Live your life’. Don’t worry or concern yourself with how you feel. I used to go about my day feeling odd, weird, anxious and not with it, but it was fine. This is the way through. You can do the opposite and walk around questioning it all, fighting it, trying to rid yourself of how you feel, worrying about it and getting frustrated by it, if you wish. But which approach will give your mind and body the break it needs? I took the second option for 9

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years and just got worse, only when I did the opposite did things begin to improve. To finish this chapter, I am including a post that I did a while back on the subject, entitled ‘Recovery from Depersonalisation/ Derealisation’, with which people really identified. Well this post was changed from another subject to this as it seems to be a hot topic at the moment and I am going to be very honest about depersonalisation here and try and help people who are still bewildered by it. I will hold nothing back and tell my whole story and the truth behind it. Firstly let’s just refresh ourselves about Depersonalisation and why we have it. Let’s start by saying that D.P is not just an anxiety symptom. I have read a great deal on the subject and discovered that people who have been to war can suffer, people who have lost a love one can suffer temporarily from it and people who had something happen to them early in their life that really hurt or shocked them, can suffer bouts of D.P. Many people who don’t suffer from anxiety have D.P, although I would say anxiety is the main reason. So let’s go back to a person who went to war and saw things that shocked him and he would rather forget. D.P is his body’s way of shutting down these memories and feelings in order to block them out and protect him. Have you ever seen that blank look on the face of someone who has just lost a loved one? It’s as though they are not really listening and are somewhere else. A few people who have lost loved ones may have temporary D.P. It is their body’s way of protecting them from all the hurt and worry and they may begin to think very deeply, just like anxiety sufferers. Once the hurt and pain weakens, they tend to become their old selves again and the D.P leaves them as it is no longer needed to protect them. People who have experienced shocking and hurtful events early in their lives, may get bouts of D.P to suppress these memories and to shut out the hurt.

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Now let’s move on to anxiety and the reason why people suffer with D.P. Why it is only natural that you will? I had anxiety for about two years before I had any symptoms of D.P. I showed no symptoms at all, until I became more angry and frustrated by how I felt. I was being moved from one doctor to another and nothing was working. This was about the time I decided I would have to figure it out for myself. So I worried daily about how I felt and spend all my waking hours trying to figure a way out of this mess. I spent my whole day feeling sorry for myself and was on the verge of tears at every waking moment. Day after day this went on, until one day I went home and, as I was stroking my dog, I felt as though I was not really there. My vision seemed blurred and I had no idea what was happening. What happened that day is my body said ‘enough is enough. I cannot take this worry and deep thinking anymore and to protect me, and you, I have to shut your emotions down’ and this is exactly what it did. I could feel no emotions, no happiness, no sensations and no joy. The whole world went grey and lifeless and I seemed to become a walking shell. But what happened next was I began to worry about this new symptom. I tried to figure out not only the anxiety, but this new sensation of feeling lost and empty. What was happening to me? I was more bewildered than ever and I now spent my time getting worse. I really had entered the cycle that would pull me in deeper. If I had known or been taught about D.P before I suffered then I would have known the reason why it was happening and would not have wasted years trying to figure it out or worrying about it daily, sinking deeper and deeper into the condition. That is why people with anxiety develop D.P. It is all the worrying and deep thinking about the initial anxiety that brings it on. No further explanation is needed. You are not unique and it just shows how common this subject is and how many people who suffer with anxiety go on to develop D.P. It is the number one topic discussed on here and I receive more emails about it than any other symptom.

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So how did I come through my own Depersonalisation? Well before I give a list of the things that saw me through, I want to be honest and say to everyone ……. It did take a while and there are no quick fixes. D.P left me when it realised that it was no longer needed. When would this be? When I stopped the deep thinking, trying to figure it all out, and when I stopped the daily worrying and feeling sorry for myself. While I was in this cycle, nothing was going to change. It makes complete sense that while I did worry and obsess, then my body would carry on protecting me. The more I worried, the more I needed to be protected. Only when this was reversed would it ease. I had developed a lot of habits and, yes, worrying and obsessing had become a habit, but I allowed it to be there. I did not add any more worry and I stopped trying to figure it all out daily - what would be would be. My attention was still on me for a while and D.P still held its grip, but I decided, and I mean from the pit of my stomach, to live with this for the time being, question it NO MORE and pay it NO ATTENTION. I was determined not to do this just for a week and then think ‘Oh it has not gone, I must try and fix it’ or start questioning it all over again - ‘Oh, should I do something about it, it’s still there, what if it’s something else’. I was not going to feel sorry for myself - ‘Oh I hate this, why wont it go away?’ All this stopped and I TRULY accepted this feeling and understood that it was my body’s way of protecting me. I had no control over it, so it was better just to get on with my life. The mistake a lot of people make is they accept it for a week or so and then become frustrated once more. They begin to question it all over again. They have never really accepted this feeling but have just put up with it. I never even thought about recovery. I just gave up and stopped worrying or fighting. I stopped questioning the feeling and recovery came to me. Don’t go searching for recovery, your body will bring it to you if you step out of the way and let it. Here is a list of other things that really helped me and I would always recommend to those suffering with D.P

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Exercise This is a great way of clearing the cobwebs, burning off excess adrenalin and giving you another focus to your day. If you go running outdoors, you are having a dose of nature and I found this very beneficial. Keep away from forums and studying the subject daily. I run this blog as I think it is great for giving support and the odd bit of advice. I don’t like forums, as people on there tend to wallow in the subject and drown themselves in it, trying to find that miracle cure. Mostly they end up feeling worse and the subject just takes over their day. I took breaks from the subject all the time and stopped doing the daily Google search. I realised that in order to feel like my old self, I had to pack in as much normal living as possible. Doing normal things makes you feel part of the outside world again. I always tried to live as normal a life as possible and never let how I felt stop me. Not always easy, I know, but I am so glad I did as in time normality seemed to override my years of suffering. Stop obsessing and worrying, trust in yourself. Pay this feeling no attention and this means truly just getting on with your day no matter how you feel. You are not going crazy and this feeling will go when your body no longer needs it. No matter how long you have suffered with this feeling, it will pass and does no long term harm at all. Trust in what I say and trust in your own body’s natural healing system. I know I keep saying it, but I was worse than most people that come on here. My D.P was so bad that I could not hold a conversation and I came through. I don’t have one symptom now. My mind can feel a little tired at times, but I have no symptoms of D.P at all and, trust me, EVERYONE’S body is the same and reacts the same. I can only give advice, I cannot make people follow it and that’s the sad thing. People do believe they have something else and go down the worry cycle again. People do believe there must be a quick fix somewhere and begin to go on their merry search again. Someone once emailed me and said “I have read your book but my D.P is still there”. Did they read the same book that told

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them it would take time? No, again they wanted the quick answer, the miracle cure that does not exist. I hope the above helps people but please make a special effort to really absorb it and take it on board. Below is a post from Steven who accepted and understood what I said and he was eventually able to come through his own D.P. Over the past few days I have let it be there and not questioned it. I have felt better and done so much the past couple of days. I even played golf today and even though I was thinking about my condition a bit, I didn’t care and I actually enjoyed playing the golf. I understand that I will feel strange talking to people for a while and I really don’t care. It’s amazing how much more I have been able to connect with my family, girlfriend and friends just in the past couple of days since reading your info. I am at Uni now and I’m going to watch the football in my local pub tonight and again I really couldn’t care less how I feel! The thing I now know I did wrong was, if the feelings were still there, then somehow I felt I was failing myself and I had to find a way to get rid of them. I now know just how much this held me back and I am just getting on with my life. Never has a truer word been said, Steven. Don’t expect miracles, just live alongside the strangeness for as long as it takes and in time the old you will re-surface. Paul And finally, this is from a lady who read the book and posted this on my blog for others to read. Hi everyone, I have been making huge strides with anxiety/D.P and the pieces of the puzzle are truly falling into place. I went from waking up feeling fear all around me, trying to figure these

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feelings out, to the point where I am now which is truly shrugging my shoulders with a whatever attitude and going on with my day. I want to share tips that truly helped me make HUGE strides with this anxiety condition. Tips that helped me: I stay busy, I read, I go outside and look at nature, I keep my focus outward and, as Paul says, I pack in as much normal living as possible. When I feel anxious (tingling, high heart rate) I have learned to shrug my shoulders in a ‘whatever’ attitude and go on with my tasks, knowing that this condition is normal for the circumstances I have been in. I do not try to justify irrational scary thoughts. I just let them flow in and literally ignore them; pay them no respect and kind of laugh them off :) When my attention reverts back to me (such as when I am out and conversing or doing any task) I allow it to be there and move on with whatever I’m doing. This is very important because trying to figure out this reverting back feeling makes us fight our condition. FAITH - that what you are doing is right – PATIENCE. Most Important: I moved towards my feelings of fear. I would sometimes have a feeling of not being able to breathe or just sudden fear that brought me to a point where I wanted to leave. This is the point where I invited these feelings. I let my body rage inside of me and continued on with my tasks, paying these feelings no respect. This means not questioning them or running away. This is truly the “water to take out the anxiety fire”; the most important behaviour. These behaviours that I have taught myself have led me to a point where I almost feel 100% normal, I do have setbacks, however I now know how to deal with them and they do not scare me., As time passes, things fall into place and the anxiety fire dies out as we face our feelings of fear and allow them to be there:) I hope this helps. Its all about Faith and Patience

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Chapter 14 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Below are some common questions I have been asked over the years. Some are detailed in my website also, but for anyone who may not have read them or would like to keep them for reference here they are again. Q.1 Why do I feel better in certain situations and not in others? This is a very common one and it all comes down to how you think in other situations. For example, you may feel better in the safety of your own home rather than at a family gathering. There is no difference in either of these situations; the only difference is in the way you think. You are the same person and it is not the situation that makes you feel worse, it is your thought pattern. You may spend the day worrying about going to a particular function, setting your body up to be anxious on arrival and then blame it on the situation you are in, rather than the thought pattern you have created during the day while at home. You may get there and then also worry about making a fool of yourself, spending the whole time tensing against how you feel and creating more anxiety. Do you see how we do this to ourselves? It is not the situation, but our perception of the situation that causes us to feel worse in certain situations. You are merely doing it to yourself with your thoughts. You must just accept how you feel wherever you are and in whatever situation you find yourself. Just allow yourself to feel anything. Sometimes a place may hold certain memories, which may make us feel anxious, but this soon passes when we learn to accept how we feel and let go of that tension. We begin to densitise to different places and situations. How are we ever going to know we are fine and that anxiety can do us no harm unless we go towards it, allow ourselves to feel it and see for ourselves?

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If you truly allow yourself to feel anything and stop all the "what ifs" and other negative thoughts that just increase anxiety, you will find that although you may feel uncomfortable at times, nothing is going to happen to you and in time your reactions lessen until you feel more able to cope, day by day. Anxiety loves avoidance, so take its power away, move forward and embrace these feelings of fear, even if you're in a situation where you feel you have failed in the past. Avoiding symptoms just does not work, as you have no doubt realised by now. Let all feelings be there. Don’t avoid them, but go through them. Don’t see them as the enemy. This worked for me, I had faced the demons head on and realised that the only way to stop fearing them was to feel them. At one time it did matter to me if I felt anxious or panicky. I would go to places wishing and hoping I would not feel this way, but this was all wrong and I would never move forward like this. I had to let go and welcome any feelings that came. I had to learn not to care if they did, this was the only way through. I ignored my body's instinct to avoid and started to embrace how I felt. I moved forward towards these feelings. Eventually, I started to understand my condition so much more. Q.2 Will these feelings ever go away? Yes, they will. Once you understand why you feel like you do, you can unmask the fears you hold about anxiety. There are so many myths about anxiety that it worries me to know just how many people are misinformed and truly believe they will never get better and will just have to live with it. Like me, too many people spend years searching for that elusive miracle cure that just does not exist. Understanding anxiety takes so much fear out of how we feel. Every stage and symptom has a logical explanation that can be explained. With less fear and more understanding, we also calm the constant worrying. It is the lack of information on the subject that keeps the worry cycle going. Constantly worrying that we will never get better also adds to the belief that we will just have to live with it. Once we start to understand anxiety and use the tools we have been given to cope with how we feel, the change can be dramatic.

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During my recovery, I found that the more knowledge I had and the more I understood my condition, the easier it was to not fear or bother about how I felt. There was a logical explanation for it all and I was not going crazy as I first thought. I started to lose the fear of my symptoms and how I felt. Eventually they began to hold less power over me and I started to pay them less respect. It is your desperation to rid yourself of how you feel that keeps your anxiety alive. The stress you put on yourself daily and the constant worrying and thinking about your condition, puts tremendous pressure on your body. Is it any wonder you stay anxious? So many people first come to me in total desperation for help, never believing they can get better. As time goes by, I receive an email from them saying how much better they are doing, how much easier life is and they can’t believe how far they have come. So don’t be depressed by how you feel now. I spent 10 years getting worse purely because I did everything I should not have done. I fought, worried, avoided and became more bewildered. My illness just became me and nothing mattered but getting rid of these awful feelings. This just left me more detached from everything around me. The worry was fraying my nerves even further, the deep thinking was tiring my mind even more and, more than that, the feeling of desperation crushed my spirit. I just became a shell. But in time all this was reversed once I had the information you now have. Q.3 Why do I find it so hard in social situations? I find it so hard to communicate with people. Avoiding eye contact and running away became a habit for me and I had to find a way to reverse it. Firstly I decided that how I came across did not matter any more. If I stuttered or felt awful then so be it, I had to go accept this to move forward. We must not run away from conversations, but allow ourselves to feel strange if we have to. We must be prepared to feel half baked and not with it, but just chat away. People don’t notice our awkwardness as much as we think they do and remember the aim is to embrace situations we may have run away from in the past. Don’t wait for the day when you wake up and all this is behind you and you are able to talk freely and easily with anyone. As you know, that

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day never comes, you have to make that day happen by not caring how you feel or how you come across. So what if people think you seem a bit distant, is it really that important? Remember in time the real you will return. When we find the courage to accept how we feel, even embrace these feelings, we find it easier to follow what the other person is saying. We become less concerned about how we feel which gives us more time to be interested in the situation we are in and become more involved in the present Q.4 Why did anxiety choose me? Anxiety does not choose certain people. It is not something that you just get such as a cold. Anxiety is the result of your body being over worked, be it through long hours, stress at work, a problem or collection of them that you worry about. You over work your body and it breaks down. Your nerves have been battered so much that they go ‘bad’ if you like. If you work anything you buy beyond its capabilities, whether it be a blender, a vacuum cleaner or a car, it will break down or begin to clunk and run badly. Your body is the same. So anxiety is not an ‘it’. It is not something your body wants to go through. It is your body telling you that it can no longer work with the pressure you are putting it under. That is why it is so important to take your symptoms with a pinch of salt and not to get stressed or worry about them; otherwise you are just working your body far too hard, a body that is crying out to be left alone Below are some questions that others asked me in an open session. Q.5 Paul, here is something I have wanted to know about you during recovery: When you say, “whatever” to a thought or feeling, do you feel confident when you say it each time or is it a matter of just saying it even if you feel like you’re treading water to stay afloat at that moment? This was one question I welcomed as I got stuck the same way and I did actually do a post on this a while back on this. I think certain

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people get too hung up with accepting how they are. This should be a ‘whatever’ attitude and NOT a need to keep reminding yourself to accept how you feel. Once you start battling with yourself again, it becomes a ‘do’. I think someone once mentioned that they had to keep reminding themselves to accept how they were. There is no need to do this and as some people may know it loses its force in time. Accepting is all about not doing - not fighting, not worrying, and not filling yourself with self pity. Giving your body a break is never a ‘do’, so please don’t feel the need to walk around telling yourself daily that you must accept this. I see it more as a case of putting all your tools down and accepting this is you for the time being. It’s more of an ‘attitude’ that just becomes second nature. It’s not about putting pressure on yourself expecting a word to make you feel better and then getting frustrated that it doesn’t. You are putting your faith in a word, when what you should be doing is developing an attitude born out of the practice of not caring. There is a world of difference between feeling awful and just carrying on with your day and saying ‘whatever’ and then getting frustrated that you still feel awful. Can you see the difference? It’s like having flu. We know we can do nothing about it, so we just get on with our day even though we feel awful. We don’t battle to feel better, worry and obsess about it, because we understand the condition. It’s the same with anxiety. Q.6 Paul - I was doing so well these days and out of the blue I got this setback. I feel the terms I use to accept no longer carry any weight. They feel meaningless when I say them to myself. For example, when I say to myself “it’s only a bad habit”, then automatically my mind will start questioning. “What’s a habit? Are you sure it’s a bad habit?” I don’t know what to do. I have tried using new sayings but the same happens. It’s so confusing. Please advise! Again you don’t have to have sayings, as you can end up putting too much faith in them to make you feel better and they can lose their effect. When you say ‘It’s only a bad habit’ and then the other questions come, again this is adrenalin building up and needing an outlet. You need to let the extra thoughts come if they wish, but let them burn themselves out. As you say, at the moment you let them

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frustrate you as you become sucked in by them. If you had not, they would not have bothered you. But more than anything, I would drop the sayings, just let come what may. If your mind questions a question, then let it, but don’t get involved or let it frustrate you. Also don’t search around for a phrase to make you feel better, ‘That saying did not work, so what about this saying. That did not work, I’ll try this. You see you are back in fight mode. You are not accepting; you are searching for something to make you feel better and having a mental battle with yourself to do so. Q.7 I have been doing great, but I stumble when confronted with the reality that people do suffer from bouts of major depression. With these thoughts come rushes of fear and then I get caught up in a swirl of anxiety and low mood. How would you move toward these feelings appropriately in order to face them head on? This question was asked in a different way before. This is the cycle of anxiety. An initial thought like ‘maybe I will suffer with depression’ on a sensitised body will set off the anxiety, which is just adrenalin on sensitised nerves. This brings feelings of fear and you may feel down that you feel awful again. Firstly, understanding that this is the cycle can help. Just understanding why you get such an exaggerated response to a thought can be a comfort. If I understand your question, then the initial thought of developing depression is the answer. To desensitise to a thought you need to allow yourself to let the depression come if it wants to. Give in to the initial thought and say “If I become depressed, then so be it”. This thought then won’t have the same effect, as you have allowed yourself to feel it. There is no recoiling from the thought, which is why you feel the initial reaction to it. Never recoil from any thought. I have been asked the question ‘Did you ever worry the anxiety may come back?’ Can you imagine the worry, the stress and the watching I would have endured if I had this thought daily? I understood enough about anxiety to not have these fears anyway, but if that initial thought had come, I would have just paid it no

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attention. My attitude would have been that there is nothing I can do about it anyway. Anxiety is a condition, not an illness and your attitude should be ‘If it wants to come back, let it’ - just give in to the thought /fear. You have allowed it to come back if it wishes, but do you see that with this statement, the fear and worry has now gone and the thought has nothing to feed on. You can ask any ex-sufferer and they will all tell you that they could never suffer again. People who recover understand what got them there in the first place and what got them home and are far less vulnerable than someone who has never suffered before. Q.8 “What does it feel like to be fully recovered” and “How do you know”? I have been asked this question more times than any other. The feeling of full recovery is really special, but something I truly never aimed for. I just wanted to feel better and I think that helped me. I was not desperate to recover; just feeling better was great and it kept opening new doors. But feeling better was up and down. It would go something like this……feeling better, then having bad days - feeling great - feeling awful - feeling really good - feeling awful. It was up and down until the good days were really good and the bad days were not too bad. I may have had a couple of really bad days, but I had been there many times before, so I did not let them bother me. I had so much faith in the fact that I would soon be back to feeling great again. Full recovery was strange as I thought I had just about recovered before. But I do remember the day when I could just chat freely without reverting back to me, without feeling as though I had to place each word in a sentence. I said to my mother “I just know this is it, full recovery”. She asked how I knew and I said “well, you know when people say they think they may be in love, but they are not sure, but others say if you’re in love you just know’ -that is what it is like.” I thought I had recovered before as I had so many good days, but now I knew, it went to another level - total freedom. I never thought

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about anxiety any more unless I worked with it and then it was just like any other subject. It no longer bothered me and because I had stopped worrying or caring how I felt, so many other things filled my day, I had my life back. My mind was so clear and my nerves had healed. They were no longer sensitised and did not feel rushes of fear for very little reason. I was not racked with feelings of anxiousness and not constantly irritable. My mind was no longer tired through fear and worry and the deep thinking about my condition. It had regained its flexibility and felt so clear. It was like the whole subject was behind me. One thing though was that it felt odd to feel free again. It was just like being let out of prison and it took a while to readjust to feeling normal. Anxiety had been part of my life for so long it felt natural. Q.9 You mention a lot about not going in search of that magic tablet or secret cure etc and just letting recovery come to you. However, you also recommend a few things such as exercise, avoiding alcohol, massage etc to help with recovery. How do you draw the line between the two and when do these things stop being just aids in our recovery and represent us searching for a quick fix? I’ve thought a few times about trying meditation or something to help me relax, but then wonder if it might be a step too far and means that I am not accepting the way I feel. This is a very good question and as I have mentioned before, I initially took up running because it helped with my anxiety. But the mistake I made was that my whole run was taken up with ‘I will feel great when I get back. This will really help my anxiety. My whole run was built around ‘ridding myself of anxiety’ which was the wrong attitude. If I came home not feeling great I would question why and try and run further. I needed to feel great, but I had fallen into the trap of doing something to ‘rid’ myself of anxiety. So although I knew it helped me, I just started to run for me. If it helped with anxiety then so be it. If it did not, then that was fine, it was not going to be the reason I ran. So it does not matter what you do as long as you do it for your sense of well being and don’t put yourself under pressure to feel good afterwards.

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Answers to emails I have received

Hi Paul. I wondered if you could answer me about a problem I seem to be stuck on. I can be sat in lectures and strange images, past dreams, memories or whatever keep popping up in my mind. I get so distressed wondering why this is happening and thinking that, yes, I am going mad. I can’t find this symptom anywhere and I have looked. Is this anxiety because it is making me question my sanity again and it does scare me to the point that I am obsessed with every thought that enters my head. My reply was: Hi, you are doing everything that I have been telling you not to do. You have given in to an off shoot of anxiety and paid it the maximum respect. Rather than just sitting in your lecture with strange images and dreams passing through, you have become distressed and scared of them. You are probably sat there trying to work it all out and scaring yourself with thoughts of going crazy, etc. etc. Is it any wonder you feel worse? You are probably thinking about it all the way home, going over why, what, if. I will tell you that I had the same symptoms many times. When I was drifting off to sleep, I felt like I was lifting off the bed. I had so many thoughts come through, but just shrugged my shoulders. When your mind is tired, which yours will be with all the worry and stress you are putting it under, trying to figure things out, then it plays the odd trick on you. Have you ever tried to stay up all night and not sleep for more than 24 hours? If you have, you will know that you minds starts to play tricks on you. It’s the same thing. Your mind is just very tired. Please don’t do all the Google searching, looking for this symptom and that symptom, it’s a complete waste of time. Just put ALL symptoms under the umbrella of anxiety. Don’t feel the need to investigate them all, obsess and worry. You will just go around in circles tiring your mind even more and not giving it the break it so craves.

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As I have said before, I can give advice out but what I can’t do is make people follow it and trust in what I say. Only you can do that. Allow yourself to feel anything, it’s fine. Hope that helps Paul Her reply was: Hi Paul Thanks so much. I have followed your advice and most, if not all of my anxiety symptoms have gone, just like you say they will. This is my last remaining symptom and thanks for giving me a much needed kick up the bum for giving it so much importance. So what if I get these and feel weird. It’s okay. I will now give myself permission to feel like this, something I have not done in the past which just created more problems. My reply was: We do need a kick up the bum sometimes Samantha and I spoke quite direct to try to help you and really get my point across, no other reason. I just don’t want you or anyone letting anxiety take control again and bluffing you into thinking it is something else. You’re fine, let it play its tricks. It’s honestly just a tired mind and means nothing. The above is a classic case of being bluffed by your anxiety. It is your reaction to it and not ‘it’ that can cause the problem. She had decided to react to how she felt instead of just carrying on with her day whether the feelings were there or not. She was tricked into the whole investigation/worry cycle. She just needed a sharp reminder from me not to go down that road.

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Hi Paul, Thank you so much for your book. It has really helped me to move forward and understand so much more. I am able to face life more easily now, although there are still certain questions I would like to ask. At the moment I drop my 3 year old off at nursery every day. Just before I leave, I start to sweat and by the time I get there it’s terrible - horrible in fact. I am trying to let the feelings go through my body and do their worst, but it’s hard. Then I start feeling faint and the fear sets in! This is a big achievement for me, as a year ago I never went out of the house. I am trying, I really am, but why do I sweat so much. I feel like I have done a massive workout! Sara Hi Sara, Learning about anxiety, having previously had no information, is like going back to school. The more we learn and understand, the easier things become, but you will not recover overnight. Reading the book has taken away a little bit of fear, which is helping you to do things you could not do before. This is the way forward. Little steps turn into huge strides. Just doing something you could not do in the past is an achievement. What we need to do is take the fear away and put you back in control. The sweating is easy to explain. When anyone gets nervous, before a job interview, wedding day etc, they begin to sweat. Well you have nothing to be nervous about and dropping your child off should not bring these feelings. Well they do, because all you fear is the fear itself. I’ll bet you try to rush your way through it and try to get it over with, making a big deal of it before you go. Is it any wonder you sweat? Again, the thing to do is exactly what you have been doing just go with it. If you sweat, you sweat. If you feel nervous, so what? It is just a strange physical feeling. Sara, like it or not, you will feel uncomfortable and sweat for a while because your body now

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associates this run as something to fear. It says “Sara, here we are again” and memory takes over, hence the sweating. This is nothing to worry about because you can now teach your body that there is nothing to worry about, no reason for it to bring these feelings on. You do this by going through it, passing through these feelings and not trying to rush or push them away. The more you go through the situation, letting these feelings come and keeping a calm attitude, the more your body will stop seeing it as something to fear and it desensitises. Avoid running around trying to push these feelings away and going for the quick exit. All this is telling your body is that there is something to fear, so it reacts accordingly by adding more adrenalin. Do you see that unbeknown to you, you are merely doing this to yourself? I went through the same thing and had to go through it many times before I began to find peace. But the very act of letting it come brought some peace in itself. The main thing to remember is that no matter what your body is doing, try not to be influenced. Also it is all about distrusting what your body is saying. Adrenalin comes through habit, which makes you falsely think there is danger, so you rush around trying to get it over with. Now is the time to tell yourself that you will be fine and there is nothing to worry about. So many people approach me and say "Paul, I did it, I really did. I just thought I could not do it" They say they felt uncomfortable, but nothing happened. They had been scared of the fear itself and once they decided to move towards it, they took some of its power away. You will never faint. This is just another symptom of fear. Many people say this. Sara, it is just adrenalin going round your body through habit in a sensitised body that can do you no harm and that always subsides. Don't let these strange physical feelings hold you back. Say "It’s just adrenalin, nothing can happen to me; it never does" Don't worry for now about how you feel. It may take a little time and practice, but you can do it and you will be fine. The only thing to fear is fear itself. Let’s move towards it and take some of its power away. I put myself in many situations where I felt fear rise and the symptoms of fear came and they always reached a peak -that point that says ‘Escape’. But I ignored this instinct and just sat on it. I let it take me where it wanted, but it always died down and nothing happened. I did not lose it or collapse and I thought ‘Is that what I

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have been running away from for all this time’. I had let it smack me and then gave it a free reign to do what it wanted. I was fed up with running away. I was almost saying ‘come on then, let’s see what you are made of. Come and do your worst’. We can only unmask fear when we allow ourselves to feel it and realise it does not have the power we thought it had. Kind Regards Paul Below are a couple of emails to the same person. Max is now just about there with his own recovery and is leading a full life once again. Hi Paul, I'm trying so hard to let these feelings just be, but today I find myself pitying the situation and poor old me. Life used to be so easy. I just don't understand why this has happened to me and what I need to do to finally rid myself of this horrible illness. Accepting it today seems very, very hard. I do understand that this is just a blip and part of the recovery, but it’s just so annoying. I never used to be like this and I can't see a reason for me to continue thinking in this way, but as you have said previously, when we get anxious the thinking becomes more negative. Regards Max Hi Max, Referring to your quote below: “After a few good days I am having a real bad time today. I didn't sleep well last night and as soon as that happens, it all goes to crap.

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Then I start worrying about the effects of not sleeping and here we go again” Firstly I can tell you to let the bad days go and not to go down the road of worrying about not sleeping, how you feel etc. and trying to work it all out. Only you can choose whether or not to take this advice, I can only advise you and hope that you trust in my words. Again you have let a bad day throw you into despair. You will have lots of bad days on your road to recovery. It is all part of the process and you really don't need to work out why. Six years ago when I first received help from someone who knew what he was talking about, I was asked the question: "Paul, are you willing to give recovery as much time and space as it needs or are you impatient to be better?" I said “After 10 years of feeling like this I am willing to give this as much time as it needs". He said "Good, then I will help you, but if you expect to recover in a week, then you may as well walk out of that door". This person saved my life because of that statement. Even when I left his help and began to study the subject, I was not cured. I was far better, but not cured. I had good days and bad days, but I always remembered what he said: "Give it as much time as it needs". Now if I had a bad day and worried about it - more stress and more adrenalin. If I tried to figure out why - deep thinking, tiring my mind even further. If I fell into the trap of self-pity and why me - more depression and stress. The list goes on and on and for years I did all of these things until I heard these words. Throughout this time I did not make any progress. How could I when I let one bad day throw me into such despair. I have received several emails like yours from people who are having a bad day or two thinking ‘this is not working’ and off they go on the roundabout of medication and magic cures only to come back weeks later saying: "Paul can we work together again." This happens time and time again. I have to let these people go and get it out of their system, but they always come back.

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Max, don't become one of these people. It was only a couple of weeks back that you told me that you felt great. You said: “I know there will be some bad days but so what.” Why not celebrate all those good days instead of being so bothered about one bad day? You also say that you cannot work out why you feel like this, well my book will tell you. Anxiety is your body's way of telling you to slow down. I devolved panic attacks through drugs misuse. I had no anxiety whatsoever, but the worry and stress of this awful panicky feeling led to me having anxiety 24/7. Many people say I don't understand why I feel like I do. I say “Have you been worrying recently or had a period of stress”? They reply with such things as "my mother passed away last month, my daughter left home, I also lost my job a few months ago. Many don't even realise until you ask them the question. Now it is not important why, the only thing that matters is moving forward slowly but surely. So don't try and figure out why or feel sorry for yourself, let’s just work at moving forward. Regards Paul Paul Thanks for the reply. What you say makes so much sense and everything you say echoes what my therapist is saying (unfortunately I only see him for 30 minutes every couple of weeks). What I realise I am doing is giving a bad day so much significance. I had so many good days and things are better than I could have believed or imagined they would have been just a couple of months ago. So as you say, I should be celebrating the great increase in good days compared to bad. The good days are far outnumbering the bad. You're right, I don't need to work out why but just accept it as part of the recovery process. I knew I was going to have more bad days and shouldn't be surprised. How on earth could I expect recovery to be a straightforward cure? It’s certainly not the case with any other serious illness. Your continued support is appreciated.

