Allay Anxiety|How to Deal with Anxiety, Cope without Drugs… Thrive!

At some point I need to start addressing anxiety medications because this is a subject that I am an expert on. I want to get out the disclaimer right at the top however that I am not a doctor and I do not take any personal responsibility for an decisions that you choose to make regarding your treatment. What I will do is to tell you what has happened to me and you will hopefully be able to learn from my story.

The first thing that you need to be aware of when talking to medical professionals is that, in the vast majority cases, they will not have had any personal experience with the medications that they prescribe. I would say that this is true in the vast majority of cases regarding psychiatrists and even more the case when dealing with your family doctor. Furthermore, doctors regard personal anecdotes from mental health consumers with suspicion and often your claims, if they fly in the face of the doctor’s convictions, will be entirely disregarded.

Also, it is pretty important that you remember that doctors make their living dispensing medications — certainly psychiatrists do. Most doctors will diagnose you with a mental illness with the expectation that you will then need to visit them on a regular basis (for the rest of your life) to manage the medications that you will need to take for life to avoid relapse. I do not say this to insinuate that doctors will not try to do what is in your best interest — they will. However they will predominantly pursue a course of treatment that is in BOTH your best interest (as they see it) and in their best interest. It is important that you be aware of this fact.

The main point that I discovered in being treated by more than a dozen doctors, psychiatrists and therapists — I have been seen by some of the top psychiatrists in several cities as well as been a patient in one of the most prestigious mental health clinics in the world — is that the professionals know a lot less about the medications than I do. The reason for this is that I have been prescribed more than a dozen psychiatric medications of many varieties. And I have made friendly with countless people who also take such medications. What I experienced myself and what I heard from others who have been prescribed psych meds does not fit with what I have been told by psychiatrists. This is because the doctors have NEVER taken the medications. They go on the reports from the manufacturers and clinical studies. At this point, I quite certain that I trust my own lying eyes more than I trust what comes out of Pfizer’s mouth or the mouth of a drug study.

I can not stress how important this fact is. Why would you take an anxiety cure from a person who has NOT used it to cure their own anxiety? In this way the mental health establishment is horribly flawed. In fact, I have always thought that AA (alcoholics anonymous) used a much better model whereby people who actually had personal experience in solving my problem could give me advice. Instead I pay a psychiatrist $200 an hour to have him explain to me how to cure a problem that he has never faced. At the end of the day I am not any better and he drives home in his Lexus. Clearly this is a good deal for both of us?!

I do actually want to talk a little bit about my experience with anxiety medications. When I was seventeen I started to have some serious social anxiety. I ended up being brought to my first shrink who explained that this was treatable with medication and that I should start taking a benzodiazepine daily. He started me on klonopin. This really helped for the first few months but after a while it stopped working. I mean I could not tell any difference in my anxiety levels when I took it. So I decided that I should get off it. However, this proved extremely difficult. I could not get off of it without having horrible withdrawal effects. I late learned that benzos have a horrible withdrawal syndrome associated with them. I actually had to be medically detoxed off of them with a course of barbituates. This was entirely unpleasant I can assure. Today, I do not take any benzos and my level of anxiety is certainly not any worse. In short I had to go through a very unpleasant withdrawal syndrome that lasted months (months and months of suffering) because… I am not sure why? Because my expensive doctor thought that they would help. He was entirely wrong.

I was also put on an SSRI to help with generalized anxiety. I have been on countless SSRIs and SNRIs. This turned out to be disastrous. Today, I am no longer on the SRNI (I was on effexor until recently) and I am grateful. However the process of getting off of these medications has been hellacious. I can not in good conscious recommend anyone get on anxiety medications at any time. There are ways to manage to anxiety without medication. There are countless techniques that you can use that will WORK better than anxiety meds.

The thing about anxiety medications is that they do NOT work. Not only do they not work, they come with horrific side effects that are, in most cases, far WORSE than the anxiety disorder themselves. Finally, the fact of the matter is that once you develop a dependence to any of these medications, you will need to continue to take them until you die or develop diabetes or go blind. And expect to weight 300 pounds when that happens.

