How to stop anxiety - SUCCESS!

Hi fellow sufferers, I planned to write about this later on but decided to do it right now.

Most of us have battled our anxiety for years, tried lots of things, only to see our anxiety strike back again no matter what we do.

Don't worry. I think I have found the solution!
If we can't beat it, be its friend! Force yourselves to be comfortable with the feeling of anxiety, through thoughts like: "This is a great feeling", "you can stay with me, it's ok" and so on. Your fears will disappear! It's like taking the control of it.

I hope this will work for so many of us as possible, and atleast be inspired about it.

There is a book called "Get out of your mind and into your life" that's all about this. And it really helped me to do things.
Thoughts like I'm okay to be red, sweaty and shaking.
The problem is that depression will surround you.

Yeah, but you have to focus solely on the anxiety feeling, not the symptoms!

Klaus said:

There is a book called "Get out of your mind and into your life" that's all about this. And it really helped me to do things.
Thoughts like I'm okay to be red, sweaty and shaking.
The problem is that depression will surround you.

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That works for awhile, but immediately when you let your guard down it comes back in full-throttle, making it almost 5x as hard to get rid of the next time.
I know, I've done it. Than i forgot all about it a year later and oh god did it suck coming back. Was waaay worse than the first time. The way i got over it was threw just not caring anymore, about anything. IF something happened, id distract my mind and say who cares, and move on with life. Takes a long time, but it worked for me.

I don't think I'm making a guard, through this I believe I'm making the anxiety harmless!
After almost a week doing the technique the anxiety spells are getting fewer. Next week I'm back to work and let's see if it lasts

I believe that its a great method but I got injured and felt so tired of trying to control my body. That needs concentration but can't able to focus on it continuously and suddenly feel worry about shaking, sweating... So now Im on beta-blokers and no matter how they hurt me. It seems that I'll use it until a new earthshaking drug is invented and maybe that means until I die.

I can already now say; I do have conquered my SA with this method
25 years of living hell and no freedom is finally over!

This is where I found the method btw (there you'll find better explanation about it too prolly):
http://www.youtube.com/user/AnxietySelfTherapy

The trick is to think about (prolly best at first) or involve yourself in situations that triggers your anxiety and then start to love that feeling. Your fears will eventually go away, and at the same time your self-esteem and self-confidence increases!

BUMP!

I'm surprised this isn't getting more views, aren't we all wanting to overcome this shit?..

It may sound too easy, but it really is and that's the way it should be 8)

It's interesting, I've done this is the past. In my opinion it does work temporarily, but it does eventually break through and sometimes harder.

I think the reason why we can't really accept or 'feel good' about anxiety long term is because anxiety is our body's attempt to tell us something.

I'm trying to think of a good analogy....Let's say you are walk home from work or school everyday and there is this steep incline on one part of the path home that you've hurt yourself many times on. Every time you get to that part of the path, you feel anxious and scared and you are really really careful. (You could take a different path home but its so much longer). So then you start to tell yourself that it's good to feel anxious when you are around that steep incline, that its okay, that its enjoyable even. You might feel better at first as you convince yourself that the anxiety is good, which really means that you are telling yourself there's no need to be scared and you power through it. You might do it few times without even getting hurt and you feel even better. But then one day you do fall down and hurt yourself like you've done so many times. What do you think happens then? You would get so so angry with yourself, with the pain...with the anxiety. It would break through your override in an instant and would create even more anxiety because it thinks you tricked your body in believing its all okay. This time it would be set up to be even more scared and more anxious so its more difficult to do it next time.

The point I'm trying to make is that I think your idea is a good step and important, but if you don't take care of the reasons behind why your body is using anxiety, then you end up back to square one. Anxiety will always break through eventually if you still have the same mindset. At least that is my experience.

I see where you're heading

I know it is important to differ between real threats and what's not to worry about.
Most of us with SA know that most of our anxiety has silly or ridicolous grounds and is unneccesary.

True.

The thing about social anxiety is that the pain is real, but grossly exaggerated. Why? Because we actually want to exaggerate it. We actually want anxiety because we believe that if we create enough anxiety (like constantly beating ourselves up for saying or doing something stupid) then we can stop the suffering, stop the pain. We fight anxiety with creating anxiety...like fighting fire with fire...it only makes it worse.

That's why I think its so so hard to break anxiety because analytically we can see how absurd and silly it is to be so afraid and hurt by something so small, but deep down we believe that the only way to stop all this pain is to be even more careful (more anxiety, more pain).

I think you are on the right track though. I would just add from my experience is try to see the actual social situation as enjoyable, not the anxiety itself. Like going back to the analogy..Think about how great it is to climb that steep cliff on the way back from work or school, so great and fun, and worth it that it doesn't matter if you fall or not...It's more enjoyable to climb than it is to worry about the pain of falling. At that point, you don't have any real anxiety about it. You can't change, accept or love anxiety, but you can choose not to use it.