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Regards Max That's a better response Max. The message seems to have come across loud and clear. You know where I am if you need me. Don't hold anything back, even if you go over old ground. I don't care what you ask or how many times you ask, as long as it helps you. Max you really are only asking the same questions everybody else asks, the same concerns I had all those years ago. But just trust in what I say. Not only have I studied the subject for years and written a book on it, but I am living proof that what I say will work for you. Nobody will ever know how bad I was all those years ago. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to realise that I did come through, but everything makes so much sense now and it is up to me to pass my knowledge on. Good luck Paul Max finally understood what I was trying to tell him. I wanted you to read this as I feel it is very important for anyone that feels they are improving. Put no pressure on yourself to feel a particular way, just give yourself as much time as you need. This one came from someone who emailed me on a regular basis, utterly concerned about every symptom he felt and trying to find a quick fix to banish these feelings Hi Paul, I am still concerned and worried about how I feel every day. It worries me that I can no longer feel emotions and have become so detached from the person I used to be. I try so hard to feel like the person I used to be, but this seems impossible at times. Please can you advise?

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Regards Rob Hi Rob, This is exactly the problem - you are trying to be the person you were before. You are not the person who could once feel emotions and have an interest in your day and what was happening, not to mention all the other things connected with anxiety. You are trying to scramble back to who you were and trying to force feeling better. The difference between you and me is that I finally accepted that ‘this is me now and this is how I feel, so I might as well get on with my life’. No more questioning it or trying to be the person I was before. I did not accept this was me forever, just for now. This was so important to my recovery, which took a while. It was a bumpy up and down affair, but I did it the right way. You still say you worry. Again you have not accepted that this is you. What is there to worry about? Your mind and body is tired and this is why you feel the symptoms you do. You need to stop hating how you feel and adopt a new attitude. Say "OK this is me for the time being. It feels awful at times, but I am going to try and live alongside it for now instead of fighting against it”. Regards Paul The following comes from someone I have been helping for a while and is a conversation we had on msn. He had suffered for many years and needed that extra help, as he was so used to fearing how he felt and was never quite convinced that it was nothing more serious. Hi Paul, I have been looking through other websites trying to find some more information, but have decided enough’s enough. I still felt there must be more to how I feel, but now I am beginning to realise it is just anxiety playing its tricks again, making me believe the worst.

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As I have said to you before, if you must look for information, then read it just for information and not to continually put your mind at rest. As you know, as soon as one fear goes, we tend to find another to replace it “Yes, I know. You are so right. Anxiety can be a very clever beast”. Ha, ha, correct, it is…..but it’s not really the anxiety. It happens because your body is sensitised, so a little worry that would not bother you when you were healthy, seems massive and worthy of investigation. It is all down to being sensitised which is why these thoughts seem to come with such force. When you’re healthy, they come and go, receiving little attention. This is very important and that is why you are far better just letting these worries go, something I learnt very early on. Paul This one comes from someone else who came so far but really struggled in the early stages. It is one that I split up and answered for him. I wanted to add it as it shows how someone can move forward with understanding. Hi Paul, Just to make sure that I'm doing everything right, let's assume you're me. In a situation at work, I'm in my boss's office (happened yesterday) and I'm beginning to get panicky. My body is going into panic mode and I'm "fuzzing" out mentally. I kept accepting this as much as I know how. I kept affirming “it's okay that this is how I feel." Then I made sure that I was breathing property, corrected my posture and really allowed the sensations to go on. That ended and similar situations like this come up during the day in my sales career. I will keep accepting this is how I am. Is this right? I did have a breakthrough couple of days after letting this sink into my mind and abandoning myself.

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I really don't like the statement 'just to make sure I am doing things right'. Again, recovery is about NOT DO. You don't have to do anything - that is the whole point. You don't have to worry. You don't have to question. You don't have to fight. You don't have to control how you feel. You don't do anything but accept this is you for now. Don’t see anxiety as a big monster, see it as a feeling - just your body’s way of saying you have over-done things. You are completely right in what you did when you felt panicky. Panic would have loved you to try and control or push away how you felt. It would have loved you to run away. It would have loved you to start with all the 'Oh no, I am losing control'. You gave it none of this and it passed. Well it will as it had no worry or fear from you to fuel it and you deserve full credit for that. Panic is just adrenalin that will always die down. I could feel like that now and it would not bother me in the slightest as I have a full understanding of what is happening and that it will pass. So I would have no worry, no fear and no fuel. Once you do this several times, then you begin to de-sensitise. Your nervous system calms down, your body begins to relax as it realises there is no need to worry, and things get easier. The people who do the opposite of what you did are the ones that say in the cycle. In my days of suffering, I realised I was sensitised and that it would take very little to make me feel panicky. I accepted this and because of this attitude, I gradually began to de-sensitise. I was looking in your "friends" section of the website. I noticed people on there talking about how they battled this thing and recovered years ago and they are now back stronger than before, etc. Is that something I need to accept also? That this could come back? I suppose if I really didn't fear it, it wouldn't. Matt, one thing I would not do is look at other people's circumstances as each one of us is different. Don't put any pressure on yourself to feel perfect for me, just be happier that you are having good days and take things day by day. In fact, don't even use the word recovery. I never did this and believe that the fact that I did not put any pressure on myself to achieve this was one of the reasons that I did recover.

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I'm really working on this Paul. I feel SO good at times and these feelings extend for a day or more sometimes. I feel horrible at times too. I am just keeping it real and realising that "there's nothing to fight here" and allowing will be better for me. That's great! Remember that at one period you felt bad all the time, so celebrate the fact you are having some good days. This is because you are physically and mentally letting go. You are not trying to 'control' how you feel and just easing some of that anxiety. You are so right, there is nothing to fight here. That should become etched in your memory as it is so, so true and covers everything I teach. Please never be one of those people that has good days and then hates the bad ones even more because they felt good the day before. The bad are just as important as the good for your recovery. They also give you the chance to practice the 'so what' attitude. What do you think? I realise that I can't create a deadline and expect recovery at such and such a date. I had a friend come to see me today. He offered me a lucrative opportunity running a couple of his business offices for him. He doesn't know the situation. This felt great, but also sort of stressed me out. I just kept thinking of the pressure it would put on me. I immediately realized that I don't have to do it at this time. I don't want to put stress on myself to "perform" at a certain capacity just because I once did. Matt My reply was: No NEVER put a deadline on recovery – never - even if you just feel much better, just accept this. Forget the word recovery and just use the word progress. Putting pressure on yourself to recover is something I don't advise. Always let recovery come to you and don't go searching for it. There is one other point I would like to make concerning the situation with your friend and the job offer. As you will now realise, without our health, life can be a struggle. Nothing is more important. My attitude to life has changed so much

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and I now realise what is important. Matt, from now on, always put yourself and how you feel first. You have actually listened to your body and are not over-done things again. If a lot of sufferers had listened in the first place, then the problem would not be so big. So, yes, I totally think you did the right thing. There will be loads of opportunities in your life, but for now you need to put yourself and your health first. I really want to MAKE SURE that I "get it" so I can get myself out of the way and let my body heal. That’s it Matt, it’s like learning another subject. The more your knowledge builds up, the easier it is for things to become automatic. I suggest you do as before. Take this information away and try to soak it up, then just come back to me when you feel you need to. You know where I am and I hope the above helps you. Paul And finally here is one from Mike who struggled thinking anxiety was something else. Hi Paul, I have a problem in that sometimes I think this is more than anxiety and maybe I am going crazy. I think odd thoughts at times and start ‘googling’ again. I understand it’s stress orientated, but even though it is irrational, I still think I may one day get taken away somewhere - silly, hey? Mike Not at all Mike; this is very common. People suffering anxiety generally think they are going crazy due to the endless ‘mind chatter’. I worried that I might start hearing and seeing things as well, but again this is anxiety playing tricks on you. You can deal with the anxiety, YOU ARE NOT GOING CRAZY. Get yourself out and about, chatting to other people and doing normal everyday stuff. Thanks Paul for that I truly understand that to feel normal I have to live normally. I am a waiter and I suppose I get

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frustrated that I can’t think as clearly as I once did and that I do get a bit of mind chatter. It’s great that you have a job. Being a waiter is an excellent way of mixing with other people and taking your mind off the irrational thoughts. Let the thoughts be in the background as you work, don’t give them any attention and don’t analyse them. Just say ‘as if’ and get on with other things. Do this each time a scary thought of any nature comes into your head. It takes time, but gradually when you are able to stop analysing your thoughts and remain in the present moment, you will gain lots of confidence. A thought only has as much power as you give it, so please trust in what I say. Regards Paul Thanks for that Paul. I did what you said and it helped a lot. I just gave them no attention and they seemed far less important. I suppose I also feel my life has been restricted somewhat and that I put off doing certain things. I try not to let anxiety rule the choices I make, but sometimes I do. I also think maybe I will be the one who does not recover, even though I have made big strides. Everyone thinks that they may be the only one who doesn’t recover, it’s part of the self-doubt that we all have when suffering. Just follow my advice, live your normal life alongside anxiety, accept the thoughts and face any fears that you may have head on. Try not to avoid doing things and going places that you would have done before the anxiety, even if you feel strange. You are changing behaviour and to do this you need to live alongside the old behaviour for a while, until the new behaviour takes over. I promise you this works and you just need to have the faith that it will. Too many go around in circles because they are not willing to live along side all the strangeness anxiety can bring for a while until a new behaviour is born.

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Chapter 15 SUMMARY When I speak about allowing yourself to have anxiety, this translates to just getting on with your day and giving less and less respect to how you feel. It is not a case of ‘I must accept the way I feel’ it’s more an attitude of acceptance. What I teach just means ‘letting go’, letting feelings be there and carrying on with your day with them in the background. Avoid trying to ‘do something about it’. The way you may be feeling has been explained in this book. It is only natural in the circumstances and this is why I say let them be there. You cannot control how you feel and all the worrying, self-pity and fighting is keeping you in the cycle. All this thrashing of yourself is just tiring your body and mind even more and feeding the symptoms of anxiety you feel. Does this make sense? If your body could speak, it would say: ‘please leave me alone, I so want a break from all this’ I was asked by someone I helped a while ago who is now fully recovered if he could write a piece for this book and here it is below: Firstly here is what Paul teaches: “No matter how bad I feel, I accept it and will move on with my day accordingly” This stance puts absolutely no emphasis on recovery or anxious thoughts because it takes away the significance of the sensations we are feeling. No matter how bad they are, I accept them and will move on. Let’s look at Paul’s second piece of advice “Come if you will, I am ready for you. Show me you’re worst. I want more. Is that really all you got? huh?”

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Paul’s second piece of advice is also all or nothing since; once again, it places no emphasis on anxiety or recovery. This time you are willing the fear on you, demanding it. No matter how bad it is, you want to feel it, you want it to bring its worst. The aspect of recovery doesn’t matter. This advice is 100% stimulating. Once again, the stigma of the coin cannot have an effect since you have taken it entirely out of the equation. So I guess the point of all this is that recovery from anxiety really involves taking away our incentive to recover. The more we think about recovery, the stronger the thought of anxiety will be. Essentially we must look straight ahead; not into the future and not back, but live in the now. The more we stop thinking about it, the less of an impact it will have on us. But it is vital that we do not impose this style of thinking on ourselves. This will only make those thoughts stay. We need to think beyond the sense of recovery and naturally it comes to us. The above words sum up a lot of what I am trying to get across. If my anxiety tried to persuade me not to do something, I would do it even more, I wanted to see what it had and the truth is it held nothing but a few uncomfortable feelings. I thought to myself, I have been avoiding for so long and that’s all you have. It is the anxiety that tries to persuade us we can’t do things ‘Don’t go there, you will feel awful. Feel sorry for yourself, you will always feel like this. Here is the neighbour coming for a chat, hide away quick because you will feel uncomfortable” Do you see that all we are running away from is a feeling. If we go towards these feelings and feel anything, then its power has gone. I began to do this and, yes, I still felt uncomfortable for a while, but it was just a feeling and nothing that could stop me doing anything I wanted to. In time it was this very living that brought back the old me. Old fears diminished when I went out. The anxiety said ‘don’t go, you will feel uncomfortable’ but it held no power over me any longer and my reply was: “I have done it many times now and got through fine, and every time it gets easier”. Do you see how once you have gone through it, it holds no fear any more. We also begin to desensitise to places and

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situations, our confidence grows and we break the cycle of avoidance. So go towards your feelings of anxiety and panic and don’t see them as the enemy. I found that the very action of doing this stopped me from noticing my feelings and they held less power over me. I began to realise that by letting them come, they didn’t turn into anything else. I knew that nothing was going to happen to me and I was still in control. I did not add any more worry or fear to these feelings, so they died down. Do you see how embracing how you feel helps free you from the constant stress and tension you have being adding to your feelings of anxiety? Also, by allowing yourself to feel anything, you stop all the constant platitudes. “Will I be okay? What if I lose control”? This leads to less fear, less adrenalin and less feelings of panic. By accepting, embracing and welcoming every symptom of anxiety, you step out of your body’s way and open the door to recovery rather than hindering it. There is no need to analyse how you feel or watch yourself any more. Just try to step out of the way and just be – your body will do the rest. You can dislike how you feel if you like, but don’t let how you feel dominate your life. If you suffer from panic or anxiety the answer lies in the unknown, the place where it seems too terrible to go. Yes, you must actively go towards your fear centre, the place that seems to hold you back and from which you would rather shy away. I did this instead of just tolerating how I felt. I wanted to free myself more and go on to fully recover, to face every fear head on and see what was at the other side. All I can say is I wish I had done this earlier. There was no unknown, terrible place that existed. It was only what my subconscious had made me believe. I faced all my fears willingly, despite my apprehension, and this is what set me on to full recovery. Somebody once asked the question “What is the difference between putting up with and accepting my anxiety. I can’t see any difference, surely they are the same?” Well they are not, as I will explain through one of my own life experiences: When I was younger I had a step-daughter who, as a teenager, caused a lot of problems to say the least. She infuriated me and her

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behaviour stressed me out. I really let her get to me and went on to develop a total dislike to her. Carrying around all the hatred and anger was doing me no good whatsoever. One day I sat down with my partner and agreed I would try and accept that she was just a teenager and was probably no worse than anyone else her age. I would accept her for who she was and try to get on better with her. Well, the difference was amazing and it felt like a big weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I stopped getting angry about her behaviour, stopped stressing myself out over the situation and it felt great. I am not saying I liked her, but I had accepted her. In the first instance, I was just putting up with her, letting her get me down, getting angry over her and stressing myself out far more than I needed to - that is the difference. It is the same with anxiety. You can carry on letting it dominate your day, allowing it to get you down and getting angry over it or you can take the other way out, accept it and just get on with your day. A lot of anxiety is a learnt behaviour, bad habits if you like. But, like any habit, bad habits can be reversed and a lot more quickly than people realise. What we need to do is distrust what our mind and body is telling us and do it anyway. This is especially true with avoidance, which is probably the habit we fall into most easily and can become the hardest to break. I conquered this habit by understanding my body, facing my fears and going through them, I actually invited any sensations and said “Come on then, let’s see what you have got.” This is the only way to break the cycle. I had, had enough of hiding away and running away from sensations. I had reached the point where I would think ‘however I feel, I feel, I no longer care.’ I refused to be held to ransom by a feeling and decided it was time to take back control’. When you do this, your body gets used to being in situations and places you found difficult in the past and your reactions subside. It begins to learn that there really is no danger there and your nerves had merely been tricked into thinking there was. Having read this book, you will now know that recovery is not something that happens overnight, although now that you have a better understanding of the condition, symptoms may not hold the same power. People who believe otherwise will stay on the merry go round of recovery for years, looking and searching for that instant

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quick fix. Trust me, it does not exist. Recovery comes through knowledge and an application of it. There is no point reading this book and then throwing it to one side. Recovery is all about making changes - in many cases, lifestyle changes – and believing that you can move forward no matter how you feel. I suffered as badly as anyone and probably more. How did I recover? Am I special? Did I take a magic pill? No! I spent years getting worse until I was given the correct information, took it on board and actually made some changes. I also trusted in what I had learnt and always kept faith that I would go on to fully recover. Many people tell me that, having read the book, they feel better instantly. They do not say that they have recovered, as this is very rare, but that they feel better. The reason for this is, having read about some of their symptoms and having them explained, they have lost their fear of them. Their symptoms no longer seem important and this gives them a new sense of hope. There is one thing that I feel is very important and I saved it until last because I really wanted to get the point across. Certain people are what I call ‘information gatherers’ (as I was) and email me on a regular basis. What I mean by ‘information gatherers’ is people who drown themselves in the subject of anxiety and their symptoms. One of the main reasons I managed to move forward is because I moved away from it. I took a step back and filled my life with other things, which took a lot of the focus away. We can drown ourselves in anxiety, searching for information on every symptom we suffer and going back to the doctor to make sure he has not missed anything. We join forums, read ten different websites a week and put searches for our symptoms into search engines. This is because we have little information, but it does no good long term. It just tires the mind even more and continues to remind us of how we feel. I was once the same. I thought, read and studied anxiety 24/7. I no longer do this because it is not my habit any more. I am involved in the subject and can talk freely about it but it no longer dominates my life. If you recognise yourself in the above description, then you need to step away from the subject and invite other things into your life. During my recovery, I still looked for information at times and there is nothing wrong with this. But I had learnt most of what you have read in this book and I no longer felt the need to run around chasing my own tail for answers. Once I took

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this step back, I gradually noticed that other things began to attract my attention. The subject of anxiety and how I felt no longer dominated my day as it had in the past. This makes sense to me now and I realise my mind had nothing else to thing about. Once I introduced other things into my day and stopped thinking and worrying, day in, day out, I was refreshing it and giving it the break it needed. To finish, I want you to release those chains that are holding you back and start living again. Do everything you would have done before you felt this way and don’t be a prisoner of your feelings any more. Take a step back from the subject of anxiety. Take a walk or go for a swim, instead of ‘googling’ symptoms on the internet, searching for that miracle answer that will make it all go away. Stop letting how you feel dominate your day. Give up the daily battle and let go. The main reason that people continue to suffer is because they are always trying ‘To Do’ something about each and every symptom and spend each day, week in, week out, trying to figure it all out; constantly worrying, fighting and filling themselves with selfpity. They fill their whole day with the subject and how they feel and their mind and body never get the breaks they need. Is it any wonder they find it so hard to break free? It was only when I did the opposite and followed the information that I have passed on to you that I began to see progress. Nothing was achieved by trying to think and fight my way better, constantly worrying about my symptoms and how I felt. You may still feel dull and unresponsive. You may still feel anxious and emotionless for now and that’s fine. The old you will begin to resurface. Never put a time limit on that, just trust in it. If you work in a high pressure workplace, then maybe take some time out. Listen to your body and what it is telling you. People who have suffered a nervous breakdown are mostly people who did not listen to their body and the messages it was giving them. The two sectors I hear from most are the medical profession and businessmen. People with high pressure jobs, such as the medical profession, can take on other people’s problems and ignore their own. Long hours and stressful jobs can take their toll and these people may feel stressed for a while before they enter the full anxiety cycle. If only they had learnt to listen to their body and slowed down, they could have

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saved themselves so much suffering. This also applies to people who say “I don’t know why I feel like this“. As stated before, I ask if they have been under any stress recently and along comes a list of such things as my daughter left home; my husband lost his job; my dog passed away; my mother is very poorly. These people did not notice the build up of stress as it happened gradually. The good thing is that I am able to help such people pretty early on before they enter the anxiety merry go round that I stayed on for all those years. I could never suffer again because I now understand why I felt like this in the first place and what kept me in the cycle. I now take time out to relax and tend not to worry or let things get to me like I did before. I know that worry and stress took me to a place I thought I would never escape from. I now realise how important my health is and it should come before anything else. I have my life back and I want to share what I know with others so they can begin to have a life too. Every stage of how you feel has happened for a reason and how you feel will not disappear overnight. So start to work with your anxiety and not against it, as there really is no battle to fight. You now have the right information and motivation to move forward. You have the choice to try and regain your former self. You always have choices about how you feel. Finally, and most importantly, begin to change your attitude towards how you feel and don’t let anxiety rule your life. It may be a pest at times, but don’t see it as some monster trying to engulf you. Learn to let go and live alongside it for the time being. Bring down your barriers, release that grip, allow it to be part of your day and you may begin to feel some peace and set yourself on your goal to recovery. Good Luck…Paul David

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EPILOGUE I hope this book can bring you some peace and set you on the road to recovery. My aim is to reach out and help other sufferers, wherever they may be, who have so far struggled to find answers to their condition. I believe that anxiety is one of the most misunderstood conditions out there. I know this because for nine years I never received an answer to why I felt like I did. Many people around the world suffer from this condition, yet find it so difficult to get the help and support they need. All too often, they end up suffering in silence because they have no one to turn to. I eventually found those answers and knew I had to let others know what I had discovered. Hopefully, by doing this, I will have prevented others from suffering needlessly because they cannot get the information they crave. As you will now have discovered through reading this book, there are no miracle cures out there. I tried everything and this way was the only one that worked for me. It is not a gimmick; it is all based on the way our body works and responds. I have met and spoken to many ex-sufferers and in nearly every single case they recovered through these or very similar methods. Every day feels like a gift to me now and I will continue to help and share my way with other anxiety sufferers. Hopefully, by doing this I will help others to have A LIFE AT LAST. Paul David

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At Last a Life and Beyond Anxiety and Panic Free

By

Paul David

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my mother for her help with all the proofreading and for always being there for me in all my years of suffering and beyond. I am especially grateful to Nicola for designing the wonderful cover for this book. I also want to thank all the people who have recovered or are well on their way to recovery and now give up their free time to advise and help others through my blog and Facebook page. Although I came to a lot of my own conclusions, throughout and beyond my suffering I have been influenced by many different teachings and people, and although there are too many to mention here, they will always have my utmost respect and gratitude. Finally, I would like to extend a special thank you to all of those wonderful and selfless people I have met through my work and am now privileged to call friends.

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Contents Chapter 1: You are not broken

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Chapter 2: Letting go of crutches

23

Chapter 3: Anxiety backpack

29

Chapter 4: What is the need for fear and anxiety

41

Chapter 5: Struggling with thoughts

48

Chapter 6: The inner critic

61

Chapter 7: Overworking the mind

67

Chapter 8: Avoiding anxiety

78

Chapter 9: Resistance only increases suffering

83

Chapter 10: Our obsession with worry

88

Chapter 10: Setbacks

92

Chapter 11: Other people’s success stories

98

Chapter 12: Q & A section

126

Chapter 11: Social anxiety

138

Chapter 12: Anxiety loop

143

Chapter 13: Living without stress

148

Chapter 14: Summing up

151

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Copyright © Paul David

ISBN 978-0-9569481-3-7 www.anxietynomore.co.uk All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

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Foreword How do I get rid of my anxiety? I searched around for years for the answer to this question. It is one that is asked of me hundreds of times a year and asked of others innumerable times a day around the World Wide Web. I personally asked therapists, read numerous books, searched the internet, asked on forums and yet no one could give me the elusive answer to this question. The reason that no one could give me this answer is because the answer never existed. What I found out after years of searching is that you cannot forcibly get rid of anxiety by actively doing something. It is only by taking the opposite approach of doing nothing that you can live a life free of suffering. Read on and by the time you reach the end of the book you will understand why. Most of you reading this will more than likely have read my first book At Last a Life which was written 9 years ago. The book was written after my own struggle to find an answer to a condition that is now number one on the list of reasons why people visit their doctor. For something so common, there still seems to be limited help out there and so much conflicting advice. It pains me to see some of the advice handed out at times on a condition that is so misunderstood, making recovery extremely confusing. The initial book was written because I truly wanted to help people who feel like they are stuck on a merry go round getting nowhere, hitting one brick wall after another no matter which way they turn. I have personally known people who have spent 20 plus years in therapy; how can this ever be right? This is what I set out to change, as I too suffered for many years going from one treatment to another wondering if anything would ever help. Eventually I’d had enough of the conventional help that brought me little to no relief and went off to seek my own answers. In my opinion a lot of self-help is still

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stuck in the dark ages where digging up the past, pills or a new technique is considered to be the answer to all ills. In this book you won’t find a list of techniques, rules or methods, as you don’t need them. I am sure you have tried enough of these and still found little relief. This is where I think a lot of the so-called cures are flawed. Techniques, rules and methods usually take effort and are mostly built on suppression of feelings, which is the complete wrong approach. Anxiety is your mind and body’s way of telling you that you are already overdoing it with effort, both mentally and physically, so the last thing you want is to add more effort. To recover from anxiety we need to start taking away from the workload, not adding to it. If you ask anyone who has recovered, you will find that they will never say “Well I have my sayings, techniques and rules to follow now and I am fine”. No, they will say the complete opposite such as, “I no longer do this and I no longer do that”. The truth is you don’t need to do anything; it is the doing that causes so much extra suffering. I am not saying there is nothing wrong with you in your current state, because there is. Your mind and body are exhausted and your nerves may be frayed because of all the worry and stress created by certain things that are going on in your life or, more than likely, you are now stressing and worrying because of how you feel and the effect this is having on you and those around you. Just remember that the way you feel is your body’s way of telling you that currently you are working against it. It doesn’t want to feel this way any more than you do. ‘Why write a book then if there is nothing to do?’ you may ask. To get to that stage of non-doing, I had to really educate myself in order to understand why what I had been doing previously was just making me worse and that I was creating

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more of the very thing I was trying to get rid of. Ironically, the attempted cure had actually become the cause. It was never about learning what to do; it was about learning what not to do. I began to understand that all my mind and body needed was for me to step out of the way and the most intelligent system there is would begin its own process of healing. The same system that would effortlessly heal me if I broke my arm or cut my finger was more than capable of healing me physiologically too. Through understanding, I developed a completely new attitude where I could still feel anxious, have irrational thoughts and yet be totally detached from them. Without the fuel of fear, worry and obsession I opened the door to recovery. Previously I had spent years trying to control, run away from and suppress my feelings and all they did was continue to grow. I spent hours in my own head, worrying, analysing and trying to fix myself, then wondered why I felt so detached from my surroundings. I eventually realised that *I* was the only reason I was getting worse not better. Why did I decide to write a new book? Well the initial book was written all those years ago with little or no expectation, and although I really thought I had something to say, I never expected it to achieve the success that it has. To see the reviews on Amazon and hear so many people telling me that their doctor or therapist has put them on to it is very humbling, and it is extremely satisfying that my words have been able to touch and help so many people. It was because of this success that I started my blog, Twitter and Facebook page and through this I learned that some people still seemed to misunderstand certain points or really struggled with particular issues that were maybe not covered the first time around. So I wanted to address all of this, as my main concern is for people to reclaim their lives. I have also learnt a

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lot more over the last nine years as you never stop learning or finding new ways to explain things. So when I thought I had enough information for another book and new ways of getting my point across, I decided to start writing. By the end of this book you will hopefully see why you have remained in a cycle, how the mind and body works, how unknowingly you have been creating a lot of your own anxiety and why what you have been doing so far has been counterproductive. When you recognise this then trust me this is the catalyst to no longer suffering. A lot of people fail to realise that we are all born with a healthy default setting, one that we can move away from, but one we can never lose and a place we can all go back to once we learn to step out of our own way and then are able to rest in that place once again. All the emotions you currently feel are just surface symptoms and once they pass you will realise that you are exactly the same underneath as you were previously. What you have been through causes no lasting physical or psychological damage and it has not harmed your natural wellbeing in any way. The book was written solely by me, someone who was in such a dark place; a place from which I never thought I could recover. My list of symptoms would fill this book on its own. I could have seen out the rest of my years just getting by, not living a life but merely existing. But I was never happy with that and I did everything I could to find answers, not just for me but also to pass on to others so they didn’t have to suffer in the way I did. There truly is nothing more rewarding than someone coming back to you and telling you that they now have their life back. The emails of thanks I receive on a weekly basis and the success stories that I have been sent inspires me to keep passing on what I know and I have total confidence in the

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information I offer. So all I ask it that you don’t just read what I say, but trust in it and implement it. I always tell people I can only pass on the information but I cannot make you follow it. The real change has to come from you. There may also be a need for you to go back to certain sections and read them again. People often tell me that once their knowledge and understanding grows, on reading the book the second time around they see something that now truly makes sense and it takes on a new meaning. This is the reason I may repeat the same message, but explain it in a different way. On several occasions I have explained something to someone in a slightly different way and they say ‘Ah, right, now I get it’. When viewed from a different perspective, what I say can produce a real ‘aha’ moment. Hopefully you will have plenty of these ‘aha’ moments as you read through this book. Nothing, and I mean nothing, came close to helping me other than a better understanding of my condition. It took so much fear and wasted effort out of the equation. This book has been written to help build up your knowledge and understanding so that anxiety no longer has the hold on you that it once had. It will help you to unravel the condition and see there was nothing to run or hide from, nothing to figure out or suppress and nothing to fear. It will show you that your mental health has always been there and that it has just been temporarily covered up. A lot of the content will be relevant to your situation and some may not. I have just tried to cover the main questions that are asked of me on a regular basis. There are also some explanations that will hopefully help people in their everyday life too. I wanted to be able to take people beyond recovery, to give them the tools to recognise the damage caused by worry and stress and how they can live a life without it.

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I have covered the subject of anxiety and explained what it is in my first book, At Last A Life. I did not feel the need to go over that again and wanted this book to be packed with help and advice about what is still keeping you in the loop. A lot of people who have read my first book have now fully recovered, but others, although they have made a lot of progress, still need a little more help to get to an advanced stage of understanding that will finally free them completely. Hopefully, this book will give you everything you need to take you over that final hurdle and answer any concerns you still have so that you can go back to living the life you want. I truly want to take you out of the self-help loop so you can finally begin to leave it behind and move on with your life, a life beyond your suffering. That is why the title of this book is:

‘At Last a Life and Beyond’

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You Are Not Broken For years I believed and fell for the lie that I was broken, and with all the labels given to me through books, doctors and counsellors seeming to confirm this, I set off on a route of trying to fix myself by taking tablets, going back into my past and trying numerous techniques with the promise that they would ‘fix’ me. I bought into it all and wasted a lot of time, money and effort. The truth is that I never was broken; I had lost my way, yes, but I was never broken. What I failed to realise is that I was the conductor of my own experience. I was the one continuing to create this anxiety and the one keeping myself stuck. I did not need fixing at all. All I needed was to be told to stop doing the very things that were keeping me in the anxiety loop, yet in many cases I was told the opposite. I was given advice on how to suppress, manage and get rid of my anxiety and eventually realised that although certain people meant well, they were sending me in the completely wrong direction. Following my recovery, I started to read up on Buddhism and other practices, as it has always been of interest to me to read different approaches on how the mind and body work. Having read these books and understanding the message behind them, I discovered that basically they all say the same thing but in different ways, which is that in order to feel peace of mind and body, we must leave ourselves alone. We cannot force or create well-being and we won’t find happiness by searching for it. We are well-being and we are happiness, we just don’t know it. We are always being sold an image by the media that happiness comes from material things, from being a size 8, having the latest fashions, or the latest car or gadget.