If there is one thing that I would preach is that develop a sense of personal responsibility and begin to learn acceptance. Sometimes the best thing to do is to just stop making your situation worse. I know that in my case, there has been untold damage that has been the direct result of my taking anti anxiety medications. I hope that no one has to go through all of the pain and suffering that I have gone through — so needlessly — so that I could be a luxury consumer of mental health services.

Because of the fact that I was born into an affluent family, I have been able to consume mental health services that most people might not be able to do. I have been to clinics for many weeks that cost more than $1000 a day. I have spent more than $500,000 in my life on mental health services. All I can say is that I AM NO BETTER FOR IT. If you have not been able to afford such luxuries you may think yourself at a disadvantage. I would beg to differ. Because, the fact is, when you are at a renown mental health institution you naturally proceed under the illusion that the doctors there KNOW HOW TO TREAT ANXIETY. Because of this you are willing to try their prescription cures, despite the horror stories you may have heard from others, because you want to get better and you think that they can help you. The fact is that they CAN NOT HELP YOU. They do not know how.

I want to repeat what I have said. I have spent more than $500,000 in my life on mental health services and I honestly believe that I would be in better shape today had I never spent $1. Without exception all of the advice that I have been given has been wrong and all of the claims that were sold to me have been false. The worst part about it was that I desperately wanted to believe because in some cases I was hopeless. I wanted to ignore the fact that their promises were not coming true. But after ten years being passed around by doctors I simply have come to see the truth.

If you are struggling with anxiety, I can save you a lot of time and money with the following word: Acceptance. Accept that you have an anxiety disorder and take steps to treat it. However, if you get involved with anti anxiety meds just be prepared for your life to get a whole lot worse.

Oh, if I had a dollar for each time I thought to myself, “Anxiety is ruining my life.” For I can not recount how many times those words ran through my brain or escaped from my lips. In fact, it even got to the point that I believed I would just have to accept my misery, my glum lot in life, and play out my hand.

Is that you? I bet it is. And you probably want me to tell you that you CAN overcome your anxiety and that overcoming anxiety is easy and, even better, that I can sell you a program or book that will show you exactly how to do it. Boy, you are bound to be disappointed. You know why? Because I can’t cure your anxiety! But there are things that YOU can do to cure your anxiety but they are not easy. Working on yourself is hard. It is hard like coal mining is hard and everyday you have to hit the mines. There is no break, there is no reprieve. I know that my health is entirely contingent on the fact that I do the things it takes to maintain my mental compentency.

So, who am I? Good question. I am a fellow sufferer of anxiety. Only I had it worse than you do. After my first hospitalization my doctor remarked that I might have the most severe case of anxiety he had ever seen. I had been a wreck for sometime, though it was my social anxiety that was especially debilitating. I had taken all the normal steps, and luckily why parents had been pretty financially successful so I had access to many options and therapies that many people do not.

I saw a psychiatrist. He prescribed some benzodiazepines for my symptoms. The first few days were nothing but pleasant. My anxiety symptoms lessened. I even enjoyed the easy, relaxed feeling that the drug provided. However, it did not last. Soon my anxiety came back, first in social situations and then later full blown, and I found I had developed a new problem. Along with my anxiety, I had developed a powerful dependence on the clonazepam.

I thought that just having an anxiety disorder was unpleasant enough. It became a whole new ball game when I found myself completely addicted to benzodiazepines. This was a whole new hell, believe me. Words simply can not explain the misery brought on by benzo withdrawal symptoms. And this wasn’t a passing phenomenon. I suffered from benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome for more than two years. It was beyond awful. It was worse, in fact, than my anxiety disorder in the first place.

Quick aside: If you doctor is putting you a regular dosing of benzos — klonopin, xanax, valium, whatever — do the research before you do damage to your body that you will have difficulty coming back from.

