Free Yourself from Anxiety (2 page)

This book is intended for people affected by all forms of Anxiety: phobias (including agoraphobia and social phobia), obsessive compulsive disorder, panic attacks and generalised anxiety disorder. We do not recommend using this book if you suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or for anxiety problems in young people and children.

Emma and Martha would like to thank: The Group, for the time they gave to this project; Angela, Chris and Isabelle for their feedback on the text; First Steps to Freedom, and No Panic.

For most people, anxiety seems to come from nowhere and hit them like a sledgehammer. One minute, more or less happily living your life, the next, terrified and distraught, struggling to breathe perhaps, convinced you are dying, or that someone else will die and it will all be your fault.

Maybe you visit your doctor straight away, maybe you struggle on alone for as long as you can, but sooner or later you will be told that it’s Anxiety. Just anxiety.

This doesn’t make any sense. You know what anxiety is. It’s glancing at the clock and wondering uneasily why someone is late. It’s double checking that you put the handbrake on when parking on a hill. It’s not this living nightmare that turns every minute of every day into a torment of worrying.

Except that it is. Your normal anxiety has got out of control and turned into an Anxiety Disorder. In other words, everybody has some anxiety, but not everybody has Anxiety. In this book, when we give anxiety a capital ‘A’ we are talking about an illness, and you can recover from it. There is good help available on the NHS, but it can mean a long wait as your name works its way up the list. If you are housebound, the wait for a visiting therapist is likely to be even longer. Why not try to help yourself in the meantime?

Some people are able to stage a full recovery through self-help. Others may still need help from a professional to finish their work, but they will
go into the sessions armed with self-knowledge and an improved understanding of their illness.

Anxiety is a black hole. It sucks in your hopes, your pleasures, your plans for the future and above all your energy. It’s picky though. It leaves behind fears, worries, and exhaustion. No wonder it’s hard to pick yourself up and find the energy for a recovery programme. No wonder you feel like staying in your safe place and doing as little as possible.

It is possible to turn this round. It is possible to come back from the black hole of Anxiety. The aim of this book is to help you set up and follow a self-help recovery programme. Working at your own pace, in small steps, you can learn to let go of Anxiety and reclaim your life.

There are two basic things that you need.

A notebook
– you will need to write things down as you work through this book. A notebook is better than a collection of scraps of paper, because sometimes you’ll want to look back and see how far you’ve progressed.

A relaxation tape or CD
– organize this now, before you start work, so that you have it to hand when you need it. You can buy them in any music store, and often in health food shops and chemists. If you are housebound you could ask someone to get it for you, or use the mail order service provided by the charities in this field (see Appendix 2 for their contact details).

Deep relaxation is an important part of recovery from Anxiety. This is not the same as relaxing in front of the TV, or with a book, or anything else you may choose. These are all good for you, but you will also need to learn to do full relaxation. There is more about this in Chapter 6.

You should aim for a recording with a voice on it, rather than just music, and there are two main types:

Choose whichever type appeals to you most. It is okay to buy one of each and decide which you prefer after playing them. If you don’t like the idea of listening to a strange voice, then you can record your own voice, or ask a trusted person to record it for you. See Extra Information 1. I for a script that you can record.

All of the examples in this book are taken from real life, from the stories of people with Anxiety who either told us about their experiences or wrote them down for us. We haven’t changed their words. They all understand the suffering that Anxiety causes. Let’s meet the group:

We are very grateful to them all for being willing to share their stories. You will learn that they’re in various stages of recovery. Several of them are volunteers with charities such as No Panic and First Steps to Freedom. The full version of Margaret’s story is available from No Panic, see Appendix 2 for contact details.

You may feel ready to undertake the challenge of working towards a full recovery. You may feel interested in the idea, but nervous about it. Or you may feel a deep resistance to it. Whatever your current feeling is about recovery, whether you feel optimistic, pessimistic or somewhere in between, you can use this book to make a start.

You can use the ideas and exercises in whatever way suits you best at the present time, and you can come back to them at a later date when you are ready for more progress. There are four particular ways in which this book can help:

In your notebook, make two lists, headed ‘things I have to do’ and ‘things I can’t do.’ Include the things that Anxiety makes you do, or stops you doing, and anything else that you feel you must do or can’t do. Here’s a brief example:

Now rewrite each list. Instead of ‘have to’ write ‘choose to’. Instead of ‘can’t’ write ‘choose not to’.

Suddenly you can see that you to have more choice than you thought. This can be a powerful turning point – and remember, it includes the choice
not
to change. If you have truly weighed up the pros and cons, the gains and losses, you may decide it’s okay to settle for level one, or two, or three.

A person having their first panic attack can think they’re having a heart attack. Someone calls an ambulance, they are taken to Accident and Emergency, and after the usual tests they are told that it’s panic. The most common reactions to this news are embarrassment and disbelief, but at least they’ve been seen by a doctor and can start the process of coming to terms with what has happened to them.

At the other end of the scale, some people live with their illness for years without having it properly diagnosed, without talking to anyone about it and without getting any help.

Quite simply, everyone needs to see a doctor to discuss their symptoms and get a diagnosis. There are a few physical illnesses whose symptoms are just like Anxiety so you need to make sure that you’re not suffering from one of those. There is no point in reading this book and doing the work we suggest if, for instance, you are suffering from a thyroid problem that can be treated by tablets.

So if you haven’t seen your doctor yet, now is the time to do so. If you are nervous about doing this, consider taking someone sympathetic along with you for support. If you are housebound, ask for a home visit.

The important thing to remember is, that if it turns out you do have an Anxiety disorder, it is an illness and it is not your fault, so you really don’t need to be embarrassed.

Sometimes people worry that their medical records will always show that they’ve had a problem, and this will go against them in some way. And yet these problems are extremely common, so there must be thousands of people with similar records who are now leading happy and fulfilled lives. Wouldn’t you like to be one of them?

You can expect the doctor to listen to what you have to say, and ask you a few questions. He or she will probably do a few simple checks to rule out a physical cause. If a blood test is suggested and needles are a problem for you, then say so. Even if the blood test has to wait for another visit, you will have made your first steps towards recovery.

Sometimes people worry about how they are going to explain what they are feeling. It might help to make a list beforehand of all the sensations you experience. If you need to talk about one incident, then don’t talk too much about the build-up to it. A simple statement will get the conversation started and the doctor can ask you questions to get more information.

‘I was standing in the queue at the bank when I suddenly felt terribly sick, my heart started pounding and I felt like my legs wouldn’t hold me.’

If you need to describe a continuous feeling, again keep it simple:

‘I feel so shaky every morning that I just can’t get out of bed, and I get worse as the day goes on.’

‘I keep needing to check that the smoke alarm works, I know it does, but sometimes I go back 20 times to it. It can take me all morning to get past it.’

Remember these remarks are just to get you started. You may not yet feel able to ask the questions that really haunt you: Am I going mad? Will my heart stop beating? Never mind. You’ve made a start.

And while we’re on the subject, let’s answer those two questions. A person with Anxiety is not going mad, and neither Anxiety nor panic will make anyone’s heart stop beating.

There are various things the doctor can suggest to help you:

Did it worry you when you saw the words ‘mental health’? Anxiety is a mental health problem, but mental health is a term that covers a huge range of issues and only a few of them are long-term permanent problems.

If you are offered therapy, one of the most common approaches is called cognitive behaviour therapy. It is very successful in helping people with Anxiety and this book is based on its techniques, so you will learn more about it as you work through the book.