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Consequently people constantly try to find happiness outside of themselves when, in reality, true happiness always comes from the inside. The same is true for anxiety sufferers. The cure for anxiety is not on the outside but on the inside, and once we sort out the inside, everything else just falls into place. We don’t need to keep going around searching for things to make us feel at peace; we already have them. It is the very battle to find peace that takes us further away from it. I looked back to when I recovered from anxiety and realised that this is the conclusion I eventually came to and passed on to others. I always believed that an understanding of what was wrong and what was happening was crucial as well, because when we understand something, a lot of the fear goes and then we automatically stop obsessing about what was bothering us and it no longer has our focus. Yet we are constantly being told that we must do something about it - fight it, suppress it or distract ourselves from it. But the only conclusion I came to in my days of suffering was that everything that helped me was a ‘not do’ and everything that made me feel worse was a ‘do’. Basically, the more effort I put into trying to get better, the worse I felt, and the more I gave up trying, the better I felt. You may have seen an advert on the Internet entitled ‘How to eliminate anxiety’. Well, good luck with that one. I tried this for 10 years and just got worse. Someone once said to me on my Facebook page “Paul I have been battling this now for 22 years and I won’t stop until I beat it.” I asked him if he had ever considered that after 22 years this may not be the way forward. The point is, when we leave ourselves alone we go back to our natural default setting. This setting is what we are born with and it never leaves us. As the title says, ‘you are not broken’ so you don’t need to run around desperately trying to fix yourself. If you leave yourself alone then you will find

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everything you are looking for because your in-built healing system will then do the healing for you. I loved what someone said after reading a line out of my first book and telling others how this helped him to recover. Initially I had said “You do not need to search for recovery, rather let recovery come to you.” He then said to others “If Paul says recovery will come to me, why am I wasting time trying to find it?” When I said this he understood the real meaning behind it, which is that you can’t find recovery through constant searching and effort; that without the constant searching and effort, recovery will come to you. I went away from my own well-being ultimately through worry, stress and deep thinking. All I had done was cover up what was always there and I just had to find a way to reconnect with it again. Even during my deepest suffering I knew deep down that I was still OK. Even though the storm still raged around me, I truly believed that I was still there underneath it all. Although I will use the word ‘recover’ throughout this book, really I did not recover, as this would suggest that I did something. I didn’t, I just stopped doing the things that kept me in the throes of suffering. There is a real difference here as it stops the need to search for a cure outside of ourselves, which is something I did for years. Some people make a lot of money promising to eliminate anxiety. They are everywhere, yet they have very little, if any, success, as you cannot eliminate something that is self-created. You just have to learn to stop creating it in order to cut off its fuel supply and then go through a process of releasing what has been stored up. The initial stress that first leads to anxiety can come from any number of reasons. Nobody wakes up and just feels anxious, so we initially created the anxiety. This is just our mind and body’s way of telling us that we have overworked it through stress and overthinking. It is telling us to slow down and not to

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stress and worry so much. Yet if you go on any anxiety forum you will see so many posts saying things like ‘I am really worried about this new feeling; I am scared of all these thoughts I have; I worry that I no longer feel any love for my husband’. Yet all that these worrisome thoughts do is create more anxiety and more unpleasant emotions. Is it any wonder so many people stay in the cycle? Emotions are there for a reason. They tell you something and are just sending you a message, that’s their job. I recently explained this to someone who was having endless inner turmoil about her anxious thoughts and feelings, and was constantly trying to do something about them. I asked her how this felt and she said it was awful and made her feel worse. I said, “The problem is that you are constantly at war with what is arising through fear and resistance. This is your body’s way of telling you to stop trying to resist, as these thoughts and feeling will come regardless. You trying to resist them is just causing constant inner conflict and is the reason you feel all this extra discomfort. Your emotions are just sending you a message telling you that this is the wrong approach”. It was the same with me. When I allowed my thoughts and emotions to just pass on through, my body preferred this and told me so by creating a more peaceful feeling. When I tried to deny and suppress them, then I experienced inner chaos, which was my body’s way of telling me that this was not the right path. So we have not only created the anxiety, we are the reason it continues to hang around. This is why the answer comes from the inside and never the outside. You are the one creating it, so you are the only one who can stop creating it and, trust me, nothing creates more anxiety than constantly resisting it. Think of your brain as a computer because that is what it is. However, this computer did not come with a manual so you

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don’t always know what it is trying to tell you. But your computer is there to protect you in the best way it can and when you feel anxious, it is just doing its job and warning you that you are overdoing things or spending too much time indulging in too much worry and stress. If you fail to heed this warning and continue to add more and more stress and worry to the mix, it then starts to affect both your mind and your body and you begin to feel physically and mentally worn out. What people then tend to do is to worry about their anxious state and how it makes them feel and they begin to sink deeper into the condition. This is sadly the cycle so many people enter and the cycle I went through for so many years. In the midst of my own suffering, I used to spend hours and hours daily chewing and chewing on my so-called problems and then wondering why I felt like crap! Yet who was the one creating these horrible, negative feelings? - ME and ME only! There was no one else responsible for the way I felt but me! Yet what did I blame it on? “Poor old me, look how I feel, this isn’t fair”. On and on I would go, stuck in more hours of negative, unproductive thinking, dragging my mood down even more and creating more stress, whilst continuing to believe that it was something outside of me that was creating the way I felt. All I was doing was feeding more worry and stress into my brain and so this became my inner and outer reality. Your brain is like an overworked computer that just does not have enough space and memory to cope with all the worry and stress you are feeding into it, yet you expect it to work perfectly. I have explained this to people in the past and, ping, a few get it instantly, but some just go back to the worry state, thinking if they keep worrying and analysing enough, the magic secret they have been searching for will just appear. The last thing your mind needs now is more worry and more stressful thinking. It is like dumping more rubbish on a rubbish dump each day; you are never giving it the chance to be clear.

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Take away, don’t add When people go on my blog or Facebook page to tell others they have really started to move forward and that they really feel like their old selves again, they always say things like “I no longer do this anymore, I no longer worry about that anymore”. What they have done is taken enough away so that the computer can start to work properly again. They have cleared up some much needed space. They are no longer still stuck in ‘doing’, they are ‘no longer doing’. There is truly nothing wrong other than what you are creating. There is no outside force doing this to you. At your core there is nothing wrong with you, there never was. A few people can get quite defensive when I say that and respond with things like “But what about this occasion, I just felt anxious for no reason?” Yes, this is because of what you have done to yourself in the past through stress and worry, a lot of anxiety/negative energy is now stored up inside the body and through a process of release you may feel anxious when you perceive no danger. But on other occasions I can explain how they have done this to themselves and that the computer is working and operating exactly as it should be, based on what they have fed it. Thought is what the computer understands. If you think anxiously about a situation, or more likely how you feel, then, yes, of course you are going to feel anxious. That rule is true for everyone. You may get a bigger reaction than the non-anxiety sufferer as your nerves may be a little more frayed and you have more negative energy stored up, but the same rule applies to everyone. So when you’re actually worrying all day about how you feel, is it any wonder that you feel anxious? You worry all day about a social event and then wonder why you feel nervous when you get there. However you feel, trust me it is all self-created through your own thinking and perception of a situation or event. Many examples of this will be given throughout this

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book. I used to feel awful socially and just labelled myself as socially anxious, thinking it was just who I was until I realised what my thought process was before and in the middle of a social interaction. It was not until I stepped back and watched what I was thinking that I realised it was me who was creating so much of my own suffering. Many people have asked me what I did to get better and I replied that I did not do anything other than reach a place of total allowing and non-resistance. This meant that I no longer tried to find temporary relief every time I did not feel the way I thought I should feel. I no longer searched around Google or tried to find a page in a book to seek any kind of comfort, and I no longer made any effort to analyse my way out of anything. I just let my mind and body go through any process it wished with as little concern as possible. If I was flooded with negative thoughts, or detached from my surroundings, or my anxiety was high, then I stayed in that place without making any effort to try to escape it. No thoughts or feelings were off limits. ‘Totally allowing’ is not a technique to achieve anything as then it can be turned into another way of controlling or suppressing feelings. It is more of an attitude than anything and one that no longer comes from a place of fear, as usually where there is fear there is resistance. I did not always like the way I felt, but I no longer feared it. I had learnt enough to no longer be afraid of my thoughts and emotions and a lot of that came through finally allowing myself to feel them and see them through whilst understanding, through practice, that no harm can ever come through this process of allowing. I also learnt that whatever state I found myself in, without exception it always passed. Without this fear and my need to try and constantly change my experience, I had now created some space between me and my suffering. My focus had shifted and I was no longer spending all day fully engaged with how I was feeling.

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Yes I still had a lot of old emotions, habits and beliefs sticking around, even when I had discovered a new attitude and a new way of seeing things. I also felt very tired mentally at times. All these years of battling with myself had taken their toll and I realised that I had to be patient with this process of recovery. On rare occasions I would get caught up in trying to control and manipulate my thoughts and feelings once again - the mind is a problem solving machine and if it does not like a particular state, then it usually seeks to escape or suppress it. But once I noticed what I was doing, I would just go back to a state of allowing. This state of allowing did not mean the end of my suffering; it just meant the end of battling with my suffering. Anxious thoughts and feelings are like the steam from a kettle. You cannot control, stop or suppress the steam, as it will just keep trying to find another way out. If it can’t, then the kettle will explode. The steam needs to be released. In the same way, anxious thoughts and feelings need to be released. Trying to keep them suppressed will just keep you in a constant state of anxious thoughts and feelings as they just build up and reside within you - more on this later. Recovery is not some weird sense of calm where you never feel anxious again. It just means that you are able to once again ride the ups and downs of your thoughts and emotions. Even now I can feel flat and down for no reason and my thinking can be off a bit, but I know it will pass without my intervention to try and change it. The very nature of feelings and emotions is that they are forever changing. I see people on my blog who help others and there are some who reach a good stage and are able to deal with things far better and pass on advice. Then there are those who have truly got the message. You can see it in what they write and how positive and confident they are in their words. Knowledge

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just flows through them. It was the same with me. I had insight after insight when I truly ‘got it’ and everything just started to click. I realised I had fallen for one big trick. Every single reason why I had become stuck now made complete sense. I did not have to work on one symptom through to the next; everything fell away at pretty much the same time. Little things may have hung around, but the same principles applied to everything. Some bits just took longer to leave, but by this time their presence no longer bothered me. Trying to fix myself was always the problem; it was never going to be the solution. I look back and think of all the effort and energy I put into trying to get better and the reason I stayed the way I did makes total sense to me now. I can’t scold myself for this as I was just doing what I thought was right at that time. I will not scold anyone for what they have been doing up until now as we are all doing what we think is right. But it is like having a headache and hitting your head each day, then saying to someone “I don’t understand it. I have been hitting my head all day and I still have this damn headache! Maybe if I hit it harder tomorrow I will get rid of it!” Yet this is what so many people do on a daily basis. It is all about getting them to recognise this and once they see it, they realise it no longer makes sense to carry on doing it. I was once helping a lady who came to me in a terrible state; she was on the verge of tears and very agitated. She explained that she had pretty much had a breakdown. She was in a very stressful and demanding job and her anxiety had gone through the roof. She had tried numerous different approaches to get better as she needed to get back to work, her children needed her and she was worried about the effect it was having on her marriage. She also explained what had first made her feel this way. She had pushed herself so much at work and wanted a promotion so badly that she worked every hour she was

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asked. She was also trying to hit impossible deadlines and took her work home with her, hardly sleeping through the pressures, and all this whilst trying to run a family home. She said “Paul, I just feel so mentally worn out and I just don’t know how to get out of it, but I have to as so many people are relying on me”. I replied, “Do you see all that effort and stress you put into getting that promotion, which is the reason you felt all the stress in the first place? Well that is exactly the worry and stress you are now putting into trying to get better”. It was as though a light came on and she could see it. She said it was almost like looking down on herself and scolding herself for doing it. She could not understand why it had not been obvious to her before and said, “I get it! The best way to feel better is to no longer try to feel better as this is taking me further away. Trying to feel better is actually stressing me further and when it does not work I get stressed about this also”. I said “Yes, exactly, by putting so much pressure on yourself to get better, you are creating more of what you are trying to get rid of”. This lady is now back at work and taking on far less hours. She has discovered the importance of looking after herself and realises that no promotion is worth sacrificing her health for. Again, this lady was not broken, she had just moved away from her natural well-being. Her true self had just become lost under all this worry and stress. She eventually realised that the symptoms of all this stress and worry would cease if she no longer stressed and worried about the symptoms of stress and worry; this is the cycle I was able to help her to break. She did not need pills, techniques or months of counselling to get better; she just needed to see something. None of you are broken, you have just temporarily lost yourself doing what you thought was for the best. I remember another lady saying to me, “But Paul, I am broken. If I was not broken I would feel good all the time”. My reply was “No you have got that totally the wrong way around. If you were broken, you

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would never feel OK. When you have these moments of feeling good, that is the true you trying to break through once again, that is your true nature showing up. Something broken beyond repair does not keep going from being broken to being fixed”.

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Letting Go of Crutches The self-help world is full of therapists, books, life coaches and all the other treatments out there, yet so many people stay stuck. Why? I was the person with fourteen books on anxiety cures, thirty favourites in my Internet browser and counsellor after counsellor. I was Googling, watching online videos and wasting money on miracle cures. It was the very early days of the Internet at that time and if anyone said they could cure you, then you believed them, but I never got anywhere and just felt worse. Firstly, I became the subject. I fed myself the subject of anxiety day in and day out and then wondered why I thought of nothing else. I became very self-aware as I was no longer interacting with the world around me and became obsessed with trying to fix myself. I was no longer Paul; I was the subject of anxiety. I woke up and carried this anxiety backpack with me wherever I went. I only threw it off to go to sleep and then it was back on first thing in the morning. Sometimes, for a split second, I would forget about the subject but then, in an instant, it dawned on me that this was my life now. I blindly thought I had to search harder, to Google more, look up another technique and to make another appointment with a counsellor, but I could not have been more wrong. I have wasted money on some rubbish in my time and saw some people that were way too unqualified to help. I did read the odd decent bit of material and did see some people who helped in some way, but years before I recovered I remember looking at all my self-help books and thinking “I don’t think I need all this”. I was carrying so many statements around with me and trying to remember so much, that I was just living constantly inside my own head. I really can’t explain what it

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was, but I just knew I no longer needed them and what I really needed was a new approach. Something inside of me told me just to drop all of it and that I would be fine if I just stopped the search and left the lot unanswered. All that this searching seemed to do was take me further and further away from my goal. But it was another two years before I finally let go of the self-help route, as deep down I still believed something was wrong and I was obsessed with wondering if I had missed something. Eventually I had just had enough. It was like some inner wisdom rose up in me and said, “Just throw that backpack away. Throw all of your sayings, Internet favourites and safety behaviours away. You don’t need them, all this searching is just making you feel worse”. I started to look at others around me who appeared happy and carefree and I realised that these people were just going about their daily lives. They were not living in their heads constantly trying to fix themselves. They did not have ten different sayings in order to cope with life. For the first time I realised that I was doing this to myself. My mind was so bloody exhausted through all of this, yet I kept dumping more and more thinking on top of it. This was why I had lost so much consciousness and why I felt as though I was in a dream most of the time - I was awake, but felt asleep. I had been going over and over the subject on a daily basis and then wondered why I felt so detached from the world around me. It just dawned on me what I had been putting my mind and body through daily and how bad I felt had really been down to me. I was stuck because for years I had been looking at anxiety in the wrong way. I had spent years trying to rid myself of it and every day was just another day to try and feel better. If anxiety was around, then the battle continued. I had the impression that I must not feel it, that I must find a way to eliminate it and that if I still felt anxious then I had failed and my search must continue. Not once did I ever think to look at it in a different

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way and actually let the feelings be there and release them. If you ever spend your life trying not to feel something, then you will forever stay in the cycle. Let’s go back to the saying that we are doing this to ourselves. I always thought there was something wrong with me because I felt half-baked and detached when I was walking around during my daily life, yet I was the one living inside my head trying to figure things out. People around me were not doing this and could concentrate 100% on the world. Everything to them seemed colourful and in 3D as almost all of their focus was on their surroundings. I had 70% concentration on me and 30% on the world around me so everything looked grey and flat, almost dreamlike. Yet the world was the same for all of us. The only difference was that they were far more conscious of the world around them because they were not stuck in their heads worrying about how to fix themselves. So, again, I was the one doing this to myself. If I could get out of my head and stop going over things, then I would see the world like everyone else and my consciousness would return. It was not something that was happening to me, it was me that was creating my flat existence. I was actually walking around worrying and wondering why I felt so disconnected from the world around me, when all the time it was the thinking and worrying about being disconnected that was causing the problem. How ironic was that - searching for a solution to my disconnection ended up being the cause! Many times I would delete everything I had in my browsers, throw all my books away and just get up and live. But I only had to have one bad day and I would think that maybe I am wrong, maybe I do need all this stuff and so I would get dragged back in. Before I knew it, I would be back in the throes of searching again. But then it hit me. I have so much suppressed anxiety, memory and habit hanging around after

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years of suffering, of course I will slip back and feel anxious, lost and confused again. I did not need to rush for a counsellor, book or a saying to feel better. Left alone my natural wellbeing would once again shine through and this is exactly what happened. I was like the person who runs around spinning plates, I was constantly running around trying to stay on top of things, until one day I decided to stop running and when the plates fell, nothing actually happened. As I write this, someone on my blog who has recovered is telling people the same thing and that he did nothing but trusted that he would always come back. Even when he felt at his lowest and was trawling through all the mind crap and anxious feelings, he resisted the need to try and fix himself. He knew that he just needed to keep trudging through the glug and truly believe and trust he would come back in time. After years of trying to stay on top of it all, he was just not going to try anymore and would open himself up to whatever arose. This was the first time in his life that he had allowed himself to go through this process without trying to intervene. I said to him, “All you did for once in your life was to no longer resist. You just let things be as they were and no longer created so much inner conflict. This also opened the door for you to finally feel and release all these stored up negative emotions. All the years of not allowing yourself to feel that way had kept you in a cycle”. We are always there ready to resurface, there is no technique needed here, no saying, no ‘do’. The only ‘do’ is to go about your life and act in exactly the same way you would if anxiety was not around; don’t change your behaviour because of how you feel. If you make a cup of tea and you feel full of dread and sadness, then carry on making that tea regardless. Don’t stand there full of self-pity, trying to figure it all out. It will lift by itself if left alone; it always does. If you go on a family day out and feel like you don’t want to be there, allow this feeling too.

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Don’t curse how you feel or try to change it. Just know that in time these emotions will pass if you are fully open up to them. You don’t have to run around trying to live life to the full to prove anything. There may be days when you need to rest and take it easy and this is fine as long as it’s not an excuse not to feel certain emotions. If you go around trying to avoid certain feelings, then inevitably you end up avoiding life. So just try to live your life as normally as you can and take these feelings with you, fully allowing for their presence as this is what eventually cures. The same applies if you are feeling detached, worn out or down. Trust me you will suffer far less if you allow yourself to feel this way. In this world of instant gratification, too many people are impatient and want to feel better now. They can’t help going over and over it, analysing the hell out of how they feel and opening the computer up to check out the latest symptom. They never get anywhere doing this and yet they think this is where the answer must lie. They never try the complete opposite approach of doing nothing about it. Yes, I keep saying we should do nothing about it, but again don’t use this as another technique to feel better. Someone recently said to me “I have allowed, as you say, but these feelings are still there” to which I replied: “And?’’ He responded by saying: “Well, I thought that if I did this, I would not feel anxious”. I said: ”You have missed the point completely. The words were a pointer to actually feel it, not the other way around. So, yes, these feelings are still there and they are fine to be there, as it is this allowing them to be there that will eventually free you of them. Before it was never OK to feel anxious and never OK to think a certain way, but now it is”. Few people even realise that we all have a psychological immune system that works exactly like our physical one and

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think that they have to try and fix themselves through continued effort. When we cut ourselves or break a leg, we just leave it to our natural healing system, which works perfectly. This is exactly the same system that works for us psychologically. My recovery was held up for years because I was always trying to do something about it and put endless stress, worry and pressure on myself to get better, which in return just made things worse. I never stood aside and gave my in-built healing system a chance to do its job.

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Anxiety Backpack Earlier I mentioned the anxiety backpack we tend to carry around. Several people ask me what exactly I mean when I mention this, so here is the explanation in a story that I have shared with people in the past. When you first began to suffer, someone came along, knocked on your door and told you that you needed this anxiety backpack; a bit like a carry-around survival kit. You were curious and believed this stranger so you invited him in. Surely he just had your best interests at heart. He made big promises that this backpack was vital for you and that it would keep you safe and take you on the road to recovery. You are so excited at the prospect of this that you buy it immediately. The stranger tells you that you must put this backpack on first thing in the morning and carry it around everywhere you go and you must only take it off last thing at night, but he assures you everything you need to recover is in there and that it will not only help you, but it will also keep you safe. You can also buy extra things for this backpack whenever you wish. It is always a good idea to add more to this backpack. It does get heavier, but he tells you it’s vital for your recovery. So you excitedly agree to buy it and when the stranger has gone on his way, you open it to see what’s inside. Inside there is a list of favourites for your Internet browser, this includes links to anxiety chat rooms, articles, anxiety literature and many more anxiety related links. It says you must hang around these forums for as long as it takes you to find the magic answer that will make it all go away. Also keep reading all this literature on a daily basis and it will make you feel better, maybe pop into the chat rooms to tell others how you feel and they can tell you how they feel too. You can even swap anxiety stories with others. All this makes sense to you and it tells you that it is the key to your recovery. So off you go

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into your first forum and as luck would have it, the backpack also gives you a list of great names to give yourself. You choose ‘anxiousgirl’. Brilliant, how appropriate; you cannot wait to talk with others, share your story and get all the answers you need. So you pop on this backpack and go on the Internet forums, introduce yourself and start telling your story whilst asking tons of questions. You’re initially a little confused as everyone seems to be answering your questions with a different answer and you’re not sure which is right and which is wrong. You also look at the dates of when people joined and they seem to have been here for years, still asking the same questions. How can this be if this is the answer? After spending quite a lot of time here you don’t feel that much better. The odd nice person has passed on a little bit of advice that seemed to help a little and you have realised you’re not alone, but the constant stories of people suffering doesn’t seem to make you feel better like the backpack promised. It seems to make you feel more bogged down with the subject and the subject seems to have taken over your life. You talk so much about it you can’t seem to think of anything else. In fact you’re already a little tired with carrying this backpack around with you but you’re sure it is vital for your recovery, so you take another look inside to see what you can find. The next thing it tells you to do is to Google the subject, put in all your symptoms and it even has a list of great links to put into your favourites. This makes sense - Googling how you feel must surely help. So off you go and once again you’re finding different bits of advice, but again a lot of it is conflicting. Some say do this and some say do the opposite. You don’t seem to know who to listen to and what is right or what is wrong. There are also lots of people on the internet promising to cure you overnight, but you’re not quite sure this could be true as, surely, if this was the case, someone would have told you about this on the forum. On the odd occasion, you do

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come across something of value and it seems to make sense, but where is this secret answer to make it all go away? That’s all you want. So you Google some more and if you struggle with a particular symptom then you are told to really Google this one. The backpack says you must search until you find something or someone to make it all go away; that each symptom is important and must be researched fully and eliminated. As you have many symptoms, this Googling is taking up a lot of your time and apart from the odd bit of decent information that seems to make you feel a little better temporarily, this golden piece of information and that person who is going to tell you how to make it all go away seem as elusive as ever. The day has also been tiring and all this research has been mentally draining, as you seem to be thinking of little else but the subject. So you decide to take your backpack off for the day and start again in the morning. As you wake, you decide you want to go out and leave the research for today, but you’re feeling a little anxious and wonder what else is in this backpack. Maybe there is something in there that will take the edge away. Inside is a list of people that are going to help you. There are counsellors, acupuncturists and hypnotherapists. This all sounds great so you throw on your backpack. Yes the backpack is heavy and it’s tiring carrying this thing around each day, but it’s vital you do this as you never know when you may need to look inside and, of course, it is keeping you safe and holds all the answers to your recovery. Well you get this list out and start to book in with these people who you’re told can help you. So you go to see them but some of these counsellors seem to want to drag up the past, which seems to have little or no effect. The odd one does talk some sense, but it only seems to make you feel better during the time you are talking with them and maybe for a few hours

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after. The acupuncturist seems nice enough and the hypnotherapist seems convincing too, but apart from some temporary relief, they really don’t seem to be helping. “Why can’t they make this damn anxiety go away? Why can’t they give me the answers I am looking for? Is the list I have the wrong list? If it is, maybe if I see a new therapist off my own back that may help”. These are the questions you ask yourself. So you go from one to another and they all appear to mean well, but none of them seem to be able to make it go away for good. You decide to cut your losses and take another look into your backpack, as this route has become far too expensive and you just seem to be going around in circles. The backpack is getting extremely heavy now and really begins to hinder your day. All these rules and techniques seem to make you feel worse not better, but that can’t be true. You were told the answers were inside, so you decide to take another look. The next bit of advice is to see your doctor and get on medication. Yes this makes sense. When we don’t feel well we go and get some pills. You are excited at this and are convinced the doctor will make it all go away. So off you go to see your doctor and after a brief chat about how you feel, he finds the pills that will work for you and off you go to take them as instructed. Again these pills don’t have the effect you thought they would. They have taken the edge off a little, but they seem to make you feel spaced out and have other side effects. You don’t really like them and feel the slight benefits are outweighed by the side effects, but they have not taken away your anxiety as the backpack promised. After a few months of swapping tablets about, you decide to come off them and try to do it on your own without the extra complications of being on medication. This backpack seems to be letting you down now. You keep doing as instructed, but you seem to be sinking deeper. You decide to see what else is in there, as you really don’t feel great at the minute. Inside there are instructions entitled ‘How

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not to feel anxiety’. Yes, this sounds like what you need. You don’t want to feel it at all. The list states that it is better to stay in more and avoid social interaction and certain places. It says “Wherever you feel anxious then avoid that place”. Yes, this makes sense. You can just do this until you feel better then start going out again later. So instead of accepting invites to social events, you start making excuses not to go. You also start avoiding big crowds of people. That concert you go to every year is now an absolute no-no. The supermarket always has you feeling a little anxious so that can go on the list of places to avoid too. Nothing really bad ever happened at these places apart from you feeling a little uncomfortable, but why feel a little uncomfortable when you don’t have to feel uncomfortable at all? Well this seems all well and good and appears to make sense, but your life seems to be getting more and more restricted. You miss socialising and you miss people and the things you used to do. In fact your list of places to avoid has increased and when you do make any effort to go out now, you seem to be worse than when you started avoiding. How did it come to this? But this backpack has the answers so you must be doing the right thing, but it just doesn’t feel like you are. You are still Googling often, still going on the forums, avoiding feeling anxious and you have even started looking at new therapists in your area. One talks a great game on his website and he seems convincing so maybe you’ll start the counselling route again. You decide against the counselling as it’s far too expensive and you feel you have become addicted to just feeling better when you talk to them, but nothing ever seems to come out of it long term. In fact they keep sending you home with a bunch of homework and techniques and you are fed up with these. You want to leave the subject behind, but you are constantly thinking about what you need to do now, how you should approach this and what you should do in this situation. You are just getting more and more fed up with it all.

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The next morning you feel as anxious as ever and feel really bogged down with the subject. You decide to look in your backpack for more advice. Inside it says the world is a scary place and you must be protected, so it includes a list of safety behaviours. They advise things like, when you go out make sure you sit near the exit; you must always have access to escape. If you see someone you know and they want to chat, make sure you have an excuse ready to get away. Start using online shopping sites; it will save you having to go to the supermarket. If someone rings you, don’t answer; just text them back and say you missed their call. This seems a good idea and could keep you safe. You like the idea of feeling safe. But yet again after trying out all these safety behaviours you don’t feel any better. In fact you start to question things now like. “Why do I have to do all this? Everyone else seems to be able to manage in life without going through all these rituals. I feel like I am telling my body there is danger when there is not. Could this be counter-productive and have I fallen for a lie here?” You are starting to question this whole backpack, but a small part of you still believes the answers lie in there. You wake up the next day and look at your backpack lying on the floor and you really don’t want to carry it around with you anymore; it is weighing you down so much. It promised so much yet delivered so little. All the answers were supposed to be in there yet you feel you have got worse. You keep looking in there and all it says is don’t do this and don’t go there. You must not feel anxiety. Avoidance is your best course of action, but it just doesn’t feel that way. There are maps in there of places it is safe to go to and places it is not. These maps are really affecting your life; why can’t you just go anywhere? There are loads of instructions on how to get rid of your anxiety but you have tried Googling, the miracle cures, the doctors and the therapists, but nothing is making it go away as promised. One other thing you notice is that very few other people are carrying this backpack around with them. How are these people going about their daily life without one? How are

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they keeping safe? How come it’s O.K for them to go where they want? They don’t seem to view the world as scary and the world is exactly the same place for them as it is for you. Maybe this backpack got it wrong when it told you the world was a scary place. Others seem so happy and free and you envy them not having to spend every day trying to get rid of something. How nice it would be not to have to go on forums. How nice it would be not to have to Google each night looking for answers and not to live so much in your head. You just want to be like them. You’re feeling so mentally and physically tired carrying this around with you, researching, trying to stay safe and trying to make it all go away. You look at the mountain of self-help books you have gathered over the years. You look at them and think, “Did I ever really need them? Did they just reinforce the idea that I was broken and needed fixing?” You don’t know anymore, but something just feels wrong here. You feel like you have been on the wrong track to get better. Every single instinct you have screams at you that you have, but it’s late and you need to sleep on this. The next morning when you wake you think again of all the people you had seen without this backpack on them. Something inside you is screaming, “I don’t think I need this backpack! What if I just throw it away? What if I just forget the search, stop the therapists, log off all the forums and go where I want to go? What if I waste no more mental energy trying to get rid of it? Would something bad happen? What exactly is this backpack keeping me safe from anyway? Do I need its help? It certainly doesn’t feel like it has helped. Maybe I don’t need to spend all day trying to avoid or get rid of it like my backpack said. Maybe it was just trying to convince me something was wrong and keep me in a loop of therapists and solutions. Maybe the person who sold me the idea was a conman. Maybe I fell for a lie, a trick.”