So anyway, I started to see a psychiatrist and my condition improved somewhat with medication. So I started to see a therapist to work on “core issues” and really get to the bottom of it. But that was a joke. Sure, my therapist was a nice guy. He had an interesting world view and he took an active interest in me. But what he did not do was help. Finally, I stopped seeing him.

Today I do not see therapists. I do not pay people to have them share their world view with me. Instead I decided to take matters into my own hands. And if I didn’t make that decision I would still be suffering from my anxiety disorder in full force. For, I discovered that therapists and doctors they can only help so much. Most of the work you have to do yourself. If you want to overcome your anxiety, you are going to have to take action.

The question I get is how do I do that. Well, let me ask, have you even looked for an answer to your solution or are you waiting for someone to solve it for you? Because there are plenty of people who will trade you false hopes for cash. Your cash. But if you take action and find the answers yourself, you will be so-much-the-better.

You see, there are sites like this and countless others where people share the exact steps that they took to overcome their anxiety disorders. Oh sure they had some help from professionals, but they learned the majority of the techniques from other anxiety sufferers. We are a great community, these people who used to suffer from anxiety disorders, and we work together to help others out of their own situation. But, the thing is, you have to be willing to do the work. You can’t be closed off. You have to devour every website on anxiety and every blog and start learning. The internet is the best source of information since the dawn of man and you can take advantage of it.

So, read this site and read other sites like it. Learn from those among us who have re-taken their lives. And, with work you can join us.

One of the circumstances which provoked my anxiety to an extreme was being in the workplace. I struggled with intrusive thoughts about what others may be thinking of me and whether I was doing my job to the satisfaction of my boss. For me one of the most embarrassing elements of the disorder was having to muddle through workplace anxiety.

At the time I wondered just what there was to be anxious about. In my rational mind I knew that I was a competent employee and that I was generally liked and respected by my co-workers. There was simply no need for workplace anxiety.

Still, during nearly every shift some situation would arise and the symptoms would begin to present themselves; My palms would sweat, I’d get a lump in my throat, I’d become paranoid that I was somehow embarrassing myself and I would have difficulty thinking clearly.

I worked in a customer service capacity and, paradoxically, it was dealing with the customers that would often bring the most relief. I knew that the customers would only be present in the shop for a short while. I knew that my interaction with them would last only a few minutes and then I’d never see them again. I somehow convinced myself that what they thought didn’t really matter. And without the fear of judgment, I was able to successfully interact with them.

However, with my co-workers the anxiety was unrelenting. I always felt as if I didn’t belong in the workplace at all, that my co-workers were all superior to me in some way. And with these thoughts in the back of my mind, I could never find myself at ease with them.

But by far by biggest struggle with workplace anxiety was with my boss. I could never find my comfort spot with the man. I felt inferior and lacking and could barely look him in the eye. The fact that I could be fired by this guy at any time wreaked havoc with my sense of comfort. I thought at any moment he would simply fire me. I was anxious around him all the time.

I decided that something needed to be done about this situation.

I had reached the turning point. I decided that I could no longer operate under these conditions and I undertook to address the problem. Throughout this period I had been on a regular schedule of benzodiazepines. The klonopin I was taking would sometimes alleviate the worst of the symptoms. But other times it was totally useless.

As I have discussed previously, I decided that there had to be another way. I commenced to get off the benzodiazepines, which turned out to be out of best decisions of my life. I next turned to the internet in search of alternate treatment strategies for anxiety disorders.

