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

There are many individuals who suffer from anxiety that want to know how to cure anxiety attacks. I do believe that as a person who suffered from anxiety for years that I can be of some use in this area. Today I am generally free from anxiety and have not had an anxiety attack in more than a decade. So how did I overcome anxiety? Believe me it is neither as complicated or simple as some may lead you to believe. I did it slowly and gradually and in time I was free from anxiety entirely.

I started Allay Anxiety to teach other people how to cure anxiety attacks as I taught myself. So, let’s get right to the matter at hand and begin to go over some basic anxiety reduction techniques that may strike you as a little unusual.

First, a bit of disclaimer, I am not a professional therapist (though this frankly may be to my advantage) and I do not write books or lecture on this topic. I used to suffer from anxiety and do not anymore and all I do on Allay Anxiety is tell you how I did it. If what I describe sounds like it won’t work for you then don’t try it. There are millions of websites out there and thousands of blogs about anxiety so there is a good chance that you can find an anxiety reduction technique that works for you somewhere else. Remember, I just tell you what I know for a fact worked for me.

So, disclaimer out of the way, let’s get back to how to cure anxiety attacks. Now, when I suffered from panic attacks there was a definite escalation that took place as I became overtaken with anxiety. I started to think about a topic that was distressing and began to get worked up and soon I had realized that I had reached a place where a panic attack (the escalating heart beat, difficulty breathing and seeing clearly, inability to calm down, etc.) would completely overwhelm me. This was not just distressing to me. It was humiliating. I felt like I could not even function as an adult in the world without completely breaking down. It was a source of a tremendous amount of shame for me.

It was the shame and humiliation that I felt after a panic attack that was worse than the panic attack itself. When I was caught up in the moment of an anxiety attack I just wanted to survive. I was living second-to-second. But, after I had retreated to a safe place and was alone to reflect, I became terribly embarrassed. I didn’t want to suffer from panic attacks anymore however I did not know how to overcome them. I mean, one minute I would be fine and a stimulus would present itself and the next thing I know I was on a rollercoaster that would only stop once I had eliminated all stimuli from my environment. Basically, I had to retreat to a dark, quiet place and re-gather myself.

Each time I had an anxiety attack I thought that I might die from lack of oxygen or possibly a heart attack. Since it was the fear of death which would so often trigger my anxiety attacks I thought what a terrible irony that it might be the fear of death itself which actually causes me to have a panic attack and die. I thought this is just my lot in life. Death by self-fulfilling prophecy.

After my anxiety disorder got a good bit worse in my early twenties, I simply came to the conclusion that I could not live this way any longer — which was all well and good but I did not know how to go about finding a cure for my anxiety. I had no idea which steps to take. I just knew I needed to do something even if that meant I would have to commit suicide, an idea that filled me with both terror and hope. I was a nervous wreck.

What made things so much more embarrassing was the fact that my panic attacks often occurred at very inopportune moments. I can’t stress how screwed up I thought that I was. And this made me feel very much like I was defective. Basically, I spent quite a bit of time, trying to avoid anxiety attacks and then trying to get over one and then trying to forget that it ever happened. I lived in constant fear.

Because, let’s face it: Anxiety isn’t fun. It is physically uncomfortable and is mentally exhausting. So how did I cure my anxiety attacks? Here is the big reveal! I stopped trying to cure them. I gave up. I stopped caring. I decided that I was just such a mental defective that I would never cure my panic attacks and I would always be socially awkward and that I would never have a fulfilling life and that I should just kill myself. Maybe tomorrow. I stopped caring.

It was a terrible time for me psychologically. I had come to the conclusion that I just couldn’t cut it as a human being on planet earth. I couldn’t interact socially and because of this I was well into my twenties and still dependent on my parents for financial support. I simply would never be able to function well enough and I might as well just kill myself and get the whole thing over with.

So, for a while, I just continued to exist. I continued to have panic attacks but when the anxiety wave would come over me I would mostly just ride it out. I would still try to get the panic attack over as quickly as possible when I would have one, however I didn’t have nearly the shame afterward. Why should I feel embarrassed. I am not a functioning human and everyone should just realize it. It was too difficult to try to keep up appearances.

So, as you are following on, you may be thinking, “So what?” Where is the cure for anxiety that I was promised!?! Well, all I can say is that I invite you to keep reading.

Anyway, so I am miserable and have just given up and nothing is going my way. Worse yet I am still suffering from panic and anxiety including horrible social anxiety. Things were pretty bleak. But, just then, things started to improve. I realized (slowly at first) that the people around me were not beginning to judge me. They had been judging me for years!!! They knew about that little secret that I carried around, the fact that I had anxiety. They had known for years. Most of the people in my life had some sympathy for me. But they all knew that I had anxiety. They knew it and saw it and because of this they simply thought that I suffered from mental illness. They could see me struggle with anxiety and most of them felt superior to me. I came to this realization shortly after my decision to give up on life. And I felt just terribly ashamed. I felt that everyone could see my shortcomings and they all saw me as a defective person. Was I just being paranoid? No they (in a non-malicious way) saw me as someone with severe mental illness and most of them didn’t want very much to do with me. Generally they viewed me as screwed up. When I came to realize this was how others viewed me, I felt terrible. I probably had a panic attack just thinking about it. But then something interesting happened.

I realized I did not care. Every one can see me as screwed up. I don’t really care. I am just one person on the planet earth and they are just one person on the planet earth. If they want to think that I am mentally defective that’s okay with me. I just don’t care.

Now, right here we are beginning to touch on the key principle of my method to overcome anxiety. I call it the mind shift technique and you probably want to take a minute to familiarize yourself with it. You see, slowly it started to dawn on me that it doesn’t matter what others think of me. It doesn’t really matter what I think of myself. The whole exercise is really pretty trivial when you get right down to it. Anyway, let’s get back to the story.

So, I have dropped out of society and come to the realization that most people I know thought of me as disabled and was still having anxiety. But the light at the end of the tunnel was starting to emerge by now. What if I stopped caring that I had anxiety like I had stopped caring about what others thought of me? What if it did not matter that I had anxiety? What if I simply accepted that I had anxiety and was going to have panic attacks and be a complete defective for the rest of my life? What if I just accepted that that was my destiny? And in essence that’s what I did!

Everyone already knows I have mental illness, I know I have mental illness, who are me trying to fool here! So, I did. I accepted it fully. I decided that I would not care when I had a panic attack. I simply would not care. I wouldn’t feel ashamed. I wouldn’t do anything. I would just let it wash over my body and when it was over I would go back to what I was doing. There was no use fighting it anymore.

And what happened was that I started to live my life by this principle. I started to live as if it didn’t matter, as if I didn’t care, that I had anxiety. If I had a panic attack that was okay. If I didn’t that was okay. It didn’t matter because, let’s face, nobody really cared either way!

So, that’s the answer. If you simply stop caring. If you stop believing that you are so significant, if you stop with the unrelenting narcissism that places you and your small struggles at the center of the galaxy you will come to the same place that I am at. You will simply cease having anxiety symptoms because you will not be giving the disease the fuel it needs to plague you. You will achieve freedom.

Now, this may sound confusing or unrealistic but I invite you to take a look around the site and do a bit of reading before you come to any conclusion. Now, I admit, I am not the best writer, but if you take these ideas to heart your anxiety will simply become a thing of the past. And that, my friends, is how to cure anxiety attacks.