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Well there is only one way to find out; you are going to leave your backpack at home and ignore every bit of advice in there. So, to begin with, there will be no more safety behaviours and rituals. Your Internet searches will now be about cycling and running which are your true passions and interests. All your Internet favourites and literature on anxiety will go. You will also no longer avoid feeling anxious. Bring it on; nothing has ever happened when you have felt that way anyway. All the counsellors’ phone numbers can go in the bin. Oh it feels good emptying this backpack and throwing it all away. There is a little part of you that feels apprehensive – will you truly be safe without it? Well everyone else seems to be, so why not. As you are emptying your backpack, you find a little note at the bottom that says: “I am sorry for conning you out of your money. I needed to feed my family and it is a very easy con to pull off. I am sorry for pretending this was the way home and that all that was in this backpack would cure you. I know by the time you read this note you will have come to the bottom of the backpack and realised it only made you feel worse. You may even have come to your own conclusions by now but, if not, here is the real secret of recovery - it’s very simple: You don’t need this backpack, you never did. You were looking in the wrong direction. There was never anything to get rid of, never anything to avoid and there really is nothing wrong with you. You have just reached this stage through a few simple misunderstandings. By trying to fix yourself and get rid of anxiety you have been creating more of it and staying in the loop. You are not broken like you think you are, so just go out and live your life. There never was anything to avoid. The list I put in there was just to convince you that the world was a scary place. It’s not and never was. If you keep following the list of places to avoid, it actually has the opposite effect. I was making things worse with this advice and I am sorry.

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You also don’t need all those safety behaviours. The best way to recover is to carry on doing the things you would normally do. Never, ever let how you feel make decisions for you. Anxiety loves avoidance and hates action. Do what you would always do and take how you feel with you, for once find out what really happens on the other side of action and take no notice of the scenarios your anxious mind creates. Feeling anxious is not always pleasant, but it is nothing more than excess energy in the body and cannot harm you in anyway. When you feel anxious, just see it as a release of that stored up energy and celebrate the fact that it is leaving you. And you don’t need to stay in therapy; this just reinforces the fact there is something wrong with you and someone will eventually save you. But only you can save yourself as you are the one that has been creating this. When you truly understand this, you will realise that you and only you have the power to no longer do the things that were keeping you stuck. The last thing you need right now is a bunch of anxiety homework or techniques. This just keeps you focused on you and makes you believe the answer lies in ridding yourself of thoughts and emotions, but in doing this, you are forever at war with yourself. This is a war that does not need to be fought and is counter-productive. You need to understand that these emotions want to be felt so that they can be released. So please stop trying to find ways to suppress or get rid of them. If you no longer want to feel certain emotions then you need to actually feel them as this is the only way a release can happen. Oh, and forget the forums. They just feed the subject through you daily and have you thinking of nothing else. They also drain you mentally and can become a distraction and a crutch that can take you away from actually living your life. Go on a forum about your true passion and reconnect with that instead.

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Delete your favourites from your browser. I should never have told you to read about it every day and keep up the research; that just feeds the subject into your subconscious on a daily basis. You are better just leaving a lot of questions unanswered and getting on with your day. If you find some information that hits home, just read it and move on, otherwise you will have a computer full of pages to keep referring back to in order to find temporary relief. Once you understand, you will realise how little information you actually need. Regarding the pills, if they help take the edge off and create action, there is a place for them, but they don’t cure. They can just act as sticking plasters and come with their own problems. The self-help books have their purpose and a lot do help educate you, but they are now acting as a safety blanket. “Not feeling great today, let’s read that book again and feel a bit of relief”. So read a book about something completely different; learn to move on from the subject. You never lose what you have learnt, so put those books in a drawer and forget about them. If in a few weeks’ time you need a little refresher, then pick your favourite page out and take a read. But it’s now time to try and get off this never ending self-help road. There just comes a point when you have to stop reading and researching and start living again. The truth is that this backpack was useless. It was never going to give you the answers you were searching for and in most cases was designed to make you feel worse. Can you now see how we do so much of this to ourselves? For your sake and the sake of my conscience, please throw your backpack away. You are totally safe and fine without it. Everyone has his or her own kind of backpack. Some carry more around than others. The more you carry around, the heavier and more exhausting things will be. That story above was my own backpack and it is not meant to tell people what

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they should and should not do when it comes to medication, books or therapists; people can make their own choices on that. If you are seeing someone and they are bringing you comfort and helping in some way, then by all means keep seeing them, but at some point you have to break away and reclaim your life without crutches. Don’t get lost in the whole self-help field for the rest of your life or you will just get stuck in a world of ‘there is something wrong and I need to find someone or something to fix me’. I hope to get through to everyone reading this that this is absolutely not the case. It truly is about seeing past this mind created illusion and recognising that in reality so many of these fears and anxieties that appear so real are just mind created nonsense. They don’t really exist apart from in the mind and they don’t need to be worked on. So the above is my own story, the conclusions I came to and how I felt so much better when I threw my backpack away. When I did I felt so much lighter, my thinking was so much clearer and I felt far more alive and reconnected with the world around me. I thought I needed so much to get better, yet it was all these rituals, techniques, rules, deep thinking and analysing that were making me worse. For as long as I thought I was broken and needed fixing, I was forever going to stay on the self-help route trying to find temporary relief whilst never finding what I really craved, which was long term relief. I recently spoke with a woman whom I respect very much on mental health and she said “Paul I have said it for years. People don’t need people like me to fix them, as that is something I cannot do. They really just have to learn to see the truth behind their own suffering; my only job is to help them to do that. They are all mentally healthy but have just lost themselves through the misuse of thought. All mental distress bar none comes from stressful thinking and when they think they are broken then this stressful thinking goes into overdrive

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and they stay stuck for years.” I totally agree with her. I have never had one person come to me who did not get to the anxious state through stress and worry, which in turn is stressful thinking. I have also never had anyone who has been stuck for years that has not had more stressful thinking because of the state in which they have found themselves. I would say I spent around 95% of my days in thought when I was anxious - worrying, analysing, fixing, researching and planning - and was utterly confused as to why I felt so bad. What I did to myself now seems crazy and so utterly pointless and counter-productive, but at the time it seemed perfectly natural. So to finish this chapter, there is nothing to find, nothing to fix and nowhere to get to. Through no fault of your own you have taken yourself away from your natural default setting of mental well-being. I will talk more about this later, but when you see the truth behind this, then you will realise that there truly is nothing to do and how liberating is that? I have had so many people come to me and almost break down in tears when they realise they no longer have to try, struggle or think their way back to well-being, this is what they have craved to hear for so long.

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What Is The Need for Fear and Anxiety? When we feel anxious, it is our body and mind’s way of telling us that we have overdone things and that we are overworking our system. It is telling us to slow down and take it easy. It is an inbuilt warning system just doing its job, but again it does not come with instructions, so many people don’t get this message and instead of taking it easy they end up putting more of a burden upon themselves. The mind and body is thinking ‘Huh? What are you doing? I need a break. That’s what I am trying to tell you. The last thing I need is more effort and more thinking’. It is also helpful to know that so much of anxiety comes from thought. When someone says “It’s the money problems I have that have made me anxious”, it is not. It is your thoughts about your money problems that made you anxious. You can swap this for ‘The problems at work or in my marriage’, but it is never the circumstances, or shall we say life situations, which bring on anxiety, it is our thoughts about our life situation. People should not say ‘I have anxiety’, they should say, ‘I have created anxiety’. An example would be: two people visit the dentist and have exactly the same work done. One worries himself into a total state while the other does not worry at all. They both face exactly the same situation but have two completely different experiences. It is never the situation, just your thoughts about the situation, which causes the anxiety. It is very helpful to know this so we can get a sense of the fact that we are the sole creators of our anxiety and we have the power to no longer create it. No one is born anxious and anxiety never comes along and decides to pick on someone. So even if you feel you are in a constant state of anxiety, if you stop having worrying thoughts about being anxious or things that are going on in your life then it will subside. Both anxiety and fear cannot

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sustain themselves without worrisome thoughts, as it is these thoughts that create the extra energy with which to sustain them. Fear is also a built-in system in all of us. It is there to warn us of danger. It is there for a reason and it is there to protect us. It was never meant to work against us. But, once again, it does not come with a manual so sometimes we cannot understand what it is trying to tell us and how we are its creator. We think of it as an outside force that is working against us. My own understanding of the fact that it was built in to protect me made me realise that it would never harm me in any way. Our creator would never be that cruel. It is a harmless warning system that is necessary for us to survive. Yes, it’s not a particularly nice warning system and does not create nice feelings, but if it didn’t create these feelings, we would not run away from that man who was standing in front of us with a knife or try to escape from that snarling dog. It is supposed to feel like fear so as to prepare us for action. I never tried to suppress my own fear reaction; we can’t because it is part of us. Through understanding, I just began to be more comfortable with it and I also understood that I was creating a lot of my own fear via my thinking or that an intense release of energy was happening. Actually just seeing my fear as energy helped me to view it in a completely different light and although I still felt uncomfortable, a lot of my fear of it went. More than anything I learnt that for fear to sustain this release of energy/adrenalin, it needed more worrisome thoughts to survive. This is why people say don’t add fear to fear, which really means don’t add energy to energy. Just try to see it for what it is and allow it to release itself. A lady once said to me “It’s not fair, I can’t go to the supermarket because I feel awful. I am OK going to my local shop, but not the supermarket” I said: “The supermarket has

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absolutely no bearing on how you feel. What could be scary about a row of baked beans? Nothing! What you really fear is the way you will feel when you get there. That thought is what brings on the fear and anxiety, not the supermarket itself. The reason you don’t feel that way when visiting your corner shop is that you don’t have the same thoughts about it. If I go to the supermarket, I do not have one fearful thought about it and hence I do not feel any fear. So the danger is not in the supermarket; it never was. The supermarket is in no way a scary place in which to be and it is only your thoughts about it that make it seem so. Yes, some of your thoughts may now be subconscious and come involuntarily, but they are still just thoughts”. We see the world through the eyes of our thoughts, our thinking. When this changes then so does our perception of the world. People who feel fear at appropriate times hardly bother when they feel this way. Some actually like it, such as adrenalin junkies. It is those that feel it when they deem it to be happening at inappropriate times that fear the feeling. If you fear the actual feeling of fear, then it makes sense that the feeling will be much stronger as what you are doing is adding another layer of worry on top of the initial feelings. Your mind senses you are scared of something so it shoots in some extra adrenalin to give you the option to escape. Again your system is working fine and just following what you are feeding it. I will give you a personal example. I used to go playing indoor football once a week. There were quite a few people there and when I was at my worst it was quite daunting for me. I was OK when I was lost in the game, but with so many people about, some of whom I may have to engage with, getting changed beforehand filled me with fear. I remember getting changed at home on some occasions so that I would not have to go into the changing rooms, and if I did have to go into the changing

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rooms, I would get changed as quickly as possible. For a few hours before I went I would be going over it in my mind and making sure I got changed near the door. Looking back on that now, who was creating this fear? ME. That changing room was the same for everyone. It was no different for me than it was for all the others, and no one else was looking to get changed at home or worrying hours beforehand, rushing to get ready. I was the one that created this danger that never ever existed. My mind or, as I will regularly call it throughout this book, my computer was just doing everything it should. I was telling it there was danger here so it fed back some adrenalin. I had created this reality through my thinking, full stop! One person was worrying and nine others were not. Who was the one that felt awful? Was this a coincidence? Once I got this insight, I saw numerous other occasions where I was doing it to myself. The approaching neighbour that I saw coming down the street where my mind would fill up with ‘Oh no, please don’t see me; this is terrible’ and when she did, I would have more thoughts about how to get away quickly. When I felt the inevitable fear, I would then blame it on the neighbour or rack myself with self-pity about my own plight thinking some outside force was doing this to me. But I had created every bit of it through my thinking; the computer was just following what I was feeding it and was working fine. There was nothing wrong with the system and there was nothing wrong with me. I was doing this to myself and I was beginning to see this now. So what did I do and how did things change? The realisation that there was not a single thing in my daily life to be truly anxious about and that this was all coming through my thinking about situations and not the situations themselves was a massive insight for me. If there was truly nothing to be anxious about and other people managed fine, then these

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fears really did not exist. They were all self-created through thought; it could not be anything else. So I was just not going to be tricked anymore by my anxious thinking and I started not to follow it blindly, but to actually catch it. But all those weeks of worrying about the indoor football and all the other places I had added to my list had been stored in my computer. It had registered that there was danger before, so when it saw the football court, the old doubts would surface and the computer would send through some adrenalin and the odd thought of ‘go for the bench by the door.’ I recognised that a lot of the thoughts were now also conditioned, like an automatic response, but they were still only thoughts. It was up to me whether or not I identified with them and followed them through via my behaviour. I realised that my brain was just going into its memory bank and trying to keep me safe, so I just thanked it for trying to keep me safe, but told it I was fine and I didn’t need its help or protection today. Previously, I had just followed my thoughts blindly and never brought awareness to them. I believed them without actually seeing them for what they were - a thought - and I never questioned them. I realised that I was just stuck in old, conditioned thinking; an old belief system that was not who I was and that had no truth in it whatsoever. I eventually got so good at catching my thinking that it became automatic and I stopped blindly following my thoughts. Another example was when I was out walking with my friend and we walked past an old school friend’s house. My friend said “Come on, let’s go and say hello and have a coffee with him”. All these thoughts of ‘make an excuse; what will I say; he will notice how uncomfortable I am; no, I can’t’, flooded through me and I just took a step back and truly saw them as just old conditioned thoughts and not reality. So I said “Sure let’s go and say hello” and the difference was amazing. I was a little anxious, but fine. Before, I would have either made an excuse, thinking I had made another lucky escape or gone into the

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situation and had a constant running commentary about how awful this was, wondering how I was coming across and what to say next, and it would have been a bit of a disaster. From that day on, if any insecure or past conditioned thoughts did come up, I just saw them for what they were, serving me no purpose and I just let them go. The old conditioned thoughts were never the problem; the problem only occurred if I identified with them, took them as truth and adjusted my behaviour accordingly. I started to see my mind as just a conditioned machine and the fears it created were just due to my past behaviour and did not exist in reality. That one incident and insight had such a positive bearing on my future. A few days later my neighbour was washing his car, as he always was, and instead of just shouting hello and getting in my car before he could start talking, I went right over there and started a conversation. Once again, when I saw right through the thoughts about it being something to fear and run away from, it went well. I was sending back a completely different message and my body/mind responded differently. It did not go perfectly by any means, but far better than ever before. I realised that I did not have to be a slave to my old conditioned thinking. In fact I could start to smile at it now and a lot of it just seemed silly. My favourite quote by Van Gough sums this up perfectly; “If you hear a voice within you say “You cannot paint” then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced” This is exactly what happened to me. If ever that voice told me I shouldn’t do something, then I did it, and the voice of old conditioned thinking became silent. I also realised there and then that I was not this socially anxious person that I thought I was; that was just a label that I

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and other people had given me. The truth was I was just taking my anxious thinking seriously. Someone once asked me “What is the best way to get past this old conditioned thinking?” I said, “Without doubt, just catch it and smile at it and it just dissolves”. Old conditioned thinking has no power once it is exposed; it gets its power from your belief in it. So, to finish this chapter really see that it is never the situation that makes you fearful or anxious, but rather your thoughts about it. Also start to recognise when your thoughts about a situation are real and when they are not. Start to catch your thoughts and question them. “Is there really danger here or am I just taking my old conditioned thinking seriously?” Start to bring awareness to your conditioned thinking instead of following it blindly. When you do this you will begin to recognise how much of your life has been held back by nothing more than this old conditioned thinking that has served you no purpose whatsoever and has created a totally false reality. If you can really see the truth behind this, you can start to live the life you truly want to. Remember: ‘Unless there is obvious danger in front of you then there is not a single thing in the outside world to get anxious about. Only your thoughts about situations can hold you back. It is seeing the lie behind these thoughts that creates a shift in your perception’.

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Struggling With Your Thoughts Before I begin this chapter, it is vital for you to understand that an anxious person with a tired and worn-out mind may find that their thoughts are more obsessive and fear based than most. When your anxiety levels drop and your mind is less active, then your thoughts begin to change automatically. It is not your job to try and change them and nor do you need to. It is just for you to see them for what they are - anxious thoughts that mean nothing and have no bearing on reality. When you are dealing with anxiety, these thoughts arise because there is a lot of negative energy stored up within you and this negative energy can then manifest itself into unpleasant and, in some cases, obsessive thoughts. I have known people instantly understand this simple fact and never take another anxious thought seriously again. With this new understanding they realise these thoughts no longer have any real substance and they instantly lose their fear of them. Without this fear then these thoughts no longer have their attention or respect and are just seen as a flow of negative energy being released through the simple power of thought. If one thing comes up more than anything else on my blog and Facebook pages, it is the subject of people’s thinking, be it ‘I can’t stop thinking; my thoughts are obsessive and horrible; my inner voice is so critical’ and many more. I know this will probably be the chapter most people want to read and it is one I am keen to write in order to stop people needlessly suffering this way. I did cover it in my initial book, but not only did I want to give people more of an understanding, but also a way of truly helping with this inner commentary. The reason people get so stuck here is because once again they do the complete opposite of what they should.

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Firstly, yes I went through this and now I no longer do, and yes everyone, and I mean everyone, can move on from this given the correct understanding. The reality is that we all think. Thoughts pop up to help guide us through life and they are an essential part of your physiological make up. You can meditate for hours, climb up a mountain in Tibet or sit under a tree in Timbuktu, but you will always think. There is absolutely nothing wrong with thinking; without it we could not operate. Stopping thinking A lot of people say to me “I can’t stop thinking” and I always say, “Neither can I and neither can anyone else, so don’t try”. The very act of trying not to think just adds more thinking. Another thing that is impossible to do is to try to change the content of your thinking. Once a thought is created, it cannot be changed as it has already been created. Thoughts can change naturally through a different attitude towards them or when a lot of this negative energy subsides, but you cannot force them to change. This is also why affirmations rarely work. For example, if you get an old conditioned thought like ‘My life is awful and I will never feel happy’, reading an affirmation that says ‘Your life is what you make it, keep on the right path and happiness will arrive at your door’ may make you feel hopeful for a few minutes, but it won’t be long before those old critical thoughts pop back up. Also the fact that you have been thinking this way for months and in a lot of cases years, will ensure that your old conditioned thoughts have the last word and shout the loudest, and within a short period of time the affirmation’s effect will be gone and the old critical thinking will be back. This is why it makes me smile when I see these books saying ‘How to change your thinking and be happy’ - well, good luck there. A far better and more helpful title for a book would be:

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‘No longer take your thinking seriously!’ I remember once reading a book and the author said “I went to Thailand and the mountains of Tibet trying to silence my mind, when the answer all along was to no longer take my thinking seriously”. How true; the real freedom is in being able to think anything and no longer care and then instantly the battle with your thoughts is over. There is then no need to change or struggle with any thought that arises. Any attempt to stop your thoughts is fruitless and counterproductive as the very effort to stop a thought is a thought in itself and how can you stop a thought with another thought? This is exactly what happens with people who get into a tangle with their own thinking. They end up going round in circles. So if we can’t forcefully stop or change our thoughts, then what do we do? Well, firstly, we need to create a different relationship with them. If you no longer take your thinking seriously then nothing is off limits. So nothing needs to be done and nothing needs to be changed, which means you can think anything. How liberating is that? If you are forever holding on to the so-called good thoughts and trying to not think the bad ones then you are in for one internal battle that will drain you and just create more negative energy. Trying to rid yourself of unwanted thoughts is like playing the game ‘whack-a-mole’. Once you try and suppress one, then another one will pop up and take its place. This is something I once did on a daily basis. It was truly mentally exhausting and went absolutely nowhere towards solving the problem. I thought exactly the same thoughts for quite a while after the penny dropped and the only thing that changed was my attitude. I will say this more than once as it is very important:

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fear and resistance through identification with your thoughts are what cause the suffering, not the thoughts themselves. It is a bit like seeing a person in a gorilla suit. At first it may scare you as you perceive it as real, but once you know it’s just a person in a suit, it no longer bothers or concerns you. Thoughts are like that. At first they may appear real and scary and worthy of your attention, but when you see them for what they truly are, then you no longer take them seriously and have no ongoing battle to change or suppress them. They just become unimportant and you hardly even notice their presence. Through developing a far better understanding, I no longer resisted or feared my thoughts. In fact, when a lot of them popped up, I would smile at them and think “Wow, I remember how I used to take that one seriously.” There were no good or bad thoughts anymore and I did not label them as such. They were all the same to me now, just thoughts. At one time I took them seriously, grabbed hold of them, chewed on them and then when this did not pacify me, I tried not to think them. I would also try to ignore them or push them away. Basically, they had my full respect and threw me around like a washing machine. People say to me “Yes, but when I think something bad then I have an awful feeling afterwards. This is why I try to stop or control my thoughts. It’s OK for you to just let them pass right on through, but they really bother and affect me”. I reply by saying, “The thought is not the problem and the thought is not the reason you have an emotional reaction. The reason you have a reaction is because of your fear and resistance to that thought. It is your complete identification with it that brings on the emotional reaction, not the thought itself. At first my own thinking did not change, but my fear and resistance to my thoughts did, and that is why there was no longer an accompanying reaction to that thought. So if the content of my thinking did not change, then it is obvious that my attitude

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towards them did, as what other explanation could there be for them no longer bothering me? So do you see that my thoughts were never the problem? Even if there still is an accompanying reaction through habit, then allow that reaction to come without more fear and resistance and just take the hit. You will soon lose interest in this too”. Here’s an example: If a dog walks past two different people and one is fearful of dogs while the other is not, who gets the reaction to the dog walking past? The one who fears it! The other feels no emotional reaction, yet it is the same dog that walks past both people. If two people have the same thoughts and one fears them but the other does not, then who has the emotional reaction to them? - The one who fears them of course. So it is never the thought that is the problem and it never was. It is the belief in it that brings on the emotional reaction. I understand thought now and realise that it is just energy passing through with no substance. Because of this, no thought can touch me now the way it used to and I, like most people, still have some fearful or insecure thoughts from time to time. But that’s all they are to me now, just a thought. They hardly register at all. I just live my life and accept whatever thoughts pass through. I no longer identify with my thinking and I now realise that it does not define me or my reality. So to recap, it is resistance and identification with your thinking that causes suffering. For years I falsely believed that it was the other way around, that it was my thinking that was causing the problem and this is what needed changing. I tried affirmations, therapists, positive thinking books, numerous techniques and all to no avail as I was looking completely in the wrong direction. I did not need to change my thinking, nor did I need to try and stop it. These very acts had created a monster, as by trying to stop and change my thinking, it had

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gone up tenfold. I was trying to get out of my own head and had only succeeded in getting stuck in it further. I had entered a cycle of thinking about thinking, trying to stop thinking with more thinking and if I had stuck to this path, I would still be doing it to this day. A woman once contacted me explaining how her thoughts were ruining her life. She said that the anxiety had started after her mother died and then the thoughts had followed. She stated that she would get very paranoid about the people around her, thinking that everyone disliked her. She also had a lot of self-critical thoughts about not being good enough and that her husband could do far better. After a brief chat when I explained how anxiety can create a lot of this kind of thinking, I asked her if she had always thought this way. She said: “No, only in the last year since my mother died”. I said: “Well, if you did not think them last year, then these thoughts can’t be true. Nothing has changed since then apart from your anxiety, so your anxious state must have created them.” She replied: “Yes I understand that, but they have such an effect on me and make me feel awful, unwanted and disliked - that emotion is real”. I said: “They only have such an effect on you because you perceive them to be true. At the moment you are totally identifying with them. You don’t see them as untrue like you say, because if you did you would not get any reaction to them. It is because you believe the thoughts that everyone hates you and that your husband could do better that you have an emotional reaction to them and they feel real and solid. You are not seeing them as just a byproduct to your current anxious state; an anxious state which is only increasing through your belief in these thoughts. Basically you are now anxious about what your anxious state is creating. Can you see the loop you now find yourself in?” I also said: “I am not here to help change your thoughts. They will do that by themselves once you no longer take them

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seriously. That is all you need to do - see them for what they are and no longer view them as fact. Then they will lose their punch and have little or no effect on you”. I helped this lady for a while after this initial conversation and eventually she saw the truth behind her thinking and sent me this message. Hi Paul, Thanks to your wonderful advice I am doing so much better and the thoughts have all but gone now, yaahhhhhh. When they do come up I just give them full permission to be there. I just let the thought dance about until it realises it is not getting any respect from me and it then just fizzles out. I know now that, in the past, it was me identifying with thoughts and seeing them as real that caused my emotional reaction and created more anxiety within me, which in turn only led to more anxious thinking and kept me in the cycle. Not only that, but because I believed them, it was also affecting my behaviour. Because I believed the thought that people no longer liked me, I would then try and please everyone and because I believed the thought that my husband could do better, I would start arguments with him just to check that he did still love me. He told me afterwards that he was baffled as to why I suddenly thought this would not be true and then I felt pretty damn awful for starting the arguments (another reason to no longer believe my anxious thinking in future). I look back now and realise I did not feel this way because of any thought, but because I believed my anxious thoughts. Yet these thoughts really had no substance, only my belief in them made them appear real. This lesson will also help me beyond my anxiety, so thank you so much for all your help and advice. Thoughts aren’t reality People think that because they think something then of course it must be true. How many times have you seen someone take offence at something that does not make sense to you? This was because they had a thought about a particular situation that seemed real to them. It was not fact, but they believed it

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and bought into it. I know someone who is very sensitive to the point where you have to really watch what you say to him. People regularly say that he always gets the wrong end of the stick and blows up, and he has lost a lot of friends through it. I once blamed him, but now I realise that he is not a bad person; he is just taking his false thinking about certain situations seriously. If he could learn to no longer do this, he would not have the reactions he does and that would lead to a much easier life for him with far less confrontation. Below is a true encounter I once had which illustrates the fact that thoughts are not reality and that we don’t have to believe them. I had a friend who was seeing a woman who had been cheated on, beaten and abused by an ex-partner. I was also friends with the girl and we often went out for a meal as a foursome. The friend would often tell me he was going to break up with her as he could never do anything right. She constantly phoned him when he was out, accused him of things he had not done and was continually looking for his reassurance that he would not leave her. He said he loved her very much, but that he could not go on like this. I asked if he would let me talk to her, to which he agreed. On speaking to her she said she really loved him but these thoughts of him leaving her kept coming up. She was also waiting for the first punch to come and she couldn’t understand why he was nice to her. Surely he had a hidden agenda. When he went out she was scared he would meet someone else. I looked at her and could see nothing but dysfunctional thinking which had nothing to do with reality. The past had just conditioned her to think this way. He was not going to cheat, hit or leave her. These thoughts were there, yes, but they were completely false. However, she had bought into the fact that because she thought them, they must be real. She could have had a fantastic relationship in the past, met him and her

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thoughts about this relationship would have been completely different. I told her that the only way to save this great relationship was to no longer take these thoughts seriously. Allow them to come up if they wanted to, but realise that they are just a product of past experiences and old conditioned thinking that held no truth whatsoever. Thinking this way was not the problem and these thoughts could never affect her or her relationship, only believing them could. So don’t let the content of your thinking and conditioned past ruin your future. What she had done in the past was push partners away because she believed her thoughts. Then when they left because they could no longer cope with her insecure thinking, it confirmed that she was right to think this way, that it had served her well and proved her right. It also served to reinforce the fact that all men would abandon her, so all the old thoughts and fears resurfaced when she met someone new and so the cycle continued. Whether it is the sensitive person, the worrier, the angry person or the insecure person, it is all about believing their thoughts are fact and reacting to them. I have learnt enough over the years to understand that thoughts mean nothing and only you can bring them to life through believing them and identifying with them. This is the only way they can cause hurt or discomfort. Without fear or identification, they just melt away into nothingness. Paying no attention to your thinking Many people spend all day paying attention to their thoughts. They get lost in them, wondering why they think a certain way and wishing they were different, constantly questioning and analysing their thinking. Again this is why they get stuck and more lost. They are trying to solve a problem that does not need to be solved. If only they could learn to pay no attention to their thoughts, then their suffering would cease. But trying to

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pay no attention to your thoughts can be misinterpreted and become another battle, another technique. I was the same and would now be saying “I am taking no notice of you. You aren’t real. You cannot harm me” but once again I was back in ‘technique’ mode as the truth was I was still fearful and fully identified with the thoughts and wanted them to be gone. Once I truly did not care what thoughts arose I did not need any sayings because I just saw them as anxious or old conditioned thoughts that meant nothing. I did not need any technique to try and rid myself of them and their presence neither bothered nor concerned me. This is why I keep mentioning the word technique as a ‘no, no’ for anything anxiety or thought related. A technique does not mean acceptance of what is, it means suppression, denial and a tool used to control or make something to go away. With any thought or emotion, the more you struggle to get rid of it, the more you get of what you don’t want. Not giving attention to your thoughts does not mean trying to suppress them or ignore them, it means opening up and allowing them to arise without identifying with them. When you take your thoughts less seriously, then you are automatically able to let them go as they no longer hold your focus. If you still take them seriously but then try to let them go, it will be done with effort and resistance. If your thoughts still have a hold on you, then there is still some fear and resistance hanging around. At first there may be a little fear and resistance still present through old habits, so don’t punish yourself for this. Just keep practicing letting them pass on through with as little identification and resistance as possible. Allow yourself not to be concerned about anything you think and understand that the content of your thoughts is not important. Also, and this is vitally important, don’t think ‘But they are still there despite everything Paul said’. Just remember it doesn’t

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matter what you think. You are not trying to change your thoughts; you are learning to no longer take your thinking seriously. Don’t use this as a technique to change or stop your thoughts. What you think is not important, only your reaction to it is. If you keep pulling away from your thoughts and try to change or deny them, then nothing will ever change as you are still in fear of them. You are still fully identifying with them and seeing them as real. Just allow whatever thoughts occur to arise in your awareness and don’t label them good or bad. It’s all just thought, just energy passing through. Only when I allowed myself to think anything without taking it seriously was I truly free. Initially my thoughts did not change and the old fearful and insecure thinking would still arise through old habits and conditioning, but I was no longer bothered or thrown by this. Without my attention and respect and without me grappling with them, they had no fuel to survive and just faded into nothingness. As time went on, my old thinking was replaced with new fresh thinking. What returned was my natural default thinking, the thought system that was there to serve me well and guide me in life. I had never lost that fresh thinking; it was just temporarily covered up. As I like my dog examples, here’s another: Imagine a dog that has been abused and even after being taken on by a new caring owner, is still petrified of everyone who walks past him in the street because he thinks that all people are out to harm him. So to keep safe he will try to avoid all human contact, pull away and hide behind his owner even though these people are not a threat to him. This avoidance is never going to cure the dog of his fear. He needs to learn that these people are totally harmless and only then can they walk past him without him having a fearful reaction. If another dog was across the road he would have

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shouted, “Don’t worry, these people are harmless. Chill out and enjoy your walk”. That’s what I would shout to someone lost in thought now. “Don’t worry, those thoughts are not real and they cannot harm you. Smile at them and enjoy your day”. Yet previously I did the opposite with my thoughts, I believed they were scary, harmful and fact, so I spent years trying to avoid and suppress them, bought all the pointless books on how to think positive, when all I had to learn to do was have a different relationship with them; then and only then would I be at peace with my thinking. So apart from the pointless effort itself, any attempt to prevent or deny thoughts that arise just creates conflict in the mind and is completely futile. Any thoughts that arise will disappear by themselves if they are not accepted or pursued as the truth. To consciously and deliberately try to erase thoughts is like trying to clean your kitchen floor with dirty water – totally pointless and counterproductive. Your thoughts are not who you are I have added this final conversation I had with someone as I have never seen anyone experience such a shift as quickly as when I said what I did below. To get something from it you have to not only read the words, but really see the truth behind them. Someone recently contacted me because he was having thoughts about no longer loving his wife and these thoughts really bothered him. He said he was sure he loved her, but maybe he should leave her and finished the conversation off with “I really don’t know why I think this way because deep down I’m sure I do love her”. I said “That final statement should tell you everything you need to know. And that is that your thinking is not you. Who is that person questioning why you think this way? That illustrates the fact that your thinking is

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separate from you. It is something that happens within you, but it’s not you. So you are the one who can decide to take these thoughts seriously or not. You can decide whether or not to follow your dysfunctional thinking and let it control you or you can smile at it and take your own path”. He sent me an email later and said he was no longer identifying with his thoughts. He could see the lie behind them now. He could not understand why there had been such a shift in his thinking. The same thought came up, yet it seemed so silly now and he realised he loved his wife more than anything. He said “I can’t believe a thought made me question leaving her and you’re right, I did have a choice to take my thinking seriously or not. Before I just saw it as the truth, but it seems obvious to me now that thoughts are not reality and they are just something that pop up; only we can make them appear real. As you mentioned in a previous session, I was stressed at the time, my mood was low and so was my thinking. I was blaming my wife for my misery when it had nothing to do with her. When our mood is low, so is our thinking, and when it is high, the opposite is true, yet nothing in the outside world ever changes. Just seeing this has helped me to no longer take my thoughts seriously - thank you”. So remember: Thinking is not the problem; you can think whatever you wish. It is identifying with your thoughts and seeing them as fact, which causes suffering.