What I found online was, quite frankly, depressing. There was rather a lot of pablum about anxiety symptoms and cognitive behavioral therapy but there was nothing that was actionable. I found stuff like this page at the top of the listings on the search engines for the term “anxiety.” Is that useful to anyone but the completely clueless? This kind of so-called conventional wisdom which implores people to go to a psychiatrist, get on a benzo and start cognitive behavioral therapy is putting a band aid on the problem at best. Such a course of action is exactly what I did and, let me tell, it didn’t help a whiff. If that sounds like a plan to you, so be it. But good luck with the benzo withdrawal syndrome and that’s if you can ever get off of them in the first place. So, having not found much useful information, I dug a little deeper. Next I encountered all the websites that were basically fronts for affiliate products like so-and-so’s ebook that claimed to be able to alleviate anxiety entirely for just one easy payment of $49.99. I never was much for pissing away money so I never got the chance to learn so-and-so’s secret. Such is life.

Anyway, back to my workplace anxiety. I realized that for me I was going to have to practice some acceptance. First, I realized that I would never be comfortable with the idea of a “boss.” I’ve always been an independent person. I see myself as a peer to others. I am not comfortable with being in the superior position when dealing with other adults nor am I comfortable being the inferior position. I just had to accept that about myself. I am not comfortable with bosses. They make me anxious. I’ve accepted it. Not coincidentally when I accepted my anxiety about dealing with boss, it started to diminish. It started to get better. Was it ever a perfect, anxiety-free relationship like the kind I have with a best friend? No. But that’s because my boss was not my best friend. He’s my boss. I accepted it.

The fact of the matter is that accepting anxiety is without a do the most effective way to neutralize it. If anything is the thesis of Allay Anxiety, it is that.

My next step was to take a look at other workplace situations that were causing me anxiety and to see what I could be proactive about. One of the main things about my job that caused anxiety was its fast pace. I worked in a busy restaurant where there were always a million things going on. It demanded rapid multi-tasking. Quite frankly this was never an ideal situation for me. I don’t perform at my best in hectic environments. As a sufferer of mental illness I have realized that I have to stack in my favor rather than against me. I need to work in an atmosphere that plays to my strengths rather than aggravating my weaknesses.

Dealing with anxiety does not mean that you have to a passive observer in your own life. You can take action to affect change. For me that meant finding a new job. I wasn’t in the right environment and I knew it. I was being stubborn and trying to “make it work” when it was never a round peg in the first place.

Which brings us to my next point: Stop trying to prove your “normal!” You are not normal. You have an anxiety disorder that affects your life. It may even impact it severely. Isn’t it time you acknowledged that fact? By trying to run against it, trying to do what the next guy does, just to prove that you are functional human being you are actually setting yourself up for failure. For me that meant that the restaurant business wasn’t a good fit for me. Did I take that to mean I was failure? Absolutely not. I just accepted the fact that I wasn’t doing myself any favors trying to force myself to conform to a situation that I wasn’t suited for.

It’s funny. Only a person with an anxiety disorder will continue to do the action that causes them anxiety. They will try over and over again to “face their fears” in the hope that they will overcome them. In Alcoholics Anonymous they define insanity as doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. Yet that’s what anxiety sufferers do constantly. But it’s bad advice. You’re really not facing your fears so much as provoking them and, unless you’re a masochist, I don’t see the percentage in that.

The path that I chose was to accept the facts as the facts. I get anxious in a hot, crowded kitchen filled with screaming bosses. The more times I tried to face the situation the more despondent I became since my anxiety symptoms were not decreasing. Finally, I wised up and said if this workplace is causing me this much anxiety it might not be the right workplace for me. And, to be honest with you, I haven’t lost a second of sleep because of this decision. Once I decided to accept it, it began to lose its power.

If you are suffering from workplace anxiety I would invite you to start thinking more concretely about how to address your problem. I don’t think you need to continue to face your fears over and again to prove some point to yourself. You need to put yourself in a situation to succeed.

Take an honest appraisal of the elements at your workplace that are causing your anxiety.

Is there a way to make a change (or eliminate) those elements? Like me, you may not be a work environment that fits your disposition. If so you will probably be best looking for another job where you will be more likely to succeed. Only you can decide on a course of action, and, since I am not counselor, I’m not here to advise you on it. You need to step to the plate and start to take ownership over your own life. I would suggest that your first step be one of acceptance.