Well if there really is no straight-forward cure for anxiety it would be better to cope with it than to try to fight it I guess. But it would be so much easier just to get rid of it completely. I can't ever imagine myself learning to love and accept anxiety. But I guess it could be done.

im deff gonna try this. ive been trying to face fears that make me feel anxiety just to see if its all in my head, and its been working. if i feel like someones staring at me i look in that direction:theyre not staring at me
if im scared to pass someone i know i pass them:its not that bad they donmt even sayt anything. if i see my crush and get scared:hetalks to me and is actually happy to see me. so im learning this shytt is all in my own head. im gonna try this method out too anything cann help

Anxiety is in every one of us, it's part of being human or any other animal, I think we only can tame or control it better.
People with SA have this thing going wild :!:

Actually when you think about it, anxiety could be a huge help to us rather than a downfall. I just realized that for me the feeling of anxiety is just like being hyper except with a feeling in my stomach. So next time I'm just gonna be like "OH MY GAWD I'M SO HYPER RIGHT NOW!!" instead of "oh my god I feel so anxious!"

True.

The thing about social anxiety is that the pain is real, but grossly exaggerated. Why? Because we actually want to exaggerate it. We actually want anxiety because we believe that if we create enough anxiety (like constantly beating ourselves up for saying or doing something stupid) then we can stop the suffering, stop the pain. We fight anxiety with creating anxiety...like fighting fire with fire...it only makes it worse.

That's why I think its so so hard to break anxiety because analytically we can see how absurd and silly it is to be so afraid and hurt by something so small, but deep down we believe that the only way to stop all this pain is to be even more careful (more anxiety, more pain).

I think you are on the right track though. I would just add from my experience is try to see the actual social situation as enjoyable, not the anxiety itself. Like going back to the analogy..Think about how great it is to climb that steep cliff on the way back from work or school, so great and fun, and worth it that it doesn't matter if you fall or not...It's more enjoyable to climb than it is to worry about the pain of falling. At that point, you don't have any real anxiety about it. You can't change, accept or love anxiety, but you can choose not to use it.

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I really agree with the part about we can see how absurd our anxiety is. It's just that our feelings overpower our reason, like we have an imbalance. I've recently read that this lack of balance between reason and emotion is something that we can correct ourselves, just by sort of training our brain. It's like balancing out our brain activity between the two hemispheres with certain kinds of mental exercises. I've been posting around to see if anyone else is trying this, but I'm really finding a lot of calm with a certain type of meditation where you use headphones and listen to slightly out-of-sync tones. It makes your brain emulate certain frequencies of healthy brain activity, and after a while your brain just sort of adopts this sort of activity as natural and your anxiety is a lot less! I always think people think this sounds crazy, but it's really helping me.

If you want to read about it it is right here: http://www.squidoo.com/curesocialphobia

I'm sorry to bring back this thread but I just have to share this with you.

selftherapy [dot] org/listen has great FREE sessions that deal with this type of therapy it's basically sort of like ACT

Klaus said:

There is a book called "Get out of your mind and into your life" that's all about this. And it really helped me to do things.
Thoughts like I'm okay to be red, sweaty and shaking.
The problem is that depression will surround you.

Click to expand...

Depression will surround you if you do things (or think positively)?

Wow...old thread...

Bravo anxiousguy! I know what you're getting at with this and I think it's brilliant and truly does work. In the past, I've always been worried about what people think of me. If they see me as a quiet insecure person. However, I've slowly gotten in the mindset of who cares what they think about me? Why should I change the way I live MY life just so I can fit into someone else's world? Living your life scared of everyone else is just so hard to imagine, yet most of us are in some way or another. You really just have to change your way of thinking.

I find that the happiest people are older people. Well, in my grandparents' cases anyway. I think this is because they're old and they have had the time to realise that life is too short to care what other people think. You live your life the way you want to. I think the secret to being happy is to realise this at a young age.

Thanks for forwarding this useful information. Actually I’ve found that just after 10-15 belly-breaths stress or anxiety will dissipate and you’ll feel a lot calmer. But you may want to take 30 just to be on the safe side. This simple exercise works remarkably well whenever you feel negative emotions like anxiety or anger trying to drag you down.
Anxiety comes from uncertainty. Knowledge blows away uncertainty and replaces it with more certainty and a clearer picture of what is to be expected. And when you dig up some information then the problem is many times not as bad as you imagined. So, ask someone who has been where you are how it is, what they did and what´s to be expected. Read about it in books or magazines. Research and Google it.