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The Inner Critic If you believe the made-up thoughts that you’re unworthy, insecure or unlovable, then you’re going to walk around with that label, playing the part, acting it out and losing sight of who you truly are whilst ruining your true interactions with others, denying your own worth and destroying your confidence. The truth is we are all exactly the same. No one is any better than anyone else and it is only our thoughts about ourselves that is different. Once we no longer take those thoughts seriously and understand that they are not reality, then who we think we are falls away and we realise that we are not the story we made up about ourselves. A lot of people struggle with that inner critic; that inner chatter that says things like ‘you will never amount to anything; you’re worthless; no one can love you; you’re not interesting enough’. The list of things the mind can come up with to put us down is endless. We can create this inner critic from past experiences and past interactions. It can be built and strengthened from what our parents, ex-partners, school bullies or even friends said to us in the past. We then tend to build up our own impression of who we think we are. We create a story and identity ourselves based on past experiences. Have you ever met certain people who you and others really like, yet they do not see it and think negatively of themselves no matter how many compliments they receive? The point is they are taking their own thoughts about themselves more seriously than what others tell them. The inner critic is shouting louder than the people around them. They have built up this story about themselves and who they are and have fully bought into it.

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A lot of people with anxiety may not have had anyone put them down and they may have been quite confident people with not much of a story before anxiety became part of their lives. But once they begin to suffer, then their story starts to develop. They begin to feel weaker than others and their confidence becomes eroded through them not being as sociable and as outgoing as before. They begin to feel they have failed in some way and that no one will want them. They may worry that their partners will get fed up and move on or that they will lose their job and friends. They begin to feel pretty despondent about themselves and their situation and in this depressed state the inner critic can shout pretty loudly. The good news is this inner critic is just reflecting your own beliefs about yourself. When you feel happy and are on top of the world, the inner critic disappears. In fact it usually tells you how wonderful you are and how great life is, but when you’re down then it tells you that you’re pretty damn useless and life sucks. But whether you are in a low or a high mood, nothing on the outside ever changes and at our core we are all exactly the same. So drop all these beliefs you have and the story you have built up about yourself. It’s all nonsense created by your mind and in a lot of cases caused by your anxiety at this particular moment in your life. We always see life through how we feel and not how it truly is. When I was at my worst, I thought friends would no longer want to spend time with me, my partner would leave and that I was no longer interesting. My inner critic went into overdrive and I believed every word it said. I know now that it was nonsense and not one person left my side or thought any worse of me. It was all just a reflection of what I thought of myself at the time and not what others truly thought. There is a famous story about a man called Sydney Banks who went to see a psychiatrist when he felt extremely low and down on himself. He sat there and told him all about his

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problems and how extremely insecure he was at the time. When he had finished, the psychiatrist just said “I have never heard such nonsense in all my life”. He then said “Syd you are not insecure, you just think you’re insecure”. This statement blew Syd away and he instantly saw the truth behind it. He said what he saw was ‘There’s no such thing as insecurity. All my insecurity was created by my own thinking. It was like a bomb going off in my head and was so enlightening it was unbelievable’. When I read this it made complete sense to me. Others may not grasp straight away what that means and have such an enlightening experience, but to me it took me back to my own suffering and how I labelled myself socially awkward when in reality I never truly was. I just thought I was and because I thought I was I played my role perfectly. I hid away in the background. I stopped having an opinion, made excuses not to go out, rushed and avoided conversations. I had decided that I was this socially awkward person and so I played the part superbly. I am not saying I was great socially as I wasn’t at that time, but me putting that label on myself and believing this is who I was, made me ten times worse. I began to realise that who I thought I was, was really just a bunch of thoughts and old beliefs creating my identity, it was never who I truly was. The following is also a true story. Forgive me for not remembering the name of the lady, as it has been a while since I came across this story, but it was a meeting between her and a well-respected health professional in America. This lady came to see him and said she had spent the last 25 years in therapy and got nowhere. She felt so low, had little or no confidence in herself and felt such hate towards her mother who she blamed for the mess she was in. She said she loathed herself and thought she was worthless and unlovable. The story was that her mother, who was an alcoholic and in an abusive relationship, had told her as a child that she was useless, ugly and she wished she had never been born. All of

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this had deeply affected her throughout her adult life. All the other therapists she had seen previously had dug up her past and tried to unravel it all piece by piece. This particular therapist did not work like that and said, “Why would I want to bring something painful back up for you to relive it all over again? All I will say is that what your mother said to you had nothing at all to do with you, nothing whatsoever. It could have been your next door neighbour or the girl you work with and she would have been exactly the same to them too. She said these things because of her own pain and suffering. This is why she drank, to hide and suppress what she was feeling, but it wasn’t enough to block out what she was going through. There was more pain and she took that pain out on you. Your mother must have been suffering terribly to speak to you in this way and you, unfortunately, got the brunt of it. I am not saying what she did and said was right; it was not. But that is why she said those horrible things. Telling you that you were unlovable, stupid or ugly was her way of relieving her own pain and suffering. It was reflection of what she thought of herself and was in no way personal”. The woman looked at him and just burst into tears. She came back a week later and said “I have been through therapy for 25 years and you have done more for me in that one session than the others did in all that time. Not only has a big weight been lifted from my shoulders but I also now see that I am not those things she said I was. I don’t agree with what she put me through, but for once I can see why. I even have a little sympathy for my mother and a lot of that hate I felt towards her has now gone”. This woman had built up her own story from her mother’s words and her inner critic got hold of the story and reinforced it. All it took was for her to put a different perspective on things thanks to the therapist’s words. The way she thought about herself shifted completely and with that so did her inner critic.

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You can relate this story to any situation. Let’s use the expartner who told someone they were useless, stupid and that no one would ever want them. Again, like the woman’s story above, these cruel words had nothing to do with them and everything to do with the ex-partner’s own pain and insecurity. Does it make it right? No, but it sure takes all the emphasis away from the victim and tells them that is not who they are and that they are just the victim of someone else’s pain and insecurity. When that abusive partner moves on to the next girl, she will more than likely get the same treatment. When a woman is treated this way she can either believe it is her and then the inner critic will reinforce this and tell her it’s all true and that she is unlovable and useless, or she can silence that voice by recognising that it was nothing to do with her and everything to do with the person that put her through this. When someone is horrible or nasty to you, it is always a reflection of their own pain and what’s going on inside them, so never take it personally and don’t put it into the story you create about yourself. Not one person on this planet is any better or more important than the other. We are all exactly the same and only by creating a false story about yourself can this perception change. Silencing the inner critic Even after this explanation, the inner critic (the mind) can still try to put you down through old habits and beliefs. Again, the best way to silence its voice is not to identify with it and know that your story about yourself is not real. It is just a bunch of old mind created beliefs based on past experiences and has no bearing on who you truly are. A lot of people try to silence it by reading affirmations about how great they are, how people’s opinions don’t matter and how they need no one but themselves etc. As I said before, I have never been a fan of affirmations as you may get a ten second boost, but then it’s not long before the old fears and

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insecurities come back. If you take no notice of this selfcreated, false inner critic, then its voice is quietened. It needs your full attention and respect to feed its existence. So the best way to silence the inner critic is to realise it’s not in any way fact and pay it no attention. Just see it for what it is which is a mind-made construction of old thoughts and past experiences that hold no truth whatsoever and have nothing to do with who you truly are. Here is a story that I use that seems to work very well to get my point across. At some point in our life we have all come across that drunken man with a beer in his hand who shouts obscenities in the street, usually in the middle of a town centre. Well imagine if when you walked past this man he started shouting obscenities at you, telling you that you are a useless piece of crap, son of a gun etc. etc. Chances are that you would just ignore him and carry on with your day. You would realise that he didn’t mean it and that there is no truth in what he was saying, so it would not affect or bother you in any way. You would just get on with your day without giving it another thought. Well, treat your inner critic in exactly the same way. See it as that drunken man shouting utter nonsense. It’s not the truth and has no bearing on who you truly are, so just carry on with your day.

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Overworking the Mind A lot of people have mentioned that their thoughts tend to race and they feel detached from their surroundings. They also complain that they can’t think straight, they struggle to concentrate on simple tasks and everything seems such an effort. The problem here is they have given their minds so many projects, worries and concerns to deal with; it is no wonder it ends up so busy, exhausted, fragile and unable to concentrate on any one task. Basically, it is being overworked and this is the reason it is unable to function properly. Are you going crazy? Absolutely not, but you need to stop feeding more projects and worries into that overworked mind and give it a chance to settle down to its natural resting state. Then clarity and normal thinking will return. Everyone that comes to me has been stressing and worrying about one situation or another. This stressful thinking has then resulted in them feeling the way they do. The trouble is they are no longer stressing and overthinking about the initial problem, but more about how they are feeling now. They are worrying, analysing and constantly going over things trying to find a way to feel different. They spend so much pointless time and energy on themselves that they can begin to feel detached from their surroundings and are constantly stuck inside their own head, unable to think of anything else but the subject and how they are feeling. So many people fall into this trap without even realising it. Some may read this book and then keep going over everything I have said, turning it into the next project for their mind to get stuck into. DON’T! You will just exhaust your mind even further. Please don’t ever turn my words into a method or a technique or something to constantly carry around with you. They are just a pointer for you to see something so that you no longer do the things that were keeping you in the loop. There

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really is no method or technique to be had here, just something to see. I had to explain this to someone recently who asked “Paul, how do I get my mind to settle?” I replied: “By realising that the answers to your problems do not lie up there. So stop trying to work everything out and then you will get exactly what you are looking for”. Consequences of overworking the mind Oh, that poor old mind that gets asked questions day in day out from the anxiety sufferer. They search and search in there for answers, yet the answers never come. Do they leave it alone once they can’t find the answers they are looking for? No such luck; this poor, exhausted mind is pounded for answers to so-called problems every day, making it feel more exhausted and worn out than ever. When I suffered I felt mentally worn out. I felt detached and could not think straight. My mind raced, obsessed over anything and everything and I found it very hard to concentrate on the simplest of tasks. I sometimes found it hard to be in my own company and felt the need to constantly escape from myself through sleep or constant distractions, all because of what I have explained above. Yet, what did I do? I went back to the very place that was causing the problem and wore it out even further. Your mind will never get bored of trying to solve problems, but it can’t find the answer to its own problems. I finally realised that it was the searching in my mind for all the answers that was actually tiring my mind out further and creating more of exactly what I was trying to fix. It really is like an unsolvable puzzle that only solves itself when you leave it alone. If your mind really wanted to help it should have said ‘Just let everything unfold as it does. The answer does not lie up here. If you want me to function like I did before, then please leave me alone so I can get on with my real purpose in life’.

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An overworked mind is a poor servant Your mind works far better as a machine when it has nothing extra to chew on. Then it can efficiently do the job for which it was designed. Left alone the mind will come up with far more solutions than when we try to find an answer. It is a far more effective machine when left alone to do its job. Scientists and inventors have said that their best ideas came to them when they stopped trying to solve a problem. Even when writing this book I had to take breaks, otherwise ideas just stopped coming to me. My mind needed time out to refresh. After a few hours’ break, ideas would start flowing again. During my days of suffering, it was when all my best insights came to me. When I searched for answers I found them pretty impossible to find, but when I stopped searching these moments of inspiration popped up all the time. When people feel clarity and a break in their suffering for the first time, it is amazing how much wisdom starts coming through. When your mind feels out of control Because of all this searching, all this extra workload and the numerous problems you have given your mind to solve, you can start to feel as though it has, shall we say, taken on a mind of its own. It feels like you have lost control over it and it is now just running wild. You find it hard to think straight; you obsess easily and find it hard to concentrate on simple tasks. Basically it has lost its resilience and seems to take you where it wishes rather than where you want to go. It seems to have taken on a life of its own and taming it and getting it to do what you want now seems impossible. Instead of it being your servant, it now seems to have turned into your ruler. But is it any wonder it is like this? It has been worked way beyond its capabilities and has lost sight of its purpose. It was only there to help and guide you through life; it did not sign up for all of this. It can’t process all this information and worry you

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are feeding it, so it starts to run amok. But, like you, it just wants to go back to being your servant. It wants to achieve calm just as much as you do, but it needs time to process all this extra information and needs to be left alone to find its own resting place. Yet it is at this point that people think there is now something wrong and they have to fix this wild and untamed mind. So where do they go to fix this? Yup, that’s right, they go right back into their own mind for answers. They are trying to fix their tired and weary overworked mind with their tired and weary overworked mind and, well, I think by now you know the result of this. Yes, another loop is created. The one single and most important fact I learnt was that you cannot fix your mind with your mind; it just becomes more out of control. The mind cannot fix the mind as much as it cannot fix a broken leg or heal a cut finger. It is an intelligence far beyond the mind that does this and it will do the same here. The only way your mind will settle is by being left alone. In trying to fix your mind with your mind you are trying to solve the problem with the problem. This is a very important statement that becomes obvious when grasped. Most people completely miss this extremely important point and spend all their life trying to solve their problems by constantly thinking and analysing all day. They fear that if they don’t continue with this, then the answers will never come and they may end up going crazy. A lot of people find it very hard to let go of this constant searching. They feel that if they do they will somehow lose control when, in reality, the opposite is true. So how do we calm an unruly mind? Trying to get the mind to do what you want is like trying to tie a horse to a pole. It will jump and buck and become more unruly, make more noise and become more distressed. You are far better setting it free to run around where it wishes. This is the only way to tame the horse; it cannot be done by force.

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When my overworked mind started to obsess and run amok, I likened it to an unruly child having a tantrum. I had previously tried to control it, reason with it, tell it off and argue with it, but it never seemed to settle. Once I gave up and let the unruly child run around and do as it wished, it just seemed to settle on its own, which, of course, now makes complete sense. There is a very simple explanation as to why you feel the way you do. Your mind just has too much momentum at the moment, which is the reason why you may feel restless and irritable as well as having racing thoughts and obsession. Reducing this momentum is the key to regaining a healthy and obedient mind. But the reason most people are unable to reduce it is because they look to the very thing that is causing the problem and hike up the minds activity, when in reality this is when they need to take it right down. Without a true understanding of what is happening, it becomes very much a catch 22 situation. Your mind has reached this point through all the worry, deep thinking and analysing. I cannot stress enough how you now need to leave it alone and allow all of this momentum to ebb away. While doing so, you will still feel as though your mind is all over the place and it may still act up for a while but, don’t worry, this is totally normal. In order for the momentum to subside, you just have to allow your mind to go through any movement it wishes for as long as it takes. If it wants to be noisy then let it be noisy. If it wants to obsess then let it obsess. If it wants to throw a bunch of crazy thoughts around then let it. To allow this momentum to ebb away you must be totally at one with its movement and not try to control or tame it in any way. Just leave it to go through its own process, whatever that entails, and then left alone it will then begin to sort itself out. This does take a lot of trust at times, because when it feels out of control and starts having some kind of tantrum, your instinct will be to try to do something about it.

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But, trust me, all this will do is keep you stuck as you are not giving it the time and space it needs to settle; you are just hiking up its activity. Once you truly allow it to run off where it wants and realise that it does eventually settle all by itself, you begin to really trust this process. I remember once going to bed and my mind was all over the place, thinking of this and thinking of that and, as usual, I got involved. I reasoned with it, got annoyed with it, got involved with its stories and tried to think of something else, yet it just carried on with its inner chatter and noise. As I was tired, totally out of the blue I just said, ‘OK, you do what you want, I am off to sleep’. Just like that, because my attention was taken away from it, it settled and I more or less went straight to sleep. This really surprised me and it gave me an insight into the fact that my mind could run as wild as it wanted, but I did not have to get involved with its antics, as all that did was just keep the momentum going. I realised that all it was really doing was trying to process and rid itself of all the worry, concern and analysing I had done for the past few months. When I truly saw this and my mind’s antics no longer concerned me, I began to see that there was nothing to worry about when it started to obsess, worry and run amok. I was then able to leave it alone to do what it needed to do. So when I woke the next morning and it was off again, going over this and that, for once I just left it to ramble and do what it wished. Without my fuel to feed its momentum, it once again began to settle on its own. I have learnt a lot about the mind and thought since that day, far too much to write down here, but I now know that thoughts are just energy in motion. That is why people with anxiety have more thoughts than the average person as they have far more energy stored up. In my initial book I said that I once saw this after I had been out running. After my run, my thoughts all but shut up and my mind felt clear once again. I then realised that

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thoughts were just energy. They had to be otherwise why would exercise make any difference? Running was not a permanent fix, as the excess energy soon built up again, but running had burnt off that excess energy. Well I had plenty of stored up energy because of what I had put my mind through in the past and this was the reason my mind seemed so overly active. If it needed more fuel then I was always willing to give it more by getting involved in its nonsense. I thought I had to control it, quieten it and reason with it, yet all this did was add more fuel to the fire. I was trying to quieten my thinking with more thought, how utterly pointless and counter-productive was that! Once I saw the obvious truth behind this, my mind’s momentum calmed in time. I did have to be patient with this process though and it would still have its tantrums and on rare occasions I would fall back and get involved with it all until I woke up to what I was doing once again. I basically stopped trying to think my way back to clarity. I stopped trying to force my mind to do what I wanted and just let it do what it wanted to do. By handing over full control and surrendering to its will, peace began to return. Trust me the best way to regain control of your mind is to let go of all control, only then can it calm and eventually find its own resting place. You cannot think your way to well-being. If you try, trust me you will be analysing yourself forever and will never reach peace of mind. Just learn to separate yourself from your mind’s antics, don’t take its movement too seriously and it will soon settle naturally. Feeling mentally blocked This is something else people mention to me. Apart from their minds seemingly running amok, they also say that they feel mentally blocked, their mind feels congested and they find it hard to think straight. They find it an effort to follow a conversation and when they read something, the words are

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not sinking in. Rather than this being a constant worry cycle, it is more of an information packing cycle where people just go from one technique to another, one website to another and one book to another trying to find the answers they so crave. It is a neverending cycle of information gathering and that over-stuffed mind is going to have to process all this and then find some non-existent space to store it. Just when it tries to have a clear-out and refresh itself, here comes more information. So nothing changes, it never gets time for a clear-out and stays blocked and unresponsive. This is why people say they need a break when they have done too much studying or work that involves a lot of concentration. They may even come home and complain that their mind is still whizzing with all the work they have done that day. When they take a break, their mind is able to step back and process all the information it has received that day. It is like a vacuum clearing a dirty carpet. After the much needed break, their mind is refreshed and they are able to go back the next day and it works at its optimum level again. The anxiety sufferer never heeds these signs and carries on feeding it more and more information. They stress, worry, analyse and search for answers. Can you see now why you can feel so blocked, detached, irritable and mentally worn out? This is something I went through too. It took me a long time to finally learn how to get out of this state as everyone I went to see and every book I read would just give me another technique to try. I would then have a bunch of rules to follow and a bunch of sayings to remember. Looking back, no person or book ever gave me a direct answer to this problem. I basically had to figure it out for myself through trial and error and a better understanding of how the mind and body work.

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So what is mental congestion? It is basically what it says it is. It is too much information going into your mind. There is not enough mental space for it to cope with what you are feeding it and it becomes full and congested. Your stomach tells you when it has had enough; you feel the sensation of being full and stop eating. Your mind does the same, but you don’t listen and carry on stuffing it with more information, more problems to solve and then wonder why it feels so full and why you struggle to process any more information. This is why I am forever telling people to leave the subject behind and go out and live more. Because your mind and body can’t speak, they send their messages through feelings and emotions and it is up to us to listen and understand what they are telling us. It makes sense that if your mind feels heavy and blocked and there seems to be no room to think, that you are overworking it and feeding it too much information. These emotions don’t pick on you, they are always pointing out to you that something is wrong and that you need to change something. When you feel that you mind is blocked and congested, it is telling you exactly that. If it could speak it would say ‘Hang on buddy, give me a break. Don’t give me any more to chew on’. Every home computer has a different capacity for storing information and you can keep adding programs and files until this space is filled. When it is almost full it will start to slow down and become sluggish (ring a bell?). Once it has reached its full capacity, the computer will tell you that there is no more disk space available and you then have to clear it so that it can function at its optimum level. Your mind works in the same way and can automatically clear this disc space if left alone to do so. Unfortunately, when you keep feeding it more and more information, it never gets the chance. It is trying to tell you something but you are not listening; in fact you continue do the opposite.

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The congestion cycle So, once again there is nothing wrong with the system and you are doing this to yourself, just like I did for many years. At the time I felt so flat, half-baked and detached that I figured that there was something wrong with me and so I had to fix myself. So I thought more, read more and analysed more, but all this did was feed more and more information into my already overworked mind. The mental effort I put into trying to feel better exhausted me further. I basically woke up and the whole day was built around finding answers. Even reading this back makes me wonder how I never ‘got it’ at the time; it seems so obvious to me now. I really had no idea that it was a lack of mental space that had me feeling this way. Because of the way I was approaching this, it’s no wonder I felt flat and clogged up, struggled to read a book, felt like hiding away and found conversations hard as well as being mentally exhausted. There was just no space left in my mind. I repeat, this is why you don’t need to do anything, as it was the doing that causes the problem. You don’t have to do anything, but you do have to see the truth behind why you feel the way you do. An understanding or insight beats any pill or technique hands down. Once I had this understanding then that was the end of this never ending cycle. I still felt mentally blocked and exhausted at times because of all that I had put myself through in the past, but it no longer worried or concerned me. Without all that extra worry and without adding any more workload to my overly worked mind, then its fuel had gone, it started to clear up and I began to experience moments of real clarity. The mind is the same as any muscle that is overworked and aches. The only cure is to rest it. It may still ache for a while, but once you stop over using it then your body’s healing system will take over. You cannot force it to stop aching by

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using it more. I could not force my mind to clear. This just involved more thinking, more work and more effort, which are the very things that kept it feeling so congested and became so obvious to me. I look back at my previous life and all I did every day was live in my head. If I wasn’t analysing my condition I was reading about it. If I wasn’t worrying about my state, I was trying to fix it. I had no time outs, no mental breaks and the more clogged up and detached I felt, then the more I continued to do the above! If you want your mind to feel more refreshed and spacious then stop stuffing more and more information into it by way of rules, techniques, Googling, reading, analysing. Just let it readjust back to its natural resting state. Without exception, this resting state is available to all of us. You just have to allow your mind to settle naturally and it will do the rest. You don’t have to try and think your way home. Anything that creates more thinking and effort will just give it the fuel it needs to stay overactive. The mind has a brilliant way of calming and righting itself if left alone to do so. It needs no intervention from you and when it settles your thinking is fresh and clear once more and you experience clarity. This shows that you never lost anything and were always there beneath your mind’s noise and nonsense. You have perfect mental health and that part of you is untouchable. It just gets clouded over at times and you feel like you have lost it, but it is always there ready to be accessed once again.

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Avoiding Anxiety Avoiding anxiety, otherwise known as avoidance coping, is when someone tailors their behavior to try and escape particular thoughts and feelings. If you want to stay in the cycle of anxiety then this is a pretty good way to go about it. No one knows this better than I do, as I was the master of this behaviour. In fact very few people who come to me for help don’t do this in one form or other. The trouble with avoidance techniques is that they may work in the short term, but in the long term they typically create more of the feelings people are trying to escape from. Examples of avoidance Not answering the phone Cancelling social events Avoiding social interaction Alcohol A need to be constantly busy or distracted Excessive exercise Trying to constantly change how you feel Constant Googling of symptoms Fabricated conversations Gambling

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Constantly changing medication Living your life online Ruminating (trying to think your way out of how you feel) The cost of avoiding your feelings Constantly drained Effect on personal relationships Loss of confidence Continued suffering Smiling on the outside whilst crying on the inside Explosions of anger or frustration Wearing a mask in front of others Hiding away Not living the life you want The best way to rid yourself of unwanted feelings and emotions is to go towards them and experience them, only then can you become free of them. To transcend suffering we need to feel the very feelings we are trying to avoid. Once you allow these thoughts and feelings to pass through, the whole battle and struggle with yourself is over. The paradox is that being prepared to feel and experience anxiety will in the long run lead to less anxiety. I honestly thought I was fine until I wrote down a list of the things that I was doing to avoid. Some of mine were subtle,

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some not so. Once I wrote them down I decided that I would avoid my feelings and emotions no more. Some temporary discomfort was far better than long term avoidance that was getting me nowhere and just restricting my life and social interactions. After a while I realised that all the reading of self-help books, medication, the Googling and counsellors was an avoidance of feelings. I wanted these books, internet searches, pills and counsellors to make it all go away and when they failed I looked somewhere else. But I was never really looking in the right direction as nothing in the outside world could make these feelings go away. The only thing that anyone else could do was point me in the right direction, yet very few did. They just made me more convinced than ever that I was broken and gave me more methods to help me cope. No one ever said to me ‘Hey Paul, they’re just emotions - no biggy - they don’t mean anything so just allow yourself to feel them. Don’t spend your life battling to suppress or get rid of them. They just need space to be felt and released’. No, I got the opposite: ‘Do this, try this, read that, take this, yes these are bad, let’s go on a mission to get rid of them’. If I only knew then what I know now! Suffering is caused by resistance to what is What a lot of people fail to understand is that around 20% of suffering is the particular emotion you feel and 80% is your resistance to it. It is the resistance to how you feel that causes the greatest suffering. The moment you try to free yourself from anxiety or fear by resisting it, you create more of what you are trying to escape from. Any attempt at suppression, control or running away from your feelings just creates more anxiety. People are afraid to really feel their feelings, afraid of losing control and afraid of the pain involved in feeling their emotions

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so they end up in a never ending battle of trying to suppress how they feel. People may drink, take drugs, exercise excessively and go on shopping sprees - anything to avoid feeling certain emotions - but all going down this road will bring is a lifetime of suffering as they just stay trapped inside you. You can only run away, drink and suppress for so long before things start to creak. I once spent all day labelling certain thoughts and feelings as OK and others as bad. So I spent all day in my head trying to push away the bad and keep hold of the good. It was truly exhausting and totally counterproductive. No wonder I was so mentally exhausted. When you feel nice emotions you don’t start questioning it by asking, “Why do I feel good? Why don’t I feel bad? I must change my state, this isn’t right!’ So if you don’t question and try and change things when you feel good then why do it when you feel bad? Trust me, if you started to create plenty of resistance over good feelings, then it would not be long before you felt rotten again. Any kind of resistance will bring on suffering, as you are going against what is, and creating so much inner conflict. You are in a period of your life where you feel anxious; learn for once to accept the fact that you won’t always feel great. Without resistance to what is, suffering will greatly diminish. It does not mean you will not suffer, it just means that without resisting what is your suffering will not touch you in the same way. A large part of its fuel is taken away and a door to recovery is opened. All the stored up emotions and feelings that you have been trying to suppress for years will finally find an outlet and be released, and as you may have discovered up until now, they will continue to keep knocking until you finally open the door. Even now, beyond my suffering, I can feel down, be full of

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negative thinking, have days when everything seems to go wrong and it truly does not bother me. It hardly touches me as I have not labelled it as bad and spent all day trying to change how I feel. Consequently my day is not full of resistance and inner conflict. Everything just is as it is, and without me struggling against my experience then in return my mood improves far quicker. It’s just like a storm passing over. I accept it’s going to rain at some point in my life, but I know it passes and the sun will always come back out. In the past when it rained I would spend all day trying to push the rain back in the clouds, ‘No, I don’t want to feel like this, go away’. If that did not work I would paint on my smile and pretend everything was great in Paul’s world, which was so bloody exhausting and made me feel a lot worse. I just ended up feeling like some kind of fake fraud, which I was, as that’s not how I was truly feeling. It was as though I convinced myself that if I act happy I might feel it, but all I was doing was denying how I felt and putting a mask on. Now when I feel down I just accept it. I won’t apologise for it or try to feel any different. All my masks are now in the bin and it’s a very liberating feeling. So now if it’s raining, so what, full stop. For once in my life I am open to feeling both positive and negative emotions, I am human after all and it is amazing how much lighter you feel when you finally allow yourself to feel something.

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Resistance Only Increases Suffering Resistance occurs when we want something to be different than it is; when we want to be somewhere else rather than where we are. This creates a void and the battle then starts to try and bridge this gap. I don’t want to feel like this so I’m going to try and feel like that. This is the battle that many anxiety sufferers go through each day and it was a battle that consumed me. I thought it was my job to get from here to there; this is why I went on my own journey of self-help. But this journey was pretty futile as long as I was resisting what was, and this was the real cause of my suffering. I would go out running, walking and constantly change my diet, but although it helped, I realised that all I was doing it for was to try to feel different. I was always trying not to feel something and I thought this was the answer. If I can just get rid of these feelings then I will be fine. On my Facebook page or through my blog I am constantly asked “Paul, how do I stop feeling this way or that way? How do I get rid of my bad thoughts?” These people are stuck on the path of fear and resistance. They don’t want to feel the way they do so they are trying to find ways to get rid. They are not allowing whatever is happening to happen. No matter how many years they keep doing this without success, they continue to go down this path never questioning the fact that this may be the wrong approach. I loved this short message that someone sent me not too long ago as it showed me that this person had truly got the message. “Paul, I am so excited; you were right. This has taken a while, but I have now got it. What I have seen is that when I have all these doubts, insecurities, obsessive thoughts and all the other things that I thought I had to work on separately, if I let

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them all rise up into my awareness without resisting any of them and with no fear of the consequences of doing so, then eventually they just dissolve. It can be quite testing at times and can all feel overwhelming on occasions, but now that I know nothing ever comes of it, I no longer fear the experience and know without doubt that it will pass. Now I don’t even question whether or not this is the right way home, I just know it is and I wanted to say thanks for showing me the way out of all of this”. A lot of resistance is also caused by fear. Any kind of fear creates discomfort. It may be the fear of going crazy; of not being able to cope or that you will lose control. And without fear there is far less resistance. If people did not fear their experience, then they would suffer far less and open the door to recovery. More often than not, when people find out that these emotions are harmless through a process of nonresistance, they finally allow themselves to feel them. Any emotion, including anxiety, is just energy present inside your body and this is the reason you can’t just get rid of it by force. It’s the force, worry and effort that creates more energy and then this energy never gets the chance to free itself. Take anger for example. That is just a passing energy that is felt as an emotion and when the energy has passed, then the anger subsides. Some people just have a lot more stored up energy than others, usually through past memories or events. A lot of boxers talk of growing up full of anger and getting into a lot of fights and the reason many turn to boxing in the first place. When they discovered boxing, all that anger/stored up energy now has another outlet and is being released, whereas the only way it was released before was by exploding at someone. This is why you feel better when you have spoken to someone about whatever is troubling you; all that pent-up emotional energy has found a release and you feel relieved. Any discomfort you feel is just energy present in the body, that is why anxiety sufferers can feel restless or irritable.

