Relax and ease your mind. Let the endless stream of foolish “fear based” thoughts cascade and laugh at them. Allow yourself to “what if” every situation to no end and then relax again. Nothing you fear is going to hurt you, just like the kids harsh words in school, but they will sting if you allow them to. But that’s ok because they cannot hurt you!

Scary can’t hurt you nor can these panic episodes. Don’t feel guilty as you have nothing guilty about. You body needs some time to stand down from the alert you put it on and you have to embrace the panic episodes lie an old friend, as hard as that may sound. You don’t need to do anything to be cured except to not fear what cannot hurt you. Much the same way as we develop irrational fears over spiders as kids, you have developed an irrational fear of these episodes, as we all did, and now you have to undo that just as you should no longer run screaming from the room when you see an insect that may be on the order of 1,000 times smaller than you and perhaps 1,000,000 times lighter!

Once you cure yourself, and it is you who in the end will cure you, nothing will touch you again as I have mentioned previsously. You will smell the roses so much you’ll pull them off the vine~!

If your children were being bullied you might tell them to stand up to the bully and call his/her bluff. I would ask you to do the same. Do this by doing nothing! Get in your cozy chair and try to create a panic episode! Have I lost my mind? Not in the least. Eventually your mind will retrain your brain to not fear what Cannot hurt you.

Celebrate this affliction Tanja (though it’s scary!), as unlike most every other malady that can afflict you, this one will leave no trace but your wonderful family and your sweet life when you finally stand down.

Not only can you do this, but you will do this by doing nothing but floating on through, light as a feather . . .

When I was going through a relapse a few years after my first episode, I used the relaxation techniques mentioned in “The Relaxation Response”. The general thrust of this techniques, if I remember correctly, was to methodically tense and relax the muscle groups in your body, one group at a time, moving from toe to head.

This technique worked great for me whenever I felt a panic “attack” welling up. Over time, I stopped feeling the needing to use this technique, though I highly recommend it.

Good Luck!

The Relaxation Response (Google eBook)
Herbert Benson, Miriam Z. Klipper

The thing that is most frustrating for me, is not being able to not be afraid. In my mind I know that’s the key, but my nerves are so sensitized that I can’t avoid feeling fear. However, like you said, it takes practice and I know that I’m exercising my brain as I would another muscle, to learn to cope with sensitized nerves the next time.

I have a question though, what do you do in times of high stress or worry, or how do you react to that, now that you are “cured”? Thanks again

When you believe (not just think, but truly *believe*) you do not need to fear these strange thoughts, feelings and sensations you’ll reach a turning point. I read her books, CDs etc many many times as well as lots of other material. I would never be so certain as to assume “it” will never return but i know and believe there is no longer anything to be afraid of. This is achieved through practicing, learning and understanding. Really facing all of it head on and running in fear from nothing. You need to en grain her teaching into yourself so it becomes second nature. This has helped me enormously and i believe it can help anyone prepared to do the same. Its not easy at all but its so often the case in life that the things really worth doing take a considerable effort!

It’s been almost 25 years since my last “relapse” and I have no fear of it coming back and you won’t either. Going through this I wondered of what value this thing was in my life until my wife and I found out that my son, who has asperger’s, has anxiety issues. Now I thank God that I had Panic Disorder come into my life so I could help him.

Take heart as once you are on the path to normalcy, there is no going back! You are taking “intellectual” control over your primordial brain and retraining it not to fear these “attacks” as if they were real threats. No matter how you much you indulge your fear by “what ifing” your recovery, you are training your brain not to fear what cannot hurt you.

You may think on them from time to time, but your body will not be sensitized to them and will not start the “fight or flight” response. As your body continues to stand down as your nervous system’s activity continues to subside, that sense of “unconnectedness” with your environment will leave and you will fell good again. Any ancilliary side effects (feeling out of control, OCD, and etc.) will dissolve as your body reaches normalcy and is no longer guarding against perceived threats. You put your body on high alert, it responded magnificently (it really did). You are marching back to normalcy and nothing will derail you as you cannot fear what cannot hurt you. It’s that simple.

One last comment; having gone through this experience, nothing will touch you in this way again. My life has been fantastic since and yours will too!

What this relapse has made me realize, however, was that eventhough I felt great, there was still that tiny fear inside of me, wishing that anxiety would never come back, and that fear was the very thing that made it come back! As Claire Weekes would put it, I find it very hard to “let go”.

Could you share some tips on how you “let go”? or have you found that there is no choice but to keep practicing every day (I mean reading the books, listening to the tapes) like some else mentioned?

I have recently (in the last two weeks) heard about Claire Weekes, and bought the audio book Hope and Help for your Nerves, which is available on itunes for the UK. I’ve had low level anxiety for 20 years, since I was a teenager. I say low level because I haven’t had panic attacks or phobias, but I didn’t know it was anxiety. I thought it was laziness, procrastination, tiredness, depression, and would just try harder and harder to improve myself all the time, telling myself off for feeling down or not doing work that I had to do. I have tried so many ‘self-help’ books, but they are all about lists and lists of excercises and things to do to improve yourself (which I then can’t stick to and feel bad about). Although I have been relatively successful, I have been too afraid to go for things I really want in life, in case I freeze up and can’t cope. This is the first thing that has started to work, and its all about ‘not doing’. I have been so much more accepting of my anxiety, and I feel that there is hope. Good luck everyone. p.s. I’d like to know how other people have used the teachings in relation to stress and anxiety at work.