Free Yourself from Anxiety (4 page)

Dealing with most health problems involves a degree of self-help. Even something as simple as remembering to take your tablets is self-help. Someone with a joint injury may be given exercises to practise at home, a diabetic will be given dietary rules, or a heart patient will be given lifestyle advice.

In the case of Anxiety disorders, the self-help element is crucial. The best therapist in the world can’t help you if you don’t co-operate with them, and drugs will only dampen the symptoms down to a level where you feel able to do the work that’s needed.

Every time you talk your problems through with a sympathetic friend or family member you are helping yourself. Reading around the topic will help you to understand your illness. In some areas there are self-help groups, where people meet up to socialise and offer support to each other. Finally, there are the telephone helplines, run by volunteers who are almost all sufferers themselves – see Appendix 2 for more on these.

So whatever treatment route you choose, self-help will be involved. This book, however, offers you a complete approach to self-help. You can use it entirely on your own, or in tandem with other help – but do please mention to your therapist that you are using it.

Anyone can apply the principles of self-help. It doesn’t matter if your Anxiety is mild or severe, new or long-standing. There is always
something you can do to start yourself on the road to recovery. What personal qualities do you need?

Perhaps you found these questions annoying. Did you want to shout ‘of course I’m committed and motivated, just show me what to do’? Good. We don’t mind if you get angry with us – anger gives you energy, just what you need right now.

Perhaps the hardest thing for many Anxiety sufferers is simply finding the time for a recovery programme. Many Anxiety sufferers are very busy people, juggling family commitments, work and Anxiety in one endless rush. Others are kept busy by their Anxiety – OCD in particular can be very time consuming.

It will be difficult to find enough time at first, but gradually you will turn things around, life will be less fraught, and you will have more time available.

Recovery work for Anxiety is based on setting and achieving goals.

Are you an impatient person? Do you want to rush in and do everything we suggest in the first week? You’ll need to curb your enthusiasm. Taking on a goal that is too big for you will lead to failure, and you will feel like giving up. Always make goals small enough that you have a good chance of succeeding. Are you inclined to be over-protective of yourself? In that case, you may need to brace yourself and take a little more risk. Goals that are too small don’t provide any challenge and achieving them doesn’t bring any reward.

Don’t say ‘my goal is to be happy’. Do say ‘my goal is to stop counting my coat hangers’ or ‘my goal is to post a letter’.

The answer to both the above difficulties is to break goals down into small steps. Start by choosing an overall goal and then see what smaller goals you could set to help you towards it. The smaller goals can also be broken down – there is an example of how to do this below.

Use your notebook to record the goal and the steps.

Counsellors and therapists say that failures are more useful than successes because we learn so much from them. If you fail at one of your goals, don’t let yourself plunge into despair. Instead be your own counsellor and try to analyse why you failed – this is the problem that you need to overcome. Rearrange the goal so you have a better chance of success next time.

Try to do each goal more than once. Overall it will get easier each time, although there may be the occasional setback.

We will give examples of goal setting for Anxiety recovery later on, but for now let’s look at an example that has nothing to do with Anxiety. A very unfit person decides to run the marathon to raise money for their favourite charity. A trainer helps them break down their goals.

Run the marathon.

1. Run a mile.
2. Run 5 miles.
3. Run 10 miles.
4. Run a half marathon.

And so on to the actual day of the marathon.

Since this person is very unfit, there is no way they are going to run even a mile the first time they go training, so they have to work out a series of mini-goals.

And so on until they can run a mile.

When setting goals, use the acronym SMART and make your goals:

Once you have your tape or CD, or have recorded your own, it’s time to start using it. Arrange a time when you won’t be disturbed – if there are other people around, explain that you need to be alone for a while. Take the phone off the hook, switch off your mobile.

Lie down, or sit in a comfortable chair, and listen to the recording. Don’t try to judge how much you’ve relaxed, just let it happen. If you fall asleep, that’s okay. You can always set an alarm if you need to be up and about at a certain time.

Do this every day. If you are very anxious, do it twice a day, morning and evening. If the recording helps you sleep at night, then use it for that, but don’t count that as your session for the day.

Some people find it hard to get started and feel anxious about doing relaxation. Here are some tips:

While you’re getting used to relaxation, be prepared to play your recording once or twice a day for at least three weeks. This is to give it a fair chance. It’s worth persevering because relaxation is such an important part of recovery.

Once you’ve formed the habit of doing relaxation every day, keep it up throughout your recovery programme.

Anxiety is experienced by virtually everyone at times. It is a normal and natural feeling when facing situations which are unusual, challenging or risky.

We are all likely to encounter events in our lives which produce anxiety. These may be major such as the death of a close family member or severe financial problems. They can also be the more normal changes which are part of life: changes at work, home or in one’s social network. Even going on holiday or preparing for Christmas can involve a measure of anxiety.

A small amount of anxiety is healthy and useful if you are facing something difficult. It helps you to take better care of yourself in a dangerous situation and it can help you perform better, for instance in an exam or public performance.

Abnormal Anxiety is different. It can make you feel excessively afraid in situations that are not stressful or threatening to most people. It can give you such a high level of Anxiety (or nerves) before an event that it stops you thinking or acting in a constructive way.

Anxiety disorders are an extreme development of abnormal Anxiety. If you have an Anxiety disorder, then your anxiety will:

There are various reasons why people develop Anxiety disorders but most sufferers, when they look back, can see that there was a period of stress in their lives that acted as a trigger. In addition, they may feel that they were always nervous, right from childhood, or always tended to worry about things.

Some stages in life seem to make us particularly vulnerable. Adolescence is an obvious one, but many young people seem to go through a difficult time a few years later, shortly after they first leave home. Perhaps life suddenly seems all too serious, with the need to be financially
self-sufficient
, to look for a partner, and generally establish yourself in the adult world.

But stressful events can strike any of us at any time, and if there are enough of them any one of us can be vulnerable to Anxiety. The
Holmes-Rahe
Scale was devised to measure stress levels. It is interesting to note that even a pleasurable event such as getting married causes a measurable stress, and could contribute to an Anxiety problem.

Here is a list based on this Scale, and you can use it to measure your stress level. Think back over your life in the two years leading up to your first experience of panic, phobia, obsession or GAD and tick any of the items that you experienced. Add up your score – if it comes to more than 150 then you have experienced more than average stress, and if you score more than 300 then you’ve had a lot of stress.

Don’t dismiss this. People will often say ‘yes, but I should have been able to cope’. There is no should about it.