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Releasing emotions is not about allowing them and then hoping they will go away, it is about totally opening up to them without trying to deny, suppress or run away from them. It is just allowing them to be there without any resistance to their presence whether or not they are uncomfortable. Only then will that stored-up energy find a way to leave you. The way to get better is not to try to get better. Don’t try to get somewhere, don’t try to feel happier, don’t try to think differently, don’t try to feel different and don’t try to feel less anxious, as any attempt at trying just takes you further away and adds more thinking, more effort and more conflict. It just exhausts you and creates more stress inside the body. When you resist anything in life this is what occurs. A lot of people who contact me tell me that they are control freaks and that life always has to go the way that they want it to. I keep telling them that this is impossible and it’s no wonder they feel constantly stressed. I tell them that they are much better handing control back over to life and letting it run them instead of the other way round. Go back into the flow of life and let it unfold as it does, as all you are currently doing is resisting what is and causing yourself needless suffering. It is the same for people with anxiety. They need to stop trying to constantly control their experience and go with the flow of whatever arises. When I hear someone say “But how can I not try to change how I feel when I feel so awful?” I say “It’s trying not to feel awful that causes you to feel awful, because all you are doing is creating more inner conflict and extra stress. If you just let a feeling or emotion manifest itself and pass through unhindered, you will be amazed how much more quickly it disappears and how much less effect it has on you than when you are trying to change or deny it”.

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Feeling good one day then back to square one Another thing I get asked all the time is “Why do I feel great one week and then awful the next?” This is where a lot of people make a massive mistake. After hearing what I tell them, they think that they should never feel bad again. They may have a few fantastic days and think they have cracked it, but that storm will come again and what do they do? They go into “Oh no, I thought I had cracked this. Why do I feel like this again? What am I doing wrong?” and then they are back to rejecting how they feel once again. If only they could have reminded themselves that it’s just another storm passing over, they would not have fallen back into the cycle of suffering. As night is to day, emotions are always changing but they love to be left alone to change themselves. The last thing they need is your interference or attempt at manipulation. I have no idea if tomorrow I will feel on top of the world or down in the dumps and for once I don’t really care, as I know that left alone at some point my mood will change. So you do have a choice. You can allow those feelings and emotions to be released or you can spend all day in your head trying to suppress or change them. Trust me I know through experience which one causes the most suffering and keeps you in a constant loop. In the midst of my suffering I had read about no longer resisting, but I never really took it on board, as I just wanted everything to go away. I did not want to allow it to be there as they suggested; that seemed silly and if it was something I did not like, of course I was going to resist or try to change it. But after years of trying to suppress and feel different while still getting nowhere, something clicked one day. Something inside me said ‘What if I no longer tried to feel better, would that work?’ I had to overcome a lot of bumps in the road as I was not sure this could be right. Surely I should fight this thing;

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surely the answer was out there somewhere; but in time it made complete sense to me and it was the corner stone of my recovery. When you are able to allow even the most painful, uncomfortable and fearful emotions to arise, over time they WILL dissolve into nothing and peace will be restored.

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Our Obsession With Worrying All anxiety is created through worry or stressful thinking. When people come to me suffering with anxiety, in every case it is because they have been indulging in worrisome thoughts. Some say “No it is not, my anxiety started when my marriage broke down or when I lost my job”. I say, “No, these outside events did not cause your anxiety, it was your thoughts about these events that did. I am not saying these things are not important and should not be a cause for concern, but we can still learn to handle them differently and reduce a lot of the stress that we create”. I have seen people lose their jobs and continue fretting for weeks about how they are going to feed their family. They worry that they will lose their house and how they will cope. Then I have seen others who say they are sure something will turn up as it always does. They may be concerned, but they just see it as something they have no control over and do their best to find a solution. I don’t think we even have to consider which one of these two will end up feeling more anxious. It is the same situation but with two totally different reactions. So it is not the event, but our reaction to it that causes the level of anxiety we feel. Some people just seem to recognize the destruction caused by worry, how utterly pointless it is and how it does not change the experience in anyway apart from making them feel rotten. This is something I learnt the hard way. Now I truly tend not to worry about anything and just let life pan out as it is. I know that I have little or no control over a lot of things and when problems arise, I just do my best to solve them.

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Not long ago I came out of a very long relationship and people said that they could not believe how well I was taking this, how calm and collected I seemed and how positive I was. I felt sad that the relationship had come to an end but I knew there was absolutely no point worrying about it. That chapter of my life was over and it was time for the next one. Yes I had good and bad days, but nothing stressful. I viewed and thought about the experience differently from the way that the old me would have done and consequently had a different experience. It was my acceptance of it that saved me from turning to the bottle or getting really stressed and anxious about it. There was nothing I could do about it so I just accepted it as best I could and moved on. In years gone by everything had to go my way and nothing could be allowed to change or take my happiness away, I worried about anything and everything and that had a big bearing on creating the state in which I eventually found myself. Worrying can be an addiction When people come to me and start to tell me how they feel, they usually start every sentence with “I worry that….” They say things like “I worry that I will never get better. I worry that I will lose my partner over this. I worry that these feelings mean I am going crazy.” I sometimes stop them and ask them how many times they have started a sentence with the words “I worry that” and point out to them that it is this exact thought process that is keeping them anxious. Did I do this? Yes, but then I realised how worrying was making me feel and how utterly pointless it was. So I said to myself ‘If I lose friends then I do. If I go crazy then let’s have it and if I lose my partner then so be it’. None of these things happened, but even if they had done, my worrying about them would have made no difference apart from making me feel more anxious and more stressed. Worrying is like super fuel for anxiety, keep putting worry into your system and your anxiety will have all the fuel it needs to continue.

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People falsely think that if they worry and chew over a problem long enough, they will find a solution, when in fact the opposite is true. When you stop worrying your mind becomes clear and the solution comes to you. As I’ve already said, I rarely if ever worry about anything now. If something needs sorting out then I deal with it at the time. I don’t worry about the past as it’s gone and I don’t worry about the future as it has not happened yet. Life has its ups and it its downs, good and bad things happen to us all, most of which we have little to no control over. If people accepted that more instead of wanting it to be good all the time, then there would be a lot less worry about. In fact the most laid-back people recognise this concept. They see and accept life’s ups and downs and just go more with the flow. Just because I rarely worry now does not mean that certain things don’t happen to me, it just means that I deal with them far better. I recently had some major dental surgery done and if you know how much I hate the dentist you would understand how little I was looking forward to this. The fact is I was dreading it, but I knew there was no point in thinking or stressing about it until the day it happened. I just got on with my life until the day of surgery and right up until my name was called, I refused to worry or dwell on it. When I sat in the chair, what was about to happen hit home and I was back to dreading it, but I had saved myself weeks of worry and stress. When it came to it, the surgery was nowhere near as bad as I had expected. Learning not to worry People often say, “Yes, but how do I stop worrying? I understand that it is destructive, but I can’t seem to help myself”. I say “All worry always starts with a thought. This could be something like “I worry that this will be me forever.” Now you cannot help but think that thought - it just popped up and that’s fine. But if you now engage with that thought you

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will get another ten worrying thoughts to go with it such as “If this is me forever, I will never find a partner. I will be on my own forever. I will probably lose my friends too. I will be stuck on my own for life, no partner and no friends.” The list will go on until you can no longer think of any more scenarios that can go wrong and this all started from a thought that just popped up and then turned into ten. Now this is a very important piece of advice: you do not have to stop worrying, just do not care that you do. I tried to stop worrying and change my thoughts, but it did not work. The way I lost my worry habit was to acknowledge and smile when a worrying thought popped up. I enjoyed playing the worry game, the thought “This is you forever” would pop up but I would just smile at it and say “There I go again, another worrying thought.” I would not engage with it and when it realised it wasn’t going to be entertained, it dissolved into nothing. The thought popped up and then it passed right on through. It did not have another ten accompanying, worrisome thoughts to feed on. So you do have a choice whether to worry or not. Learn to catch yourself worrying and ask yourself if this problem even exists or if it is something your mind has made up. Will it do any good going over it or will it just make you feel worse? Also learn to live in the now, not the past or the future as neither exists in this moment. Ask yourself if you have a problem now, at this minute. When you do you will see how many worries are just mind-projected problems that don’t really exist. See the complete and utter fruitlessness of worrying and just learn to let life unfold as it does with its ups and its downs. When a so-called problem arises, deal with it at the time in the best way you can.

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Setbacks The subject of setbacks and what they truly are comes up so often I decided to cover it again in this book and explain exactly what they are and how they are an important part of recovery. Too many people falsely believe that unless they feel good all the time, they must be doing something wrong. Before we start I am talking about real setbacks here, not just the normal ups and down we can feel each day because of anxiety and thoughts - that’s natural. Some days it rains and some days the sun shines, that is true for everyone. Everyone’s mood shifts from time to time. I am talking about the kind of setback where a person feels a lot of peace and freedom for a period of time, then gets whacked with all their symptoms once again and feels complete despair, thinking they are back to square one and then start to question it all once again. Each person’s version of a setback is different. It can be the return of anxious feelings, depersonalisation or obsessive thoughts to name but a few. It doesn’t matter what it is, the advice is always the same, but to save confusion I will talk mainly about the most common setback and that is the return of anxious feelings. When I suffered with anxiety and all the obsessive thinking and skewed belief systems that went with it, I did what everyone else tends to do and worried, fought, avoided, suppressed and analysed; basically everything that was keeping me in the cycle. When I finally understood that all of this is what was keeping me in the cycle and started to just allow these feelings to be there, things started to change, yet one thing always kept me stuck.

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Let’s start with my first true realisation. I mentioned this insight earlier in the book but here is a more detailed description of that day. I was walking around stuck upstairs in my head as usual, thinking about me and what was wrong and trying to forcibly change my experience. The world was basically just passing me by as always and I was doing my usual mental workout when something just came to me: “This clearly is not working. What if for today I do not try to change how I feel, how would that work?” I actually found it strange that after years of doing the opposite and getting nowhere, I had never thought of this before. But the mind is a stubborn little machine and if it does not like something then it will try every trick in the book to get rid of it. Anyway, going back to that day, this is what I decided to do. There would be no analysing, no avoiding and no trying to feel different. Much to my surprise, I felt far better that day. I still had all the thought storms, confusion and anxiety flying around, but it was far less heavy. There was a sense of peace wrapped around it, like it was there but I did not care as much. As I had also stepped out of my head by no longer analysing or trying to change things, I felt far more in touch with the world around me. I was actually noticing things and everything looked a little brighter and fresher. I was so excited by this that I did it the next day and the same thing happened. I woke with the usual feelings of dread, anxiety and thoughts but I did nothing about them. I just got up and went about my day and found it much easier; in fact I felt pretty damn good. At last, I thought, I have cracked this thing. All I had to do was no longer get involved or try to change my experience and I would feel like this all the time. Well this went on for about 4 days until one day I woke and I felt dreadful again. I tried not getting involved, not bothering about how I felt, not analysing, but this time the feelings were too strong. I concluded that I must have been wrong and that what I did was just a coincidence. If not, then it worked for a few days but no longer. So I had to face

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the fact that this was me now. I thought that I was free, but clearly I was not and I was stuck. So I concluded that because my symptoms had returned then the answer must lie elsewhere and I went back to doing what I knew - trying to feel different, analysing and fixing. The irony is that it was not a fluke and I was on to something, but I had made two mistakes. The first one was that I thought I had to feel good all the time and if not then I must be doing something wrong and the second one was that I was using what I learnt as a technique to feel good, so when I felt bad and it did not work, I became frustrated and disillusioned once again. Yet I never gave up on what I learnt that day. Something deep down told me I was on to something here. How I felt for those few days could not have been a fluke, but why did I not stay in that state of peace? What I eventually realised is that I had suffered a setback that day. I actually don’t even like the word setback as it sounds like you have gone backwards when the truth is you are going forwards if you allow the setback to occur without trying to force it away. That really is what a setback is. It is a mental and emotional release as your mind and body clears out all the mental and emotional baggage, a bit like a detox. When I truly understood this, I looked back on that day and recognised my mistake. Feeling good had been great but having experienced bliss, my mind and body needed another clear-out. It was just releasing all that built-up energy and all those negative emotions that were still there stored up in my mind and body and that is why it felt so strong. I really did not know that this was a vital part of recovery and that it was a cycle I needed to go through to finally feel peace once again. What I should have done that day is enjoyed the release, as bad as it felt, and seen it as an opportunity to get rid of some more of the energy that had been stored up.

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After this I remember going back to allowing once more and feeling great for a few days, then ‘WHAM’ one of the worst days ever and every cell in my body wanted to fight it off and try to change how I felt. In the midst of it all, it was nearly impossible to see it as a setback. Surely anxiety this strong had to mean I was worse than ever? But I carried on with my day the best way I could. Well within two days it was gone and I woke up feeling as good as ever. I felt really clear and fresh. It was the first time in my life I felt I had gone back to square one and never tried to do anything about it. In the past these kinds of setbacks would have lasted for weeks as I tried to find my way back, analyse why I had gone backwards and thought I needed to find a new path. This is why in the past I stayed in the cycle because any previous attempt at a release was just topped up with more through me denying it. The reason these releases were so strong at this particular time was that for the first time during my suffering I had no longer tried to deny or suppress my thoughts and feelings. It was the first time I had really opened up and allowed a release to happen, so the release was quite intense. The way I started to view setbacks was to recognise that any internal mayhem that occurred was caused by my mind and body trying to get back in balance and return to their natural state. It’s a bit like a TV trying to tune itself in. The tuning has to go through a fuzzy period to get back to the perfect picture. When I started to view setbacks in this way, then I actually looked forward to the next release because I knew that a lot of my stored up emotional baggage was leaving me and I always enjoyed the bliss afterwards. Sometimes these releases would last for a day or two and sometimes they could last up to a week, but the longer the better for me. I wanted as much gone as possible. At first it was like opening up a dam and these releases came thick and fast, but once you truly understand them and no longer freak out and go back to your old ways of coping, then they become far less frequent and are not as strong as a lot of what was stored up has been released. In my

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case they came every few days at first, but towards the end I totally forgot all about them. They were so infrequent and so weak that they hardly registered, until eventually they never came at all. Everything that was stored up had left me. You may have to go through many cycles of release depending on how long you have suffered and how much you have suppressed. It’s just a process of releasing all those trapped emotions. I went through many releases, but without fail they always passed, they always do. When you feel great it’s just the end of another release. People who take longer to come out of a release are the ones who continually fight them and go back to suppressing or trying to change their experience. So call it a process, a setback or a release; it doesn’t matter what you call it as long as you know it’s a vital part of recovery. Many people tell me that they don’t even have a setback, as they just feel dreadful all the time. I say, yes, because you are not allowing a release to happen and you are just continually creating more anxiety by trying to stop it happening. The people who have setbacks should see that they are the ones that are actually moving forward. Anxiety is purely excess energy in your body. When you feel a release this is the energy being discharged. The trouble is that people don’t see setbacks as a release. They see them as a return of their symptoms and so start fighting, worrying and analysing all over again, creating more of what their body is trying to get rid of and making little to no progress. That was my mistake that day. I had a real chance to progress, but because I was not educated enough and did not understand that setbacks are a vital part of recovery, I blew it. So now that you know what a true setback really is and how vital it is to your recovery, allow each release to happen instead of fearing and denying it like you may have done in the

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past. Begin to celebrate them as the doors have finally been opened and each release is taking you a step closer to your true sense of well-being. Someone on my Facebook page recently asked a question about setbacks which I have printed below, followed by a member’s response: Original Question: This ‘transitional phase’ between being anxious and being normal has been hovering over me for a while now and I simply accept it as a beneficial part of recovery. Does this phase last forever? Members Reply: I've been like that for a while now and I get days/weeks of feeling completely normal then I'll randomly feel weird again. This will last for a couple of days and then I feel fine again. It just goes back and forth for a while until it finally passes. That is exactly the attitude they both need!

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Other People’s Stories of Recovery Recently I asked people on my blog and Facebook page to send in their own stories of recovery. I believe that these can give people great hope and insight into what is needed to recover. I have also been told that it was a part of the first book they enjoyed reading the most. It is for this reason that I have included quite a few. Each one published is from a genuine person and is a true story of their own recovery. The response was overwhelming and I have been unable to publish them all, but here are the ones I thought would be the most helpful and inspiring. Tim’s Story By very poorly handling stress over a long period of time led to some of the darkest days I have ever experienced. Years upon years of refusing to graciously accept little stressors in my life as a given and attempting to make my environment suit me as opposed to me conforming to my environment lead to a level of despair that I didn’t even think was possible. On February 13th of 2013 I woke up at 3:30 in the morning. My mind was just buzzing with activity. There was no thought in particular that was bothering me, but every thought that crossed my mind early that morning was charged with such an intensely negative ‘feel’ to it. I had no clue what was wrong and I couldn’t get back to sleep. The following night when I was attempting to go to sleep an odd thing happened that had never happened before: every time I started drifting off I would immediately find myself awake and alert. This cycle played out the entire night. It was then I knew something was wrong. During the day my mind started latching on to the thought “Will

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you be able to sleep tonight?” Over the following days, and restless nights, that thought became charged with so much negative emotion that a flood of fear, doubt and despair would overtake me. I was in a full fit of panic, exhausted, sweating profusely and stomach churning, while my mind plummeted to new depths of despair. There were other symptoms aside from an inability to sleep (constantly alert, intrusive thoughts, very jumpy, uncomfortable in social settings, no appetite, racing heart) but the sleep issue struck me to my core. In a matter of a few days the depression set in. I felt detached from everything in my life. My wife and I had a son 6 months earlier but it seemed that nothing could prevent my stay in total despair and hopelessness. Suicide and thoughts of death were never too far from my mind. I knew it was as bad as it could get when I found myself driving down the road and pleading with God to allow some accident to happen so that I could leave this life behind me and simply cease to exist. It’s one thing to have your future stained with despair, but all of my thoughts from my past, my old calm and peaceful thoughts were now also stained. Those once joyful thoughts and memories now were sources of torment. I felt alien in my own life; a husk of my former self, irreparably broken. I went to see my primary care physician, a psychologist and a psychiatrist. I’ll at least give credit to my primary care physician for not trying to venture any solution that would only leave me further confused and hopeless. The same can’t be said for the psychologist and psychiatrist I saw. The phrase ‘wildly incompetent’ comes to mind when I think of my interactions with them. One was having me plumb the depths of my childhood for an answer. I love my dad, but for reasons beyond my understanding the psychologist was helping me to conjure up some anger towards him. Some failings on my

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dad’s part that accounted for all of this. I would ask, “Why now? I’m 36 years old. Why would this all come out now?” His justification for the method was as confusing as the method itself. He had me also see a psychiatrist. Never was a prescription too far from her hand. In a two-month period of seeing her she had me on: Ambien cr, Lunesta, Trazadone, Lexapro, and Clonopin. I no longer even recognized myself. My mind was flooded with fear, doubt, and despair while my body was flooded with pharmaceuticals I didn’t even know existed. On my last appointment with her she prescribed me Rozerem. I drove home, walked in the house, looked at the prescription, ripped it up and decided I’d rather die than take another pill or see her or the psychologist again. Very shortly after this, a friend who was also struggling suggested I read a book called At Last a Life by Paul David. I had read so many books already, but I decided to give it a shot. I wasn’t even reading it because I thought it couldn’t do anything. But it wasn’t long until my mind became enveloped by the book. It just made sense to me. The advice was absurdly simple; certainly simpler than delving into my past with no map or taking pill after pill. I started taking Paul’s advice as soon as I was done reading the book. I just started living my life again. Off of my shoulders came the weight of trying to work it all out in my head. “Give it the space it wants and move on with your life”, Paul advised. There were some immediate but slight improvements. It wasn’t long until that horrid doubt starting filling my mind: “Paul really didn’t talk about my issue as much as I think he should have…. Maybe he wasn’t writing this book for someone like me. Maybe I’m broken in a way that is different than his”.

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Paul very, very wisely states in his book that he wasn’t going to unweave all of the possible symptoms and address them individually. This didn’t make sense to me at the time, but eventually it became profoundly wise. The fear and doubt for each individual can be made to manifest in so many different ways, but even for one person his or her fear and doubt will expand, shift, and contort in ways that can leave a person befuddled. This is one reason why it doesn’t matter to even start addressing individual symptoms and expressions of anxiety. In the end, the advice is still the same: let it be there and live your life. It wasn’t a steady line assent to recovery for me. There were ups and downs and setbacks that made me think that Paul’s approach could never work for someone like me. The despair got so thick at one point that I was certain I was irreparably broken. But then a thought dawned upon me, “Even if you are broken and there is no hope for you recovering your old self…. isn’t a life lived larger than anxiety better than a life that only focuses on anxiety?” And then I understood what Paul was saying. Before I was giving anxiety the space it needed as long as it was sure to leave, and quickly at that. I didn’t truly let it be there, it was always contingent on the hope that it would just leave me alone for good. I shed all hope and focus on recovery. That might sound like a terrible idea. But it wasn’t. I was simply going to make my life larger than the dictates of anxiety. I would ignore those dictates of anxiety. Not in the sense of pretending that they weren’t there, I was just done taking heed of them. They were more than welcome to yell as loud as they wanted to, and yell they did. Even with no focus on recovery I would have these moments where my mind just felt calm and peaceful, normal! Those

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moments were fleeting and that was fine. My goal now was nothing more than just living my life with or without anxiety. Slowly the sting of the fear, doubt and despair would lessen. Setbacks would still come, but earlier on I had realized that it just didn’t pay to fight against them, to engage them in an argument. All that ever did was get me stuck further in the mire. All good reasons why you shouldn’t have these fears, symptoms, doubts fall flat when your mind is in a setback. When the setback lifted, things would just make sense; this from no effort on my part. Call it simply being in harmony with peace. If one needs a goal then make that goal simply to live your life. There is no need to engage in the world of anxiety, engage in the world around you. We all know people who are consistently happy. In moments of self-pity (a tendency, from my experience, that sufferers of anxiety indulge in a bit) we get frustrated at them and possibly convince ourselves that we just had it harder than them. This is a lie. People whose lives are defined by happiness, peacefulness, calmness are not the ones who through cunning or luck avoided all the pitfalls that beset us and lead to our anxiety. They are simply the ones who accept all that comes their way, good or bad. They allowed their lives to be larger than the bad things that happen in it, and that graceful allowance became their habit as it can become your habit as well. “God bless.” Tim now helps on my blog and gives out some fantastic words of advice. This following piece that he wrote for someone who was struggling really stands out and has so much truth in it. “Hi Shaun, Dominic said it the best when he said “turn your ‘what ifs’ into ‘so whats’.

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Stop caring so much. Like Paul said, allow your body or brain to feel or think whatever it wants. Think of how liberating this is as nothing is off limits for your mind or body when it comes to thoughts and feelings. Allow everything to come. Think of it like this…. it’s going to come regardless, right? When has freaking out, searching the net and frantically trying to stop it ever helped? So, open your arms up and embrace all it has to offer. I would have fears and doubts (doubts of ever recovering) so thick that I could feel them crushing me down. Any interest I had in life or things that used to provide enjoyment would be quickly snubbed out by this fear and doubt…. like trying to light a candle in a gale. It was only when, following Paul’s advice, I simply let everything come. I allowed myself to be scared, full of fear, full of doubt. I stopped running from those feelings. I stopped trying to rationalize them away (I mean, seriously, has any one of us ever successfully reasoned away these fears?). But what did I now do differently? Like Dominic said, I turned those ‘what ifs’ into ‘so whats’. I’m personally not a fan of mantras, breathing exercises or any concerted effort to ‘accept’. Again, like Paul said, actively doing things to make this burden lift just doesn’t work. It simply reinforces that this issue is actually a pretty big deal. But that’s not to say that I never had to remind myself. Sometimes I’d tell myself, “it’s okay Tim…. it’s fine to feel this way” or “So what? Let it be there. I’m still going to live my life the way I want to.” These are different than mantras. I’m not endlessly repeating it over and over. I’m not saying it to make those bad feelings and thoughts lift, like so many who use mantras do. I’m simply reminding myself that it’s okay; that anything that happens to my mind or body is okay. But remember, you still need to get out there and live your life.

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It’s one thing to say “okay, I’m going to be at peace with this burden”, but to say that and to come back to this blog on a daily basis is simply doing it the wrong way. Come back if you really need to, but if you find it becoming more habitual, then stop. Remember, this approach is completely liberating. No thought or feeling is off limits. You are now letting down your guard. Let it all wash over you. Be at peace with the lack of peace in your life…. then, in time, you will find true peace. God bless I think you can see there in Tim’s story that recovery is not the giant of a struggle that people believe it to be. It did not entail years of counselling, techniques and mantras or any attempt at trying to get rid of something. When we give up the struggle great things can happen. Trust me it is the struggle that hurts you so much. I really cannot emphasise this enough. Let me explain: When I saw something and when I truly understood my condition, these thoughts and emotions still came to me for a while afterwards, but the difference was I was no longer thrown by them. They no longer bothered me and why did I then feel better? The answer is because I was no longer feeding worry and concern about them into my brain. When I did this previously, that’s when chaos ensued as my brain picked up on my worry and concern about the state I was in and stirred up all the emotions that go with worry and concern. It did not know what the cause was, it just knew I was worried and concerned about something and then, of course, I felt the emotions of worry and concern on top of my initial feelings, taking a double hit. When my attitude changed, then I just had the initial feelings

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because I was no longer sending any extra worry or concern upstairs and just accepted the state I was in. My brain picked up on this and stopped sending all the usual extra emotions that go with worry and fear. Again this is why I try to explain things to people first, because that’s when they become more able to no longer fear or create concern about how they are feeling or, at the very least, that fear and concern is reduced. That is why, having read my words, people can feel really good for a few days. A lot of the fear and concern about how they feel has been taken away; the brain picks up on this and you feel more settled. But, yes, of course the feelings will come back at some point and that is when the worry and concern starts again - the ‘Oh no this is wrong, I hate this’ or ‘I thought this was gone, why is it back?’. People can feel even more concern and fear once they have experienced a few days of freedom as they may have thought that was the end of it and now they worry that they might be stuck this way forever. So instead of the concern and worry about every day things like the mortgage being paid, you have the worry and concern about how you feel. That is what makes you feel dreadful, far more than the initial feelings of anxiety do. As I say, I got to a stage where I did not particularly like the way I felt at times, but I no longer worried about it or feared it and due to this my suffering was far less than in the past and didn’t last anywhere near as long. I had cut off a major fuel supply for anxiety and this is what Tim did by allowing anything to happen. When that fuel is cut off, the mind and body can begin to truly heal, as there is not a constant stream of fear, worry and concern getting in its way, as all this does is create more feelings of anxiety. I really hope people can see the truth in this and not constantly chase their own tail searching for something to eliminate anxiety or chase their feelings away, as it truly does not work that way.

