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

Anxiety affects the mind and body equally. It can shatter your confidence, damage your psyche and bring your body into a frenzied state. I know this from personal experience. And after battling a severe anxiety disorder for a number of years, I have come to a place in which I no longer suffer from anxiety. Oh sure on occasion I will get anxious in the face of a screaming boss or when presented with a particularly frightening scenario. But does anxiety rule my life? No. On the average day do I feel even a twinge of anxiety? Not at all.

I simply live my life and 99.9% of the time I am not anxious. Coming from a person who barely left his apartment for two years, this is a remarkable accomplishment and it is one that I take an extraordinary amount of pride in. It’s how I am able to live my life today, interacting with strangers and “important” people, driving and taking care of errands, doing everything that I once thought would be impossible for me.

So you may be wondering, “How did you do it?’

That is the utmost question and why I started this blog. I think the important thing to realize about overcoming anxiety is that it is something you are going to have to do on your own. No matter how much money you spend on advice-doctors or filling your latest prescription of klonopin, you are never going to find relief unless you begin to take matters into your own hands.

Let’s look at how many people attempt to begin dealing with their anxiety:

First they go to a therapist. Therapists are wonderfully well-meaning people who are suitably educated to discuss psychological matters with you. Unfortunately, they almost always have zero experience with anxiety disorders themselves. Every thing that they know about living with anxiety they learned in a workshop or college class. As a result, you don’t get much from a therapist that can actually help your anxiety, since they don’t know. What you will get is one of two things: You’ll get what their college textbook prescribes for treating anxiety or, and much worse, you’ll get their personal opinion on what causes anxiety.

You may think that a therapist’s opinion on the causes of anxiety must be pretty valid since they are a trained professional. Unfortunately, and this is from personal experience of dealing with over a dozen certified therapists, they don’t know the first thing about anxiety. Their concentration in graduate school could have been how spirituality soothes the soul for all you know — which is fine, but if you think they are going to help you with your anxiety disorder you have a rude awakening in the coming.

The simple fact is that most therapists make their living by having an active interest in their client’s lives. They meet with their clients, get to know them, express interest in their success, and give you advice based on their world view. As a result you end up with a person who absolutely has a rooting interest in your life. They will ask about your troubles and listen and give advice. And that is all well and good if that is how you want to spend your money.

But, you will never get better. Never. Because the dirty little secret of psychology is that they don’t know how to help you. And you will spend two years, or three or four or what have you, seeing your therapist, spending thousands of dollars, and not getting one bit better.

So, if you love your therapist, you may be feeling a bit angry at what I have just said. And, remember I think that therapists are lovely people who really want to help. So, you may love your therapist and think they are the bees knees. And that’s fine. All I would point out is there is a difference between wanting to help and actually being able to. And, in my vast experience, most therapists simply can not help you.

The reason for this is more simple than you might have guessed. Therapists don’t know how to treat anxiety because they have never dealt with it. It’s that simple. They don’t know what actually works, because they don’t know. It’s that simple. So, that said, all I would ask is that if you want to continue seeing your therapist because you like them, ask yourself, is it okay that they are not helping you? Is it worth it to pay for someone to listen? In some cases, I most confess, it is worth it.

So, what generally happens next is your therapist will recommend that you see a psychiatrist or check into a psychiatric hospital. Because your therapist does not know how to help you, they will refer you to another professional who makes their living “trying” to help. At the psychiatrist you will hear the recommendation of psychiatric medication. You may or not need them. I, for instance, have been on psychiatric medication for fifteen years. I am still on some medication to this day, mostly because the withdrawal effects of stopping them are worse than simply being on them. I continue to take them and see a psychiatrist because I basically have no choice. But that is neither here nor there.

So your doc will put you on some meds, because that is all they know to do. Like therapists, very few psychiatrists have any experience with severe anxiety disorders. They dispense medication because that is their job. That’s what they know. Know some shrinks will inform you of the addictive qualities of certain psychiatric medications, and believe me the anxiety meds are about the worst offenders here, but many times they won’t even mention it to you. Why? Because they see meds as life-changing and once you get on them you won’t have to worry about the withdrawal effects because, you won’t EVER be getting off of them. You will be on the meds for the rest of your life, and, even better for them, you will be cutting them a check every six weeks as you see them for medication management. Now, again, if meds have saved your life, I don’t begrudge you. But, meds did NOT save my life. They made it appreciably worse. And, not only was I left back at square one with my anxiety disorder, I was worse off because now I had to deal with the horrible discontinuation syndrome so typical with most of these drugs.

So, anyway, you’re now seeing a doctor and a therapist and spending hundreds of dollars a month. And you are only maybe 10% better, because drugs do help some, and you’re dependent on your “support network” to continue functioning. How’s that sound?

I’d like to propose another solution. And this is what I eventually had to do. The solution is simple. Stop looking to other people to “cure” your anxiety disorder. Start taking accountability for your own feelings and well being. And start solving problems yourself, with calling a professional every time that you encounter some diversity. Because, believe me, they need you a lot more than you need them. In fact, based on my personal experience, unless you have no friends and no family you do not need a them at all.

So, back to the issue, what can you do to address your anxiety disorder? Quite a lot actually. Because the disorder impairs the way that you think about yourself in relation to others it becomes paramount to re-align your personal paradigms. What you need to do is to start thinking about yourself and your environment much differently than you have been in the past. In my experience, the majority of anxiety results from uncertainty and fear — it can be fear or uncertainty about anything though it usually centers around your health, life, social status and safety — so to fight it you’ve got to neutralize it. How do you do this? That is the question.

