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

It took me a long time to learn how to deal with anxiety effectively. I started this blog to help others who are struggling with anxiety and/or panic attacks and I hope you use the tools that I am providing with you effectively. I also want to encourage feedback from my readers. If you enjoy something about this site or have a question please leave a comment, though at the moment I am dealing with some spam filter issues however those should be cleared up pretty quickly. I also would like feedback as to whether you (the reader) would like me to add a forum to this site. Like I said please let me know in the comments, which should be up about as promptly as I can get them up!

Anyway back to today’s post which is on dealing with anxiety. As I wrote last time in anxiety cures I believe that each of us have a decision to make if we want to deal with anxiety or want to just keep struggling on. What I mean by that is this, when you decide to take a stand against something, in this case overcoming anxiety, you may have some other issues that arise in your life and you have to decide if you want to make that tradeoff. What do I mean by this? Let me explain.

If you want to eliminate your anxiety I can show you exactly how to do it, and have been for some time on this blog. However once you learn strategies for dealing with anxiety you may have other issues that come up for you. In this instance I am talking about philosophical issues for my method for dealing with anxiety is different than most others. I advocate accepting your anxiety on the basis that nobody really cares that you struggle with anxiety. Once you realize that it simply does not matter then you overcome anxiety in a way that is probably hard for you to even comprehend at this point. However, when you do so then other problems creep up for you which can cause difficulties as well, and we better address those “side effects” as well.

Here’s what will happen if you follow my method for dealing with anxiety. First, you will begin to struggle with anxiety less and less and when you do have moments of anxiety they will generally be far less severe. Sure you will still have symptoms but the thing about it is that they will not bother you and in time, after dealing with this stage of anxiety for a while, the symptoms themselves will start to disappear and you can live free from anxiety. You have essentially discovered how to deal with anxiety effectively. But the secondary, philosophical problem starts to rear its head.

Once you have accepted your own insignificance in the universe you can have difficulty dealing with life. I know I have experienced this unfortunate outcome and while I am anxiety free I still can not say I am completely satisfied (though I would never go back into the dark) and here’s why. I have fully internalized how meaningless my life is and as a result I have seen how meaningless a panic attack is which is a good thing. But other things like excelling in work or having children doesn’t hold the same appeal to me anymore because I have realized that there is very little worth doing. And this is the downside of this method of dealing with anxiety. While not a certainty, it is possible that you will begin to lose interest in some of the things you used to hold dear. This is somewhat unfortunate but it also just a fact of the matter so you learn how to cope.

I have learned new strategies for dealing with what I call anxiety free living in reality. I have to face certain adult realities in this new life that make my old anxiety and panic attack problem seem miniature in comparison. I felt like I had to take this leap to address my mental illness and anxiety issues however I wasn’t entirely prepared for the resultant change in philosophy. See, I hate to break the news to you, but the universe does not care that you suffer from anxiety. Actually, nobody cares about your anxiety problem accept you (and maybe your significant other, maybe) and that’s just the reality. As you come to accept this reality your anxiety will naturally diminish to the point that it itself disappears and then other questions come to the fore. For instance, what else that you thought people cared about (like your mental illness) do they simply care less about. Do you see where I am going with this? It is entirely possible that you will have to accept a whole new reality. But, and this is important, it is entirely worth it. Why? Because there is nothing like living in the darkness, having social anxiety, being afraid of anxiety, living a half life of misery. There is nothing like that kind of unhappiness. It stinks quite frankly. So you simply must deal with anxiety and not be a slave to it. But then you can start to realize that so little of what you do truly matters and this can cause depression though I haven’t actually seen it cause depression so much as disinterest which is quite different. So what are my strategies for continuing to prosper after you have effectively eliminated your anxiety?

Well, there will be another couple of posts on this subject however I just wanted to let my readers know that I am aware of the fact that these issues do come up. The first strategy to combat this effect is to build and maintain relationships. This is critical as well you isolate even if you aren’t dealing with anxiety you can struggle to stay motivated to fight the fight. This is simply a reality. So you need to stay close to others and nurture the relationships that help you feel a part of. The other thing that you will notice, once your anxiety disappears, is that you are must more able to function with other people, especially strangers. You won’t get those anxiety symptoms that you hate so much, sweaty palms, racing thoughts and heart, etc. You will simply be much more composed. Another strategy that helps you feel connected is to pursue major dreams. Once you learn how to deal with anxiety you will feel very large and some of your problems start to seem pretty darn small. You can’t believe how you used to stress over this stuff it just seems so trivial to you now. And that will happen which is great but because of this you simply realize that many of the old things you used to worry about and get anxious over simply melt away. They just sort of take care of themselves and suddenly you are not worrying about them at all. As a result of this, life starts to seem somewhat breezy. You don’t have the same struggles that you used to have. You will find yourself interacting with people more often and making more money and therefore your financial insecurity issues and social anxiety will melt away and suddenly you don’t have that much on your plate to really worry about and then you start to feel unchallenged. In order to combat this feeling, which will absolutely happen as you deal with anxiety and eliminate many of the petty things that you used to sweat, you will need to develop new, much more ambitious goals to keep you interested in life. On one hand it will be very satisfying to dream big and conquer big goals, however you will also realize that many of your simple pleasures will not give you the same thrill that they used to. When you are dealing with anxiety just being able to interact like a normal human being makes you feel good about yourself, however once your anxiety is gone you will get no rush from simply completely everyday tasks without embarrassing yourself. Those days are over my friends.

Because of this, you simply need to find some new goals for you to accomplish. You will find that once you deal with anxiety and put the panic behind you that there are a lot of things that you can accomplish in life that you may have thought were out of your reach before. And because of this, just to stay interested in life, you can’t be afraid to go after these things and challenge yourself with them. You need to stay interested to combat these philosophical issues I have been talking about, but I fully believe you can do. I hope all this has made sense, for I am not sure if it did. If I was unclear please leave a comment and let me know.

next time we’ll really get into the meat of dealing with anxiety on a day to day basis.