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Before we go on to the story, I will finish with the following statement sent to me by someone who had recovered. Two people are put into prison for the same amount of time. One guy is in his cell crying in self-pity one moment, banging on the cell walls the next and running through scenarios in his mind of how he can get out, but always running into dead ends. The other guy sits on his bed, takes out a book and starts to read a little before lights out. Be the other guy. Rochelle’s Story I just wanted to start out by saying that your book saved my life. I cannot thank you enough for all of the information. I suffered from anxiety and severe depression after the birth of my son on July 7, 2014. I came home the following day with my baby and that night suffered from what I know now was a panic attack and thus my anxiety began. I had every symptom in your book and no answers; I really had no idea what was going on. I thought I’d had a heart attack or something else horrible was happening to me. I ended up in the emergency room and after 5 hours of strenuous tests I was told that I was okay, which left me totally bewildered. I then went home and began thinking what could be wrong with me? What had happened to me? And when I initially felt it happening again and again, because I feared another episode, I thought for sure I had postpartum psychosis or some other type of postpartum problem. I went to doctor after doctor, with no answers. They all just looked at me and wondered why I was so agitated and kept trying to force pills that did not help. I was pushed from

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therapist to psychiatrist to finally a therapist that did help in some way to my recovery. I stayed away from my son at this time and I could not even be around him as I had such disturbing thoughts that I might hurt him or myself. These thoughts seemed irrational but real at the same time. So I was back into the emergency room because I thought for sure something was terribly wrong. But again they told me nothing was wrong and I was sent home again to try and get better. I slowly began to slip into depression. I stopped caring about what I looked like; I stopped eating, stopped sleeping and all because my brain would not stop searching for the answer to this new found problem. I tried to explain what I was going through to my husband but he had no idea; nobody understood. I just felt so alone trying to fight my way out of this hell. I figured I would end up in some institution never to see my family again. But I began to research what this could be and then stumbled upon your site online, and then went and ordered your book. When I first went to read it, I suffered from what I can only describe as severe depersonalisation. My anxiety was so bad I could hardly read the book or hold a conversation. But I started to read and finally I had found the answers to all the questions that my mind was seeking. It all began to make sense. I basically just gave up the fight. It was very difficult to do, but I did it. I had many, many bad days thinking I will be stuck in this hell forever, but I just stayed with the advice and things began to change. I began to have moments of quiet in my mind. The tools in your book really started to help and I was so relieved. It was so good to no longer be searching and fighting. It was such a weight off me. I wasn’t going crazy and I was not about to be carted off anywhere. Yes there were still many days where I wanted to give up, thinking I would never smile again, never

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be able to take care of my children or love my husband. But then I realised that the anxiety was there to help me. It was a warning system that things had gone too far and I had overdone things. It really was a friend that was asking me to stop the worry and the stress. I had to read your book many times to let the information really sink in, but slowly, very slowly, my mind began to reverse these habits I had started and though I don’t feel I’m 100% recovered, I know that full recovery is just around the corner as I am so much better. I can now do all of the things I could do before, including taking care of my son. I made myself smile on the days where it was impossible and never gave up. I realise now how important life really is and how important friends and family are. Though I can say I hope I never reach that place again, I know that I can get through it and now because of it, I am a better person. I realise now how important your health is. You really just need to get on with your life and take the anxiety with you, and man is it sometimes the hardest thing to do, because all my anxiety wanted me to do was stay in bed. But I refused to let my emotions take charge; I started to see them as just harmless thoughts and emotions and they just lost so much power. Looking back that makes so much sense as when I was petrified of the way I felt and thought, then of course I was adding more anxiety, stress and worry and of course I felt so terrible. To others that are suffering with anxiety, you will get through it. And believe me I was one who thought, “Yeah right, I’m going to be like this forever; my life is over”. But just let go of the fight, just let your body heal itself and never give up. There is so much to live for. Thank you so much Paul for all of the information you provided me, without it I really don’t know where I would be now. I really thought I wouldn’t make it out of that hell and I was ready to give up. But I never did and I thank

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God every day for that decision. I truly hope my story helps provide hope to someone. I really cannot thank you enough Paul. Scotty’s Story I’d wanted to live in America ever since I was a little kid. I think it was a case of watching too much ‘Saved by The Bell’ leading me to develop a desire to either be Zack Morris or to be with Kelly Kapowski – I’m not sure which. Anyway, at the age of 29 I had that opportunity and in the summer of 2013 I headed out on a 5 year visa to Washington DC. I’d been working for a small and specialised professional services firm who wanted me to help build out the office over there and I have to say I was very excited. I turned down a great job in London where I was living at the time with another firm and couldn’t wait to get started. Things, however, didn’t quite work out the way I’d planned. Within two weeks of moving over there, the partner I was working with quit and I ended up taking on a large proportion of his work. This meant I was then working 70-80 hour weeks, including Saturday and Sunday. Early the next year my girlfriend, with whom I had agreed to go long distance, dumped me and the company decided to close the DC office and move me to New York. This would mean another relocation and home move. I hadn’t made any friends due to my work commitments and had started having funny turns that I didn’t understand – shortness of breath, racing heart etc. I shrugged these off, however, and thought nothing of them. It wasn’t long before the straw that broke the camel’s back came along…. Dentistry in the UK is a medical service, at least on the NHS. In the US it’s big business. This is a fact I was naively unaware of in early 2014. To cut a long story short I had a lot of work

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done – which future dentists told me I didn’t need – and it made a mess of my mouth. I couldn’t open it more than a quarter inch, I had migraines essentially the entire waking day as well as shooting pains down my neck and into my back, sensitive teeth to the point where I could only eat lukewarm soup through a straw and the tightening of my facial muscles where it felt as though I’d had a facelift. Adding this to the stress of doing nothing but working in a high pressure, results driven environment on the other side of the world with no support network, I essentially crumbled. When the dentist told me things might never get better, I went back to work and had my first panic attack at my desk. I then made every mistake in the book. I fought it, wrestled with it, tried to drive it away, ran around looking for an answer and did everything possible to add fuel to the fire. At the same time, I continued to work, and while living a normal life is essential to recovery, neither the environment I was in nor my current mindset were conducive to success! Before too long I had a full on nervous breakdown and went on to experience a litany of physical and mental symptoms over the coming 9 months. Even after another dentist helped correct the issues with my teeth, these only got worse. So few people know how bad I was. Here is a list of those I can remember – intrusive and disturbing thoughts, constant inexplicable heightened levels of fear, inability to quiet my mind, constant worry, self-pity, self-loathing, depression, shaking, adrenaline rushes, restless legs, chest pain, heart racing, stabbing feeling in stomach, sweating, pins and needles, headaches, vomiting, loss of appetite, increased appetite, digestive system shutdown, crying for no reason, overly emotional responses to trivial matters, dry retching, tight throat, over production of mucous, shortness of breath, insomnia all the way through to depersonalisation and derealisation. Each symptom was heightened by between five and ten panic attacks a day. It wasn’t ideal.

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Then, after about six weeks of denying there was anything wrong, I decided to do something about it. I first met a psychiatrist who came highly recommended. He diagnosed me with severe generalised anxiety and panic attacks and tried to put me on anti-depressants within ten minutes of walking through his door. He told me I would probably need to be on these for the rest of my life. I worked with him for six weeks, but didn’t take the pills. In the interests of full disclosure, he did prescribe some tranquiliser type medication for the panic attacks and between May 2014 and July 2014 I probably took somewhere between 15 and 20 of these. It was about this time that I read Paul David’s book, At Last a Life. It made some sense to me, but to be honest it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. It wasn’t a quick fix. So I ignored it and instead, over the next three months, I tried a lot of different things to get better. These included, but were not limited to, a therapist who told me to try press-ups, hypnotherapy, relaxation retreats, various methods, diet change, vitamins, minerals and a whole bunch of other stuff. Little changed and I was still just as bad, if not growing a little more hopeless. Somewhere in amongst all this I had stopped working and moved back to the UK. The flight home was interesting to say the least. It was four months in and I was at my wits’ end when I came across a psychologist who specialised in anxiety. A lot, though not all, of what he taught was what Paul David teaches. He helped a lot in putting me on the right path and I went as far as I could with him. To truly get better, however, I knew I had to accept things and move through the feelings on my own. I re-read At Last a Life and decided to apply Paul’s teachings. Within days some of my symptoms lessened and within weeks I had an hour or so of clarity. A month or so later it was a couple of days, then weeks on end. I’ve had four major setbacks, the last of which was the week between Christmas

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and New Year 2014. I still have the very odd twinge but now it’s gone within minutes if not seconds. These are less and less frequent and, to be honest, I can’t remember the last one. I accepted. I got back out there and lived my life, despite feeling like I was dying much of the time. I reclaimed my independence, moving out of a friend’s spare room and back into my own flat, taking responsibility for myself. I have gone back to work and started my own business, I have been on holidays abroad and I have built new relationships with new people. I have gone towards what frightened me, and come out the other side. I now genuinely love life again. The only task I have ahead of me is to shed some weight after all of the comfort eating! There were other things that helped, like a better diet and more exercise, but acceptance and the teachings that Paul espouses were the real things that led me to a successful recovery - acceptance, non-avoidance and independence. In my opinion and experience, if you want to move through anxiety then these are the principles you have to adopt. Catherine’s Story Anxiety first hit me last year off the back of a new high responsibility job and a difficult break up. Stress had crept in over the year and I was getting myself more and more wound up until bam, the first panic attack happened. I remember it like it was yesterday. Fear set in from that very moment. What is happening to my mind? Why? How can I make sure this doesn’t happen again? I spent pretty much an entire weekend shaking, severely anxious, pain in my chest and throat. I rushed to A&E thinking I had heart problems only to be told to go home and relax. It was from then that problems just grew and grew – the fear of those feelings coming back encompassed me and anxiety had become my anxiety.

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I developed severe GAD to the point where my entire day was spent anxious and all I did was feed the condition with more worries. I lost my appetite, I had constant pain in my throat, I became depressed, I didn’t think anyone understood (they didn’t really) so I felt totally isolated. The GP referred me to a course of CBT – all I said during my sessions was “Why is this happening to me?” and attempting to find the positive equivalent to that thought which just added stress to my mind. I quit my job, which I loved. I had a month off but spent it feeling anxious and even more depressed for not having a job anymore. Crying was a momentary relief. Knowing that anxiety would be back once the crying ended was hell. It was an endless loop. I took on a different job, no change, and I quit 6 weeks later. Took on a third job and was at rock bottom, so unwell and resigned within two months completely in despair. I rented out my room and went home to my parents’ house again. When I found Paul David’s website and book, things started to change. It was in no way an immediate fix and it was a very long time ago, but something about his approach stuck with me and although I veered away from it several times it really was the only thing that started to instigate change. Let it happen. It seemed so simple. Of course, just let it happen. Not as easy as it sounds. But wow, has it been worth it. I have been through some of the worst days in my life since I started putting Paul’s advice into practice and have been lower than I’ve ever been. And some days I felt it was impossible and lost all faith. What if recovery doesn’t really exist? What if people just say you recover but you don’t really? But the next day would come round and I’d go again and if I experienced even a few seconds of relief in that day, a light in my mind would come on and a smidgen of hope would raise its head. I called my old boss up, from my job I loved. He asked very few questions and let me come back to work. I am eternally grateful to him for this. Once I started recovering I saw how much I had thrown away unnecessarily. Panic attacks came,

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doubt came, depression came and somehow I just kept getting through it and started to realise that there were moments during the day where I felt OK, even if just for five minutes. I stopped reaching out to so many people whenever I panicked and let it play itself out by myself a bit more. I’d contact friends or family to say ‘I just let a panic attack happen’ instead of ‘Help me, I’m panicking’, which started to empower me ever so slightly. Only I knew what my mind was doing, and I knew that this approach was changing something. There were moments where my mind seemed so clear that I could touch the healthy me. There was no black cloud or terrifying feeling encompassing me and I’d feel better than I ever felt. Then the next day I’d be back down again, so low and fearful that I could barely remember the good moment the day before. I realised that I was learning and improving when, in one of my panics, I called a counsellor thinking I cannot live with this anymore! This is ridiculous! and she started talking to me about breathing techniques, medication and an anxiety app. I just thought, No she doesn’t get it at all. She hasn’t been through it. I know more than this woman about this. It’s just tough right now. And I said “No thank you” and hung up. Everything I needed to make myself feel better was within me and I knew it more than ever. I started doing everything socially that I did before and took the hellish feelings with me, however bad it got, letting it be there and continuing with life. I didn’t analyse how tomorrow was going to go. I just went with however I was feeling in the moment. Slowly, I was able to enjoy things again, laugh and enjoy sport and socials. I’m not saying anxiety left me. I’m saying I enjoyed these things regardless and started to care about anxiety less. I started talking about it more, started a blog to share Paul’s incredible advice and one day a few weeks back I had an entire day where I felt anxiety free - all day. It was incredible. It just crept up on me. It was a day like no other I have experienced to date in my life. I had stopped

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aiming for it and it surprised me, just like that. I felt so happy. The next day I had the physical stuff again but knowing that that day had existed just drove me to continue. I will never go back now. I know it is possible and I know this is working. I realised that no thought is worth worrying about now. I’ve now realised that anxiety is a very convincing trick. It’s totally empty of point or necessity. It is the attempt to solve something that was never there in the first place. I have spent so much time trying to figure things out, solve problems, find the right way of doing things, how to fix myself, what I can do better, when in fact there is absolutely nothing to figure out; nothing at all. I’m attempting to resolve a problem which doesn’t exist! No wonder I’ve had panic after panic! As soon as I realised that I just needed to let the problem (that doesn’t exist) go, I felt better. Is that not the main aim? When you get into the habit of worrying, you very easily slip into ‘But there is something to worry about. What is it today?’ because somehow it makes us feel like we are controlling things or keeping ourselves safe. Actually no, you’re not controlling anything; you’re just making yourself feel a bit crap. The main time I feel ‘better’ or things are calm is when my brain is too tired to think about this ‘problem’ I have; it’s not because I have actually solved anything. Well, the great news is there is no problem! Nothing! It’s a figment of my imagination. The best bit is that I have not actually recovered yet. Even this morning I felt anxiety and waves of unease and the physical side, but my mind set has changed so much now that I almost couldn't care less if this is as good as it gets (which I know it is not) because it doesn't stop me doing a thing or having fun and it just does not bother me at all anymore. I know it's just one big trick and I keep on welcoming it like a little buddy. I clearly see now that there is nothing you can do to change the natural journey of your emotions. There's nothing you can do

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but allow them and feel them all, be they good or bad. It's a tough journey but I know it's the way to go. Anxiety has made my life fuller as I now see every day for the gift that it truly is. I am much less swayed by anyone else’s opinion now and am so much more self-assured and confident in myself. I appreciate everything, absolutely everything. Anxiety is the single most positive thing that has ever happened to me. I am so excited about life now and this new understanding I have of myself. I am eternally grateful to Paul; I owe him everything for sharing his story. Thank you is not enough, Paul. Alyssa’s Story When we are born into this world, those before us are likely to assume that we will live what they would call a typical life. You know, like achieving life’s typical milestones. More than likely you will experience your first day of kindergarten, somehow earn your driver’s license, graduate from high school and maybe college, dance with your dad at your wedding, cry tears of joy with your mom after having your first baby, send your kids off to college, and grow old with your spouse, all the while enjoying every minute of it. Although every individual lives with the expectation that all of these things will happen to them just like everyone else, for some it is either suddenly stripped from their future or diluted with doom, and if this occurs you can either roll with the punches and just live your life or have these things literally eat you alive. For me, my world was flipped upside down when my mom passed away when I was nineteen (we didn’t even know she had cancer). One day my biggest dilemma was picking a country on which to do my Spanish project and the next was choosing which coffin my mom would have liked. There was no long battle with chemo, which I suppose I’m thankful for,

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but the path she had chosen was still laden with unimaginable suffering for us all. I always wondered what it would be like to lose someone you truly believe you can’t live without - a part of me even yearned to experience it one day just to see what would happen or how I would handle it. Would it be like the movies? Would it be like one of Shakespeare’s tragedies? I always thought that these actors and characters were exaggerating just to earn an Oscar or make a story more memorable (it’s just fiction, after all), but it wasn’t until I experienced loss first-hand that I finally realized that all these gut-wrenching emotions weren’t just added for flare. No, these emotions were real. My sister and I were waiting amidst vases of flowers we had just bought for our mom in her new room at the hospital when my dad told us that she had passed away in the elevator. Without even thinking, I dropped whatever was in my hands and shoved myself in the nearest corner, bawling my eyes out. I had never cried like that before; my body just couldn’t stop shaking as I fought to see through my mascara-stained glasses. I had completely forgotten about the host of relatives that were gently stroking my hair from behind for who knows how long. I sometimes wonder what they were thinking in a time like that because from the outside they looked like they still had control of their sanity. I hardly remember the week leading up to her funeral, but somewhere in there I managed to type up her eulogy and buy a new black dress (she was never fond of the one that I usually wore). The funeral itself really wasn’t that bad surprisingly, that is, until the slideshow started. But even just days after the funeral, I genuinely thought I was okay—not great, mind you, but okay. It wasn’t until much later that I realized how affected I was. It happened a little over a month after my mom’s death. I was sitting in our local movie theatre watching the world’s latest take on the story of Noah with my family, when it hit me. In an instant my heart was racing at what felt like a hundred miles

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an hour. My lungs were fighting to expand against what felt like a tightly cinched corset around my chest. My hands shook as if I kept touching a hot skillet over and over, my senses never learning to refrain from the heat. My eyes could no longer focus on the massive screen directly ahead of me. The urge to pass out overtook my entire body. I desperately tried to get more comfortable in my seat and nibbled on popcorn in a poor attempt to get a hold of myself, but all I really managed to do was keep myself distracted until the end of the film (thankfully we had already gone through most of it). Immediately afterwards I told my sister that I was about to pass out and needed to go home, thinking I just needed to get a little something to eat and rest for the night. After my dad drove us home I crawled into bed and morphed myself into the tightest little ball I could muster, praying that I would eventually find peace in sleep. It wasn’t but a few days after when the struggle to breathe proved too much to cope with anymore, it had now gotten to the point where each breath felt like my last. I was now hyperventilating in a desperate attempt to get more oxygen. Although it was the last place they wanted to return to, my dad and my little sister took one look at me and didn’t think twice about rushing me to the ER. There, nurses quickly tethered me to various beeping instruments via wires and stickers after taking a quick x-ray of my chest. As we were waiting for the results of my chest x-ray, I just knew that they would find something wrong. Fluid in my lungs, a tumour, a blood clot, anything that would explain why my body acted like it was fighting for its life. But when the doctor came back with the results, all he had to show us was the ghostly grey imaging of a perfectly sound heart guarded by a set of healthy largerthan-average lungs. I remember thinking that this just couldn’t be right, that I must be looking at someone else’s x-ray instead of my own. But no, this scan was mine. I could easily read HIGGINS, ALYSSA M. typed in bold white font along the bottom of the image.

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What the doctor did next was something that I would have never guessed in a million years: he diagnosed me with severe anxiety. I just lay there in disbelief as the words that shot at me like daggers leisurely rolled off his tongue (apparently my father had mentioned to the doctor while I was in for my x-ray that my mom had just recently passed). Once I got my bearings back I asked him if more imaging could be done to make sure, but he told me that it was too late in the night and that they would have to call others in from home that were specifically certified for those screenings (I could tell he was writing me off). Eventually it got to the point where he insisted that nothing was wrong with me and sent me home with nothing more than a doctor’s note and a prescription for some anxiety medication that I would never consider taking. Going home that night felt like such a defeat. I had stopped hyperventilating but I didn’t feel any better. All I felt like now was like a crazy person, but far worse - a crazy person without the slightest hope. The next few months consisted of many different ups and downs (mostly downs, to be honest). I had managed to finish off my classes for that semester, but the following summer was one that I would like to forget. Sure I went swimming with my cousins frequently and even took a much-needed family vacation to Atlanta, but during these times I still felt like my body could break down on itself at any given moment. At any time I could be the bedbound nut-job I once was when I had just returned from the ER. Anxiety has a way of swinging you back and forth like some plaything. Once it tires of you it will seem like it has lost interest in you for a while, but it always seems to have a way of charging uninvited through your door again. I cried and prayed continuously whenever anxiety physically wreaked my body and once the symptoms seemed to be at bay, I would soak up the opportunity and pretend to live normally for as long as I could until my body decided to turn on me once again. I had hoped that my next semester at

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college would keep my mind off of how bad I felt inside, but this was not to be. I was able to pretend for a while and put on a happy face during class or afterwards with peers, but the month before finals I had once again become a slave to my fears. I was once again housebound. The thought of returning to school was almost unbearable; I couldn’t even make a trip to the grocery store without bursting into tears. I was so uncoordinated that I felt like I could pass out at any given moment. My mind whirled like a top; always analysing, always questioning. Why me? What do these symptoms mean? Am I going to die? When will this nightmare end? I spent most of my time either crying or Googling my new latest symptom (neither of which did absolutely anything for me but put even more stress on my already exhausted body). However, while surfing the web I had stumbled upon a certain website that wasn’t at all like other anxiety forums that seemed to only terrify me more. This one was entitled “Anxietynomore” and was written by an ex-anxiety sufferer by the name of Paul David. He too had dealt with severe anxiety, for ten years in fact, and had wandered helplessly down the road of countless prescriptions and doctor’s appointments until he finally had the realisation that he alone had the ability to regain his old life back. For the first time I felt hope as I combed over the entire website with a fine-toothed comb, leaving no link unread. There was no talk of some magic pill or miracle doctor, which was quite refreshing after the countless gimmicks I had encountered that had promised such things (you would be surprised of some of the things you find on the Internet), but of how to conquer anxiety ON YOUR OWN. Without even having a chance to think about it, I ordered Paul’s book, which has undoubtedly become my biggest step towards freedom thus far. I now have a whole new mentality when it comes to my anxiety. I no longer fuel it further with fear, but face it head-on with what I can only call a “so what” attitude. Instead of

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stressing my body out even more with constant worry like I once did, I now let whatever my body wants to feel just feel it. What is the worst it can do? Sure it may not be the most comfortable thing in the world, but I have finally realised that it is in no way life-threatening; it’s all a trick. Everyone deals with bouts of adrenaline when they feel scared or anxious; my body just over exaggerates a bit due to the constant worry that has plagued my mind for so long. My anxiety is no longer being fed with fear and panic, but is slowly being starved by just not caring and living my life. I know that I am by no means cured just yet (I have only just finished the book), but for the very first time since I first struggled with anxiety I now know that one day I will once again be the person that I once was, but perhaps even better. For once, I am daring to hope. Kate’s Story A while ago my life was going so smoothly that I never for one moment thought I could end up in the hole that I did. I had no inclination that anxiety even existed and if I had I would have had no clue how it could take over my life. My struggles began after I left college and moved away from my family and friends to be with my partner in another town. At first this new adventure was exciting and new, sharing an apartment with the love of my life was everything I dreamed of. I also got a new job and found new friends and things were looking better than ever. But like anything in life, the highs don’t seem to last forever. Living with someone was nowhere near as exciting as the long distance relationship we once shared. I also missed my family and my old friends. My new friends were great but they weren’t the ones I grew up with. I knew as time was going by I was missing home and this started to affect my relationship and we started bickering which led to him staying out and coming in at all hours drunk.

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We argued constantly and the more we argued the less time we spent together and the more I missed home. It all came to a head one day when he stayed out all night without contact. I stayed up all night wondering where he was and had no sleep, everything that day seemed to come to a head and I just felt mentally worn out. I couldn’t say exactly what was wrong, but I just felt different, kind of detached and emotionless. I decided that day that enough was enough, told my partner it was over, packed my bags and went home. The real problems started when I arrived home. My relationship had broken down and I had no job to come back to. Some of my friends had moved on, I was struggling to get my social life back on track and the lack of money certainly did not help. I just woke up one day and did not want to get out of bed. My thoughts seemed to be racing all over the place and I just had no energy or motivation to face life. When I did venture out I felt anxious and the world had seemed to take on a different look, everything looked dark and uninviting and I was soon retreating back home to the safety of my bedroom. I would say nothing to my family about the way I felt as I did not want to worry them and I think they just thought I was down about the break up. I just felt like I did not want to worry anyone and anyway I presumed these feelings would be over very soon and I would be back to my old self. It was a few weeks after feeling like this and realising that things were not improving that I went to see my doctor. I could no longer deny anything was wrong and that I would just wake up and this would be gone. I just knew that my zest for life had gone, everything seemed flat and one-dimensional and I felt constantly anxious. It was as though I was in a constant state of worry even if I had nothing to worry about. But it was the constant racing thoughts that bothered me more than anything, I just wanted some peace.

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It was hard to begin to tell the doctor what was wrong, as I did not know myself, but after explaining my symptoms she said, “I think you have anxiety. It is all the recent stress that you have gone through that has ended up making you feel this way”. I was instantly relieved that I was not going crazy and how I felt had a name; to know that she would now be able to help me and that by the end of the week this nightmare would be over. The doctor initially offered me some pills that I then picked up from my local chemist praying that these would be the answer to all my problems, but after taking them I just felt zoned out. After this I switched tablets many times before I decided that pills were not for me. I never truly believed they were the answer. I wanted to find out all about anxiety and not look to just plaster over it with tablets, so with the help of my doctor I gradually came off them. I then hit the Internet to find out more about anxiety and to really educate myself on this condition. What I initially found was of little to no help. I was constantly told to do certain techniques that seemed to point towards controlling or suppressing my thoughts and feelings, which never made me feel any better. In between that I was asked to part with a small fortune for some kind of miracle cure. Well I fell for it once and never went down that road again. So I was basically left alone to my own devices, picking up the odd book, struggling each day to make sense of how I felt, going from one technique to another, spending days on end analysing, trying to make sense of how I felt and knowing deep down things were getting worse and not better. Then one day I came across Paul’s site, bought his book and soaked up what he had to say. Something just clicked as he was the only one I had so far come across that told me that I need not do anything, that it was this constant search for peace that was keeping me stuck. I don’t know if I believed this at first, but something in his words rang true. I always had

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this desire to do nothing so I could go back to living my life. Trying to recover from anxiety had just exhausted me. It was when Paul said feeling better comes from no longer trying to feel better. Something about that sentence made me excited, like it made sense. I had this realisation that maybe I was the one doing this to myself. I went down and made a sandwich and looked at my father reading his paper without a care in the world and again something clicked. Look, my dad is not putting himself through what I am each day and he is fine. What if trying to feel better had been the cause and not the cure, just like Paul said? Before anxiety I just lived out my life without the need to figure it all out. I was not worrying about anything internally. It was all this worrying about myself now that was creating more anxiety. I could see this now. One after another realisation came to me. I read everything Paul had to say and for once I did not have a technique to follow; I had nothing to really do. This was a relief as I was tired of looking for cures and answers, tired of using techniques and sayings just to get through the day, tired of battling against my thoughts, tired of analysing, yet at the time I thought it was what I had to do to survive each day, I never for one moment thought I could just stop doing all of this, that there was nothing to fix and nothing to protect. It wasn’t easy to let go of old habits and some days I would start questioning again, but Iittle by little I started to trust that deep down I was fine. Even after all I had learnt, things were quite shaky for a while and I had some real up and down periods. But I learnt to just ride these periods out without any resistance and not fall back into the old habits of freaking out, analysing or trying to fix myself. I trusted that this was a process I had to go through, as the truth was it took me plenty of time to reach this state and it

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made sense that it would take a while before I felt like the old me again. This story was me two years ago and now I have a new partner, a new job and life is great once again. I know without Paul’s advice I would still be where I was. All I can say to anyone who suffers with anxiety is to let go of that battle with yourself as there truly is nothing to work out and nothing to fix, just let it all play out and peace will once again find you. The real you is always there, like the sun behind a storm. The sun is you, untouchable by anything anxiety can bring along. I hope my story gives you some hope

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Q & A Section Below are a number of questions I have been asked over the years. I thought I would publish the ones that come up often and I feel would be the most helpful to others. Question: People talk about allowing, accepting and being at peace with how you feel. Can you elaborate as I still get confused with exactly what this concept means? Someone said to me last week ‘Paul I have been accepting, yet I still felt bad last week. Any advice as to what I am doing wrong?’ Well there are many things wrong with this statement. Firstly he is as far as he could be from accepting his experience as he is still complaining about it, so he is not allowing anything. Secondly, he falsely thinks he has to feel good all the time and, lastly, he has used my words as a technique to rid himself of his feelings. Let’s get past the myth that any of my words are to be used to get rid of something or to make you feel good all the time. They aren’t; in fact quite the opposite. By that I mean that it’s OK not to feel OK. Don’t waste time and energy trying to change your experience, don’t spend hours analysing it and don’t spend hours worrying about it, as it is these things that give anxiety all the fuel it needs. It is all about not trying to change your experience whatever that may be and just allowing it to be as it is without trying to control or manipulate it. It is just walking away from the battle and letting things unfold as they do and the mind and body will sort itself out. The person above had not done this; if he had he would not have cared if he felt good or bad last week. The best way I can explain this is to say: Imagine you had a big bowl of water and you shook it from side to side and the water started sloshing around. What would be the best way to

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get the water to settle? It would be to leave it alone. You can’t force it to settle. Any attempt will just unsettle it further and then of course it never settles. So the paradox is the more you try to make it settle then the more unsettled it becomes. The more I tried to control my own experience then the more out of control I felt. It did not take me long to realise that the best way to control my experience was to give up all control of it, to just let it happen and let it settle by itself in its own time. Just remember: whatever experience you are having at any particular time can never harm you and it will always pass. Again if people never feared their experience, that would be the end of suffering as you would not find the need to go over it, worry about it or attempt to change it. I got to this point. I lost all interest in my thoughts and emotions, they no longer held my focus and attention and this came about because I no longer feared them. That was when the battle ceased and recovery began. Question: Why are some of my thoughts so repetitive? The mind has a tendency to repeat thoughts which have had your previous interest and attention, especially a mind that is fueled by the accumulation of a lot of negative emotion. Thoughts then tend to stick more. So don’t be thrown by this; it is perfectly normal in the circumstances. But no thought, good or bad, can survive without your fear and attention towards it. This reason the good ones don’t hang about in your awareness is because you just think them and move on. You don’t fear them or see them as overly important, so you don’t focus your attention on them. When was the last time you tried to deny or wrestle with a good thought? You can simply acknowledge any thought and then let go of it without fear. You will then not add any new fuel to the thought and without your respect and attention it just withers and dies

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as there is nothing to keep it alive. If you do this over time, you will see a big reduction in any disturbing or repetitive thoughts. Question: Paul, what is the best way to eliminate anxiety? You can't ‘eliminate anxiety', as you put it. Forget all those people who promise they can as there is nothing there to eliminate and trying to do so just creates more stress, more effort and more suffering. There is nothing to eliminate because the continuation of anxiety is self-created. There is no outside force doing this to you. It is not a thing you can just zap away. Your mind and body need a break from this constant struggle you have created. This is what anxiety is telling you – that currently there is some kind of worry, resistance and inner conflict creating these feelings. It’s not telling you to eliminate anything. Your anxiety would love that battle with yourself, as that is what your battle is against - yourself, not anxiety. Anxiety does not cause the majority of your suffering, it’s your battle with your current state that does. You are actually fighting yourself. It is like going out every day and using yourself as a punch bag and wondering why you feel so worn out, battered and fatigued. People can expend pointless energy all day acting like some kind of doorman with their emotions. ‘Yes, that’s alright, so that can come in’, ‘No, I don’t like that one so that’s not coming in’, ‘Oh, I’ll push this one away’, ‘No, I hate this one so I’ll try to get rid of this one’. What’s this one hey! I really don’t like that one. This one needs fighting against’. The doorman then comes home battered, bruised and exhausted from fighting and pushing all night. Don’t try and eliminate anything. Put your feet up and let it all in. You will have a much easier night!

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Question: I love what you write and it has helped me a lot, but I still feel down quite a lot and end up turning to other things like food to feel better. Do you have anything to help with feeling down? There is absolutely nothing wrong with feeling down. Welcome to being human; it’s all part of our make-up. We live in a world where we are told happiness is a must and feeling low is bad which is why we see so many new buzzwords and life coaches popping up. Imagine someone saying to you: ‘Right, your life aim is to be happy all the time.’ My reply would be ‘Huh, can’t I just feel happy and sad like everyone else? That would be so much easier. I’m not wasting time and energy trying to feel a certain way all the time; that would be impossible’. I actually don’t mind feeling low. It’s only when you put a label on it as bad or wrong and then start trying to change how you feel, that it becomes a problem. Don’t fall into the self-pity trap and feel sad for feeling sad. Without feeling down you would not know what feeling good was and anxiety sufferers going through a process of recovery can feel quite drained and flat, so don’t worry about it if you feel it more than normal now. It is only when we try to escape feeling down that the problem gets bigger and the reason people do this is because they are under the false impression that we must feel good all the time. People spend their whole life seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. This is why so many people turn to food, alcohol and other things like excessive shopping to feel pleasure, all of which may help temporarily, but as night turns to day, the sadness returns and then what? They always say the more you seek of what you want, then the further away it ends up, as you spend your whole life searching instead of living. The best way to be happy is to no longer try to suppress or get rid of the sadness, to allow any experience to be as it is and let your mood change naturally. That way when you feel down

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you no longer add sadness to sadness as you no longer see it as something wrong or something to change. It just is as it is and will pass. It is the same with anxiety. People spend their whole day trying not to feel anxious and end up feeling more anxious than ever. If you no longer saw it as something wrong and left it just as it is, you would not get anxious about being anxious and you would not spend all your day/week trying to get out of it and it would die down naturally. I would rather feel happy than sad - everyone would - but I no longer resist it and try to change my experience. I don’t turn to anything to get rid of or suppress any sadness that is around and the sadness no longer feels like sadness; it just feels like an experience. It was the same with anxiety. I did not want to feel anxious, but I had no control over when I felt that way. My body had plenty of stored energy in there from years of stress and years of suppression, so I just had to accept that it is as it is and let it manifest itself in whichever way it wished. Eventually it started to feel different and lighter. I didn’t identify with it and wasn’t as wrapped up in it. I was no longer getting anxious about being anxious; it just felt like energy in my body. Before it felt so heavy, like an entity that was taking me over. I thought of nothing else but eliminating this beast, yet the more I tried to slay it the more it grew. I will never forget someone who once emailed me telling me that he had spent years getting worse and just one sentence I provided had changed his whole perception and sent him on a totally different path. Here is what he asked together with my reply. Question: Paul I have spent years trying to control my anxiety and it just seems to get worse - why?