Now, I use a method that absolutely works to re-frame your universe and eliminate anxiety. However, it does have some downsides. If you come to believe what I believe you will find your entire value structure altered and you may encounter new difficulties on the road of life. But anxiety will not be one of them.

So, what’s the secret?

You’ve got to come to accept your place and, to be terribly honest, your own insignificance in the universe.

We’ll come back to that in a moment. For now, just prepare to throw all of your old preconceptions out the window. In order to fully conquer anxiety you’re going to have to adopt some (maybe even radical) premises. But, I can assure you, this mind shift technique works.

I have dubbed my top technique for dealing with anxiety “Mind Shifting.” The goal of mind shifting is to “shift” your state of mind from concerned to indifferent. We want you to stop caring about your anxiety disorder or its effects because, let’s be frank, the universe does not care that you suffer from anxiety.

First a little background about my case: During the most intense grips of the disorder I was barely a functioning human being. Everyday situations and interactions terrified me to the point that I rarely left my house. I could not drive a car, hold a job or even shop for the items that I needed.

I was always terribly afraid. For me I was terrified that I would humiliate or endanger myself. And these fears were debilitating. Despite the irrationality of these fears, I couldn’t shake them. I would have an episode and it would leave me trembling and unable to “be myself” for hours, until I was safely back at my apartment, alone.

I reached a point where I could not take it anymore. Realizing that I needed a new radical course, I started dealing with anxiety differently. You see, for me and most people with anxiety, fear was based in some way on the importance I granted myself and the opinions of other people.

Think about that for a minute. When you are alone, in a safe place do you often have panic attacks. I did not. But if you surrounded me with people or a situation I was unfamiliar with there was no saying what might happen. The reason for this was my fear that I would embarrass myself or be incompetent or endanger myself. For you it may be a different fear, but it is almost certainly a fear of something.

For the most part, I was afraid that other people would endanger me or think poorly of me. With a little practice, I discovered that I could alleviate most of the anxiety if I just thought differently about the situation. I realized that I was entirely too concerned with outcomes and other things that I could not control. For instance, what if it didn’t matter what other people thought? What if it didn’t matter if some danger befell me?

If I truly believed that my anxiety did not matter, would it still matter?

I decided to do a mind shift. I convinced myself of a few new (radical) ideas. First, I decided that even if something terrible happened it me, the universe would still go on and function just fine. Second, I decided that what other people thought — about me, about anything — simply did not matter.

Therefore, I could diminish my anxiety (to the point of disappearance) if I could convince myself fully of these things. You see, if I reached a point of indifference about my anxiety, if I simply did not care that I suffered from it, it simply could not continue to exist. It needed my fear to feed it.

It was one thing to decide that I would disregard my anxiety, other’s opinions, and my own significance. It was quite another thing to actually convince myself that these things were true. Which is absolutely critical for the mind shift to work.

So I started doing exercises meant to downplay the importance of myself and others. In order to do this, I would do a mental exercise which I invented. I mentally pictured a floating spot in space right in front of my face. This little spot just hovers before me. Then, I imagined 6 lines, like laser beams, firing from this spot in all directions — up, down, left, right, forward and backward. These lines, from the second I imagined them, would fire out at the speed of light from the spot floating in space. Right through my face, right through the earth, right on to infinity. All from this one little imaginary dot.

Because the universe is infinite these lines will travel forever in all directions. Never stopping. They will cover millions of miles per minute and will go on for billions and billions of years into perpetuity.

The sheer size of the universe made me and others feel momentarily small. Suddenly it was easy to think of these lines, going on ad infinitum, and not worry so much about if another thought I was foolish or if I was in imminent danger. Whenever my fears started to creep up on me, I pictured the spot in space, and I pictured the lines firing out in all directions. Suddenly, I felt right-sized again. I wasn’t preoccupied with the trivial things that I used to obsess about. I felt freedom.

That’s how you implement a mind shift. You imagine the size of the universe, the nature of all things, and wonder what difference does it make in all this if I am nervous right now. What difference does it make if this person thinks poorly of me. What difference does it make if I die.

The universe will continue on, maybe forever, regardless of your level of anxiety. You can bank on it. The simple technique of visualizing the spot in space and the lines serves to demonstrate how little your present fear-inducing circumstance really matters.

And once you have mastered the little spot in space, the mind shift takes place. Every time the anxiety starts to emerge, you simply imagine that spot in space. Think about how little “they” matter. And remember, that life will go on.

You don’t actually have to subscribe to these ideas to make the technique work, you just need to convince your mind of it. And your anxiety will simply melt away. Believe me. I am living proof.

So next time the anxiety starts to spring up inside you, do the easiest hard thing you’ll ever do. Trick your brain into thinking it doesn’t matter. And, in a nutshell, that is my top tip for dealing with anxiety.

Now there will be much more on the mind shift technique on allay anxiety. But I did want to take a moment to introduce the concept to you. Now this, and variations of it, are the techniques that I use everyday to overcome my anxiety. It works. And, obviously I need to continue to explore elements of it so that the readers of this blog fully understand how to make it work for them. But…

I have had more success using these techniques of my own design that seeing so-called experts for hundreds of hours. For me, they did not work. And if you are looking for others who can help you overcome your anxiety without costly advice-doctors, I recommend you make a habit of reading this blog.

And, remember, all I talk about is what worked for me as a person with a severe anxiety disorder. If something I say doesn’t sound right to you, then don’t follow it. The key to this whole thing is taking ownership over your own life, so if something sounds fishy then disregard it. Go find another site. Try another method. I am not a therapist and do not give advice. There are plenty of people who can do that for you (and send a bill). All I do is shared what I know will work.

The rest is up to you.