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Whatever you fight you strengthen; recovery comes when you truly surrender and realise you never had any control in the first place. I had no idea this one sentence would have such an effect on him, but he said that it hit him so hard and just made complete sense to him. He realised that all his anxiety had come from trying to control his anxiety and that of course he had no control. He said it would be like trying to control the beat of his heart. I wanted to add this as this is pretty much how I saw it. I was trying to control an extremely intelligent machine that had worked perfectly all my life, from the beat of my heart pumping blood around my system to processing my food and turning it into energy. It works miracles every day we are alive and so surely it would make a better job of getting better than I would. So why did I not just let it get on with its job? Why was I constantly trying and failing to get it to do what I wanted it to do. It had far more intelligence than me and just needed to be left alone to do its job. When I break my leg or cut my finger my body knows exactly what to do to heal them, but if I hit that broken leg every day it would never get a chance to heal. That is exactly what I was doing and the reason I was not healing. I had to give back total control to my system and stop trying to constantly manipulate it. It knew what was needed and it was only when I tried to get it to do what I wanted it to do that chaos was created. Question: Paul, my main problem is I can’t seem to switch off from the subject. It’s all I seem to think about. How can I switch the subject off and think of something else? This question comes up time and time again. The reason you can think of nothing else is because you keep feeding it into your sub- conscious through worry, analysing and research.

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The subject just takes over your life and becomes stronger while life starts to fade into the background. I am forever telling people how pointless and counterproductive all that is. When I understood things then I basically stepped out of my pointless war and just went back to living. Instead of reading about anxiety, I would read about cycling. Instead of researching the subject I would research holiday destinations. I dipped into the subject now and again but that was it. It was no longer my life and when my mind had other things to think about it shifted its focus. I would have a day or so when I felt I could think of nothing else, but I understood this was just a bit of habit hanging about. I let my mind stay on it as much as it wished and it soon took its focus off and went back to other things. It is like breaking up with an ex. Even after the break-up you will have days when you can think of nothing else, but as you start adding new things into your life they become a distant memory and your focus begins to shift. But if all you do is think about her every day and try to analyse where it went wrong and how you can fix it, then your focus will stay on the relationship. You can only carry on thinking of something if that is all you feed in. Trying not to think about it is just feeding more of it in; so don’t fall for that trick. If you want to stop thinking about something, then allow yourself to think about it if that is what your mind wishes to do, which, through habit, it probably will do for now. That does not mean that you should actively try to think about it; it means don’t try not to think about it, that will come naturally in time. It is similar to when a person first leaves prison after many years. Of course they will still think about their time in prison; any attempt to do the opposite would not work as it is all they have known for years. But, once in the outside world, the shift will begin naturally as they start to readjust to normal living. If you did this with any subject then trust me you would think of nothing else. Feed on life and you will think about life, feed on

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the subject of anxiety and all you will think about is anxiety. The problem at the moment is that you are not having any breaks as you’re probably leaving home with a running commentary on how you’re feeling and how you’re doing. It never ends for some. Hopefully my words can eliminate so many of your concerns and the subject will just form a small part of your life as you add other things into your day. When you start adding new experiences, your mind will become interested in a variety of things rather than just focusing on one. If you need to read up on the subject or need a reminder then that is fine as long as you then go back to living. Again there is nothing wrong here. It is self-created by thinking of nothing else. When you start to shift your focus in a natural way you will have a variety of other things to think about. Question: The thing that annoys me the most is that I know my fears are irrational, but they win every time and I end up hiding away and missing out on life. Why? I hid away for one reason and one reason only, and that was because I did not want to feel certain emotions, so the best way to not feel them was to hide away. Firstly we need to ask ourselves if we fear the place or the situation we are going into, or the feelings that the place or situation brings. If it is the place, then there is nothing to fear there. Fear is an illusion we create. The world spins exactly the same for everyone, the only difference being that someone with anxiety may perceive it differently. But how they perceive it is not necessarily reality. So it is about recognising that your fear is not real and that it is just built around old conditioned thinking. Your mind’s job is to remember and store things from past experiences so that it can protect you. If a dog attacks you at a particular house, then the next time you approach that house your mind goes into its memory bank and warns you to be careful and hence you will feel slight fear. It is your mind’s job to keep you safe

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and it actually thinks it is doing you a favour, which in this case it is. But there are certain occasions when it goes into its memory bank and it is not being helpful at all. But when you follow your thoughts and emotions blindly and keep avoiding a certain situation or a particular place then your mind thinks it was right to feed you the warning. It believes that it did its job correctly and will continue to protect you in these situations. However, this time the stupid thing has got this wrong, but you can’t just tell it so. It doesn’t grasp language as we know it. The only language it truly understands and follows is your actions and if you keep telling it that it’s right by running away or avoidance, then the reaction will never change. You have to start telling it that it is wrong through the only language it understands and that is through non-avoidance. So the next time you get the pang of fear/adrenalin, the only way to let it know that you’re alright is to sit with it, see it through and no longer try to escape. It then starts to get the new message and no longer fires off a warning when it is not needed. The emotion you feel is usually accompanied by a thought and in a lot of cases you actually tell your mind to look out for you before or during the event by telling it things like ‘I will feel awful when I get there, I’ll just stay at home instead’ or ‘Oh look there are loads of people; please don’t talk to me’. This thinking then starts to become conditioned and you no longer have to even actively think it, your mind just brings it up automatically. You need to recognise that this thinking is just old conditioned thinking and that it has no truth in it. I remember one of the first times I ever caught this thought process in action. I was playing snooker and hated talking in big groups. There was a big group of people I knew standing at the bar so I kept asking the person I was playing against to play again. When he finally said it was his last game, I thought

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“If I play the game slowly, they may all be gone by then” and in that instant I saw the thought for what it was, just an old conditioned thought. I realised that this old conditioned thinking was completely controlling my life and I had basically become a puppet to it. The only reason the person I was playing against did not feel this way is because he did not think this way. The reality was that these people were not scary; my thinking was just making it appear so. When I saw the truth behind this then the thought had no power and no substance. With that I potted all the balls and went straight over to the group and started chatting. It was that day that I finally saw the lie behind a lot of my conditioned thinking. There was nothing scary about this world or the people in it and I was no longer going to let my old conditioned thoughts and feelings make me think there was. I had created this conditioned thinking from doing what I had done in the past, which was avoidance. I knew that these old conditioned thoughts and emotions would still come for a while and that was totally fine, but it did not mean I had to believe them anymore or follow them as fact. I no longer had to identify with them. If they were fact then everyone would think them and that was not the case, only my past experiences had brought me to this stage. I realised the best way to expose them as liars was to do the exact opposite of what they told me to do. It was like rebelling against the bully and then the bully lost all his power. In the past they had told me to escape when I did not need to, they told me there was danger when there was not. I truly saw this and pretty much took no notice of them from that day on. I realised that I had self-created this old conditioned thinking through avoidance. It may not have been very helpful, but my mind was just doing its job. I know I keep saying it is selfcreated, but it was and it taught me that there was nothing wrong with me. My mind and body were working perfectly and

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these constant realisations took away the need for me to fix myself as there truly was nothing to fix, just something to see. I eventually learnt to become detached from my thoughts and emotions when they were out of whack and not take them too seriously. I was able to challenge the truth behind them and see if they made sense or not. When exposed as just old conditioned thoughts, they started to have far less influence on me and my actions. Question: You mention doing nothing a lot. Surely I need to take some action? Doing nothing does not mean lying around on the sofa all day doing nothing. In fact I tell people to become more active, go back to following their hobbies and passions and start living again. Doing nothing points more towards what not to do, as anxiety sufferers are always stuck in doing whilst trying to recover. Doing nothing is just a pointer to no longer battling yourself as there is nothing to battle against. Healing will only come when you step out of your own way and give your mind and body the space they need to heal themselves. If your mind is tired and weary from all you have put it through, does it not make sense that the poor thing just needs you to stop and give it rest to heal itself? Does it not make sense that if your nerves are shattered through worry, the fuel of worry must be cut off so they can heal? Does it not make sense that if your body is full of anxiety, adding more anxiety will keep these stores full and they never get a chance to be released? So doing nothing basically means stop creating more of what you are trying to diminish. It’s realising you have little control over your own healing system and that, left alone, that system will do a far better job without your constant interference which just makes things worse.

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The more control I let go of, the more control I felt I had. If you don’t hook on to an emotion or a thought then it will pass right on through, just as energy does. If you want that emotion or thought to hang around and grow then I suggest you try and deny it, argue with it, suppress it or run away from it. Do this and you will see what little control you have over trying to change any thought or emotion. It was the same when I felt mentally off. Trying to change or deny the experience just made it worse. If I left my mind alone to do what it wanted then it passed far more quickly and clarity returned. I used to see all of this as a process of recovery. Whatever emotions or feelings my mind and body produced was just its way of releasing stored up energy and finding its balance once again and this process of discomfort was something I needed to go through. What doing nothing does not mean is hiding away from life, which really means you are hiding away from feelings that certain situations or interactions may bring. If you want your life back, then you have to go and live it. If you want to build your confidence then you need to mix again. The best way to recover is to live again, mix again, get out in nature, go back to the things that you enjoyed and follow your hobbies and passions. You can do all of these things so don’t let any emotions or old conditioned thoughts tell you otherwise. My life was on hold for many years because I fell for the big anxiety lie and hid away. My life became narrower and more restricted, my confidence plummeted and my social skills dropped alarmingly. I was no longer living, just existing. I did not see the world through my eyes; I saw it through the eyes of my old conditioned thinking.

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Social Anxiety People have asked me many times how I got over my social anxiety, as this was a big part of my problem. I did cover it in my last book, but will expand on it a little more here. Firstly, my social anxiety lasted for many years before I even realised I had it. I thought I just always felt weird and off and this feeling was stronger when in the company of others. I knew that I felt worse around people so I tended to avoid people, not realising that this was the start of my social anxiety. I can’t speak for others who overcame their own social anxiety, but for me it started with a simple realisation and I built on it from there. There are numerous incidents when I began to see the truth, but this particular one sticks in my mind. I remember one day going to pick up a painting I had bought from a local artist and I had to go to his house to collect it. I was dreading going, worrying about what I would say and how I could get out of there quickly. “What if I stutter? What if I come across as odd?” etc. Then all of a sudden something hit me. I realised the old Paul would just have got in his car and gone without having all these worries. So this person I was going to see was not the problem, it was my thinking that was creating the problem. I was taking this thinking seriously and acting upon it. I don’t know where this insight came from, but I suddenly realised: ‘There is nothing at all in my daily life to worry or be anxious about. It’s all self-created by thought and therefore does not exist’. If I was OK previously then what had changed? The situation had not changed as I had been to see this person before I suffered from anxiety and had no problem whatsoever, so only

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my thinking could have changed. So this fear does not really exist; it only exists in my mind through thought. That one insight had such a massive effect on me. I started to see it all over then. In the past I remember waiting for neighbors to get into their cars before I would go outside just in case I bumped into them and had to talk. Again there was no danger there, only my thoughts about the situation created one. Yet when they had gone I thought I had done well and dodged a bullet. I did not expect these insights to be some magic overnight cure, but I saw a lot of truth behind my actions and that was a start. The truth was I had not become socially anxious overnight; it wasn’t something I woke up with like a cold. No, I created all this through all my previous avoidance. I had created new neural pathways in my brain by all my avoidance in the past. Like driving a car, my actions had just become automatic. It’s my brain’s job to try and make things easier by making something happen automatically when I have done it many times before. The trouble is I did not like this reaction being automatic, but the longer I avoided the stronger this pathway would become. I could not just tell my brain this reaction was not helpful and not needed so once again I had to speak the only language it understood and that was through action. That was the only way to build new pathways so that being comfortable in social settings became automatic. So what I did then was to no longer wait for any of my neighbours to get in their car. I no longer avoided people, and stopped turning down invites to social events. I lived like the old Paul and did it the hard, but effective, way. I was determined that this new path was going to be built with real foundations. Just realising that this anxiety and fear were just an illusion, not real and part of old conditioned habits, made it a lot easier to deal with. I still often had the same thoughts and feelings, but I no longer identified with them and they didn’t

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have the same punch. Also, the fact that I knew every victory was taking me nearer to building new pathways made me determined to stick to my task. I would also spot my thought patterns and recognise how they would try to trick me into avoidance once again as soon as the old conditioned thought ‘oh no, what if they come and talk to me. What will I say?’ came to mind. I would just smile at it and see it for what it was; old conditioned thinking that had no bearing on the reality of the situation. It was that false thinking and those old beliefs that were creating the problem and the reaction. All I had to do was to be aware of that thinking, catch it and no longer take it seriously. The situation I was in was never the problem; it was my thoughts about the situation that were. Up until then I always thought it was the other way around; that it was the situations that made me anxious and they just needed avoiding. I know that this is a very brief explanation and this condition can really cripple people and their interactions, but the only way to build a new habit is to immerse yourself in the new habit you wish to create and accept whatever that may bring. It doesn’t always have to a go well. If you put that pressure and expectation on yourself then you are pretty sure to fail. Just remember people really don’t see what you feel inside. It was far more important to me to get my life back than to worry about how I was coming across or what people thought. This is why some people fail, because their only concern is coming across well and if they don’t, then they think they have failed and so they avoid once again. My only focus was to no longer avoid and how I came across was of little interest to me. If your only concern is how you come across, then you will struggle to follow what the other person is saying because your focus will be entirely on yourself. This is what I call splitting. When your concern is on you and how you feel, then you will always struggle during conversations as you can only

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focus on one thing at once. This is the reason people sometimes babble or involve themselves in fabricated conversations as their focus is elsewhere. I just saw every conversation as a step nearer to becoming the old me. I actually asked people afterwards if they ever noticed anything and they said no; in fact they were surprised when I told them. Only one person said that on rare occasions I would talk faster, but that they had no clue that anything was wrong. We always think people see what we feel when the truth is they rarely see anything and seldom care if they do. There is no miracle cure for people who are socially anxious and I am sure that there are many who suffered for longer than I did and probably far worse, but this is truly how I did it. I just started to see things and started to take my thoughts and emotions far less seriously, whereas before I related to them and took them as fact. I understood clearly what had created it and that I was just stuck in an automatic reaction of my own doing. The only way to reverse this was to do the opposite and trust me it was not always easy, but every time I had the thought ‘don’t do it’ I realised that was the voice that needed silencing and the only way to silence it was by doing the opposite of what it wanted me to do. At times I would feel a massive urge to make fabricated conversations or to make a hasty exit, but when I saw the truth behind it all I was able to manage far more easily. If I felt nervous then I understood why and I knew I needed to keep on this new path and maintain my non-avoidance. This new path was shaky and bumpy at first well it would be as it was all new to me – but with practice it became more and more familiar until the new pathway was built and I had no trouble at all in the company of others. In my early years I remember trying to get over it by pushing myself to do stuff. I may go out but play on my phone as a distraction or sit in the corner quietly thinking this was at least progress. But this never worked as I just thought, “Phew I did

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it” while still thinking I had done well and avoided a disaster. This approach was not seeing things through; it was coping and would never have any long term results as I was still completely identifying with my thoughts and emotions about the situation. Non-avoidance had to be just that - non-avoidance - and even if thoughts and emotions wanted to follow for a while, then that was OK. If I had a thought or emotion that said ‘escape’, I did not take it as fact. I just saw it as an old conditioned reaction with no truth behind it. Once you see it for what it is, it’s amazing how much less of an effect it has on you and how much easier things become. But, yes, it was not always easy as I was going against so much habit and conditioning. But if I just looked at the long-term goal, through understanding and perseverance I was able to change my old conditioning into new conditioning and re-engage with my true self once again. I knew if I went from being comfortable to being uncomfortable in sociable situations then I would be able to reverse it back, as that was my true nature. I am not trying to oversimplify things here, but, despite years of struggle, once I saw the truth behind my own social anxiety, I did overcome it quite quickly. With social anxiety I truly believe you really have to catch your thinking and see your thoughts and emotions as just old, conditioned reactions and no longer take them as fact. Also it’s important to understand that people really don’t see how you feel inside and not to care what people think or how you are being perceived.

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The Anxiety Loop Here I am going to explain the anxiety loop in which so many people find themselves and how people misinterpret the whole route to recovery. You will have read a lot of what I say here in different parts of the book, but I think it is very important for people to fully understand this loop so they can finally be free of it. This understanding is so crucial to recovery. No one told me this and I did not read it anywhere; it just came to me one day when I was putting the pieces of the puzzle together. When this realisation came I just saw it so clearly. Any questions or doubts I had about whether or not I was on the right track disappeared and I made a huge leap towards recovery. Firstly, anxiety is energy that is initially created in the body through the power of thought. You cannot feel stressed or worried without first having a worrisome thought; this is how our bodies work. And it is this worrisome thought that creates the energy in the body that then creates the feeling of being anxious. Now the odd concern and the odd worrisome thought is fine, as when the worry or concern is over then the energy is released as it has no fuel to continue and we go back to a place of calm. The only way people reach a state of constant anxiety is when they stress or worry for a long period of time and this energy is constantly created and not released, or there is more created than is released. It is then stored in the body and you feel this energy constantly. You now get the feeling of being constantly anxious. When people get to this stage they don’t understand why. They have absolutely no intention of feeling this anxiety and so they go on a mission to find the answer to eliminate it. They search everywhere for the answer on how to do this, hitting

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one brick wall after another, and then this is where they can enter the next stage. The next stage of the loop is when they start to worry about their anxiety and try to fight it off or suppress it. But any attempt to suppress, deny, change or worry about thoughts and emotions takes immense energy. This constant expenditure of energy is what drains you and leaves you feeling so worn out and weary. This is the reason you feel mentally and physically exhausted and it is all utterly pointless and completely unnecessary. All that this struggle and constant creating of energy does is to leave the body full of negative energy. This is the energy that needs releasing, as it is creating its own fatigue and inner turmoil. Unbeknown to them, every attempt to eliminate or control their thoughts and anxiety just creates more of the very thing from which they are trying to escape. The next stage comes because they don’t want to feel these emotions and they then begin to hide away and go down the path of avoidance, hoping that one day it will just go away. Avoidance is just another technique to deny emotions, so they again stay trapped in the body as they have nowhere else to go. So trying to avoid or run away from emotions can never solve the problem, all it does is begin to restrict your life. The only way people will recover is to give up the struggle that creates all this negative energy in the body and then allow a release to happen. This means no more fighting, no more suppressing and no more worrying, as you cannot empty a cup that you keep on refilling. So if you want rid yourself of this energy, the answer is to feel it without adding any more to it; this is the only way. This is why people sometimes search around for years yet never find the answer to how to get rid of anxiety, as the answer is to not try to get rid of it.

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Even now people still misinterpret what I say when I tell them to allow the anxiety to manifest itself. They think this is some kind of technique to get rid of it and to not feel it. It is not; it is pointing them in the completely opposite direction, which is to not only feel it, but celebrate feeling it, as allowing release will eventually empty all that stored up energy within them. However, the crucial mistake people make is they think that if they are still feeling it then they must still be doing something wrong and that they are still stuck in this condition, so they then go back to searching, fighting, worrying, fixing and suppressing. They had a real chance there to release some energy by allowing it and all they did was add more energy and so the process of release was never allowed to happen. Any energy that was released was just topped up with more. If you are always worried about your state or are anxious about being anxious, all that is released is just replenished and the cycle continues. This is the very reason people stay stuck for years because they stay in this loop of release and replenish and the energy stays stored up in the body. So I did not eliminate anxiety, I just allowed a process of release to happen without adding more to it and now the only time I get anxious is when I have an anxious thought. This is why I no longer feel it unless there is a reason. Any anxiety I feel would need to be activated by an anxious thought. But your anxiety doesn’t need a thought to be activated as it is stored up in your body and can be felt at any time for no reason; this is what throws people. They think ‘It’s still there so I must keep searching’. So this is the cycle; the more you try to eliminate anxiety, the more of it you create. When you truly understand this loop then you no longer try to suppress this energy, as you know this will just keep it stored up in the body. You no longer battle to rid yourself of it because you realise this will just create more energy and you no longer worry about it, as you now understand its presence and the process you have to go

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through, so the whole anxiety loop is broken. So now when this release is allowed to happen without you creating more, the anxiety will start to subside. It will become weaker and will arrive less often as your stores are beginning to empty. When the stores are fully empty then you no longer feel anxious at inappropriate times and you go back to your natural default setting. This is why setbacks aren’t really setbacks at all but just another release. It is the not worrying about or trying to manipulate this release of energy that eventually cures. The same loop applies to anxious thinking When we are anxious this stored up energy does not just release itself through emotions, it also releases itself through thoughts. This is the reason people find that their thoughts race, they think things that do not make sense and they find it hard to stop thinking. It is just all this accumulated energy releasing itself. You may notice that if you feel fearful, anxious or unsettled, this is when you experience more of this kind of thinking and the calmer you feel, the less you do, which of course supports what I am saying. So if this release of negative energy manifests itself through thoughts, then you again have to allow this release to happen as any attempt to fight, worry and suppress what is coming through just creates more energy and more irrational thoughts. So do not be thrown by whatever thoughts come up and this energy is then truly allowed to burn itself out as you are not topping it up with more. So if your thoughts race then let them race; if they become obsessive then let them become obsessive; if they appear scary then allow them to be scary. I used to have some real thought storms and once I saw them as just energy storms, all the fear when out of them, as I could now see them as just a release of energy and nothing to be concerned about. With this new insight I was able to just let

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this energy pass through me and all the thoughts then just settled by themselves. The only reason my thoughts no longer race and are no longer scary or obsessive is because there all this negative energy is no longer stored up within me. So can you now see how pointless and counter-productive all this battle and concern about your thoughts is? Sometimes you just have to see something so that you no longer carry on doing what was creating more of your suffering. Just remember recovery is never about trying to eliminate anything; this just creates the opposite effect. So there is your loop, hopefully now people realise that you cannot reach peace without feeling some discomfort along the way, as it is all a very important part of the process. So the next time you feel anxious or unsettled, don’t spend your day pointlessly trying to get out of it, see it as your mind and body finding its way back to peace.

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Living a Life Without Stress Just about everyone reached their anxious state through too much worry and stress, basically pushing their body and mind beyond its limits. When we recover or are going through recovery, it is wise to take a good look at what brought you to initially seeking help. You won’t get very far trying to recover whilst you continue to worry and stress about the same things that brought you to this point in the first place. Even if the situation or situations that brought on the anxiety are still there it is not a problem, you just need to learn to look at things differently. As I said before, it is never your life situation that causes the anxiety; it is your thoughts about it that does. If I hear friends and family stressing over little things, it seems so trivial to me now. I just sit back and see the old me and thank my lucky stars that I no longer fall into this worry trap. Going through what I did certainly changed me for the better and I don’t regret it, otherwise I would be joining in with them stressing and worrying about nothing in particular. It’s what I did for so many years. People are always commenting on how much calmer I seem these days, as though nothing seems to bother me. I purposely don’t try to be this way, I just learnt so much about worry and stress that I just don’t go there anymore. Yes, bad things still happen, but then again so does good stuff. I have learnt to see life as a balance of good and bad. I never complain when things go well so why would I complain when they don’t and what purpose would it serve apart from making me feel like crap for a while? If there is any part of your life that you can change to make it less stressful then do so, be it taking on less, cutting your hours down if you feel over-worked, learning to say no to others that burden you, going out more in nature and having

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more time for yourself. Take a good look at your life and see if there is room for change or things that could improve your life. I explained in my last book how exercise and a better diet helped me and I followed this through with a complete lifestyle change. I still carry on looking after myself to this day. I am not perfect by any means, but I now understand how looking after yourself better and getting a good nights rest are vital to your overall well-being. Searching for happiness A lot of people search for happiness in outside things. Yet when they get the big car and the new house and that feeling of emptiness is still there, then they think: ‘Well I have everything so it must be me’ and so then they turn to self-help looking for a solution. This is why the self-help industry is booming. I learnt that the best way to be happy is to get the inside right then everything else falls into place. I regularly tell people that they are looking for happiness in the wrong place. If you feel lost and miserable and look for someone else or some possession to make you happy, it won’t work. That is not where true happiness and peace lie. I live a much simpler life these days and realise what is important; following what I want out of life, helping others and spending time with friends. After my recovery I no longer enjoyed drinking and that was pretty much what my social life consisted of. But I no longer wanted to go down that road and knew I had to make changes. I had tired of hangovers and wasted days and wanted to follow what made me happy. I knew that my priorities had shifted and what used to make me happy no longer did. So I joined an art class and a walking group, joined a gym and bought myself a bicycle. I live a far more fulfilling life and it feels more in line with what I want. We can’t all pack our jobs in and move to a vineyard in France, but we can all make some changes that will help us to

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lead a happier and more stress free life, even if that means just having a new attitude towards it. If we could just learn to no longer take life so seriously, to just let it all unfold as it does with all the good days and bad days that may come along. Learn to appreciate what you do have instead of what you don’t have. Sometimes all you need is a new attitude and a new perception on life and it all appears different, friendlier and less hostile, something to enjoy and not see as a problem. So much anxiety is created through inner conflict, for example: ‘I feel like this, but I want to feel like that; I want to achieve more, be happier than I am and feel more peace; I want to be prettier, younger and think more positive; If only my partner would be more like this.’ When you are in constant conflict with life and with what is, then all you do is create stress and suffering. When we just let life play out as it does then we find we are happier, more at peace and achieve more. When we start appreciating what we do have and not what we don’t, then life gets so much easier. It is the constant need for more that creates the discomfort and unhappiness. I once saw a program about people in Africa where people were playing football with a sock bound by tape and they did not have a care in the world. They were kicking it around and really enjoying themselves. Then one of the women gave them a pencil each and their face lit up. Just seeing that had a profound effect on me. It showed me that they did not see what was lacking in their life; they just really appreciated what they did have. Change is not always easy as plodding along just seems easier at times, but nothing is gained from this. If you want things to change then you are the only one responsible for making it happen and trust me the rewards are so worth it. But even just a change in attitude towards life can have a real impact on your wellbeing.

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Summing Up Anxiety was never the true cause of my problems; it was the ensuing battle that caused the real suffering. After reading this book you will now know that it was not written to give you a bunch of techniques or rules to follow because you don’t need them. Recovery comes through an understanding of how you have been keeping yourself in the cycle. This is when you can truly surrender and let your mind and body return to their natural default setting. It truly takes no effort on your part. So many people come to me for help and because I can’t give them an instant answer on how to rid themselves of their suffering, they go off searching elsewhere, only to eventually realise that it is a fruitless pursuit. But you have to allow people to find out the truth for themselves. When they have had enough of searching they will eventually start to look in another direction. The true aim of this book is to take the struggle out of how you feel and relieve as much of your burden as possible so that your mind and body are able to heal. I also hope to educate you enough so that your focus of attention is taken away from the way you feel and fully back on life. When you do this you will see life with far more clarity and live it with far more ease. All I am trying to do is point you towards the truth so you can see it for yourself and are no longer in a continuous struggle with your thoughts and emotions. Only you are responsible for letting go of this struggle, no one else can do this for you. Once I let go of that struggle, I started to feel more at ease with how I felt, with life itself and change started to happen. I began to feel a certain clarity and peace that I had never previously felt. This peace would come and go and I could

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have some pretty rotten days as my mind and body started to go through a process of healing and a lot of built-up emotions were released, but I understood that that this would take time and fully allowed the process to happen. The length it takes for this process to happen is different for everyone and can depend on the length of time you have suffered and what emotions have been stored up. When I do read people’s stories of recovery through the blog or in an email, it is usually a few months after they first came to me for help. The reason I mention this is so that people don’t fall into the trap of being impatient. We all have a desire to get to where we want to be right now or as soon as possible, but it is that constant struggle that works against us and can take us in the opposite direction. When you feel an urgency to be somewhere else, you are pushing hard against where you are right now. When you are more accepting of where you are, then you naturally fall back to where you need to be. Time is your healer here, not your enemy. Where recovery is concerned, knowledge really is the key to everything. Even to this day I continue with my research. I go to conferences and retreats with some highly respected mental health professionals and we all swap new thoughts and ideas to help people. I never stop learning as I want to be able to give the best advice I can. When you truly see something that makes sense and where you have been going wrong, then it’s the end of going down that path as it no longer makes sense to carry on doing something that you know is harming you. Understanding can eliminate any suffering. I really try to get across to people that there is no battle to fight and no enemy to defeat. You create the enemy and it is one that genuinely doesn’t exist. It is the constant fight with this invisible enemy that you are so desperately trying to escape from that keeps you in the cycle. I have spoken to so many people who have recovered and can now clearly see

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everything they previously did wrong. They can’t believe what they used to put themselves through on a daily basis. Even when things start to click and you feel more at ease and you begin to see where you have gone wrong, you may still feel remnants of your past struggles. You can still be left with a lot of trapped anxiety and emotions that still need to be felt and released or some old conditioned thoughts that hang around, some days they will be weak and other days they are quite intense. Trust me, none of this is important so accept this fact and allow yourself to experience it all. During my recovery I had to go through many cycles; some days of real struggle and some days of pure bliss, but I fully accepted that it was a process I had to go through. If you can learn not to try to hold onto the bliss and not take the down periods too seriously whilst allowing yourself to fully go through this process, then healing will take less time. Before I understood this I had spent ten years never allowing this process to begin. My body had tried many times to start this procedure, but I just denied it the opportunity every time. Someone recently said that I was the first person ever to say it was OK to feel anxious. Not one person he had seen before me had ever told him this. No wonder he remained in a constant struggle with suppression and resistance, as well as being in a state of continual suffering. When I explained to him that it was not only fine to feel the way he did, but was also to be expected, he said it was like a massive weight had been lifted off his shoulders and he no longer had to struggle with the way he felt. Hopefully after reading my initial book and this sequel you will have a far better understanding of what was keeping you in the cycle and the mistakes you may have been making. You don’t have to go on a long self-help road to get back to who you truly are, all you really need is a true understanding. In my

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case a simple realisation could wipe out years misunderstanding and take away so much suffering.

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Just remember: there is nothing to fix, nothing to run away from, nowhere to get to and nothing to do. Underneath all of these surface symptoms you are just perfect as you are, so don’t fall for the anxiety trick and go out and start to live the life you deserve. Good luck with rediscovering your true nature Paul David

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More from Paul David If you would like further reading to complement this book, my first book At Last a Life can be ordered through any UK bookshop, my website or Amazon and is also available on the kindle.

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If you would like to keep up to date with me on social media, then you can find me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/anxietynomoreuk or you can follow me on twitter @anxietynomoreuk You can also visit my website www.anxietynomore.co.uk Anxietynomore is also available as an app for the Iphone and Android and can be found in the App store

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