Not a Typical Recovery Story You've probably read stories about how people cured anxiety. Those stories surely made you feel hopeful about recovery in general. But at the end of the day, when anxiety returned, all of those stories went down the drain. Why does that happen? The reason is simple. What most of those stories don't talk about is the exact step-by-step guide on how they cured their anxiety. They don't talk about what stages of recovery they went through. What mistakes they made that prevented their recovery. What changes helped them progress in recovery. And last but not least, how to know if anxiety is cured or not? But don't worry because today I'm going to share with...
Fear of "jumping" As I was waiting for the train to arrive, an extremely disturbing, intrusive thought appeared in my head out of nowhere. The thought was very short and straightforward: “Jump!” It was at the height of my anxiety disorder and that mere thought triggered my anxiety to go over the roof. I rushed towards the stairs and went up to the waiting area of the station. I wanted to avoid that thought from provoking me to do something that I never wanted to happen. As you can tell, I eventually didn’t do it. Moreover, I no longer struggle with OCD intrusive thoughts. But what is the power behind the belief that we can act on these thoughts? Desire,...
My fear of flights If you’ve watched a video about my recover story (watch it here), you know that my journey to recovery pretty much started after an 18 hour long flight. I had two panic attacks and high anxiety throughout this flight. But it was a pivotal point that sparked the “aha” moment in me and got me motivated to start facing my panic attacks on a daily basis. However, back then it was a frightening experience and one that I certainly wasn’t looking forward to. Therefore, I want to explain how I ended up having two panic attacks and how to best deal with panic attacks on the flight. The buildup to my panic attacks started the moment...
Lie #1: Diet and exercise is the way out While diet and exercise are good supplements to overall recovery, they are not as important as actually gradaully exposing yourself to situations where your health anxiety will be challanged. Challanging your anxious brain is a hard thing to do. So we tend to take the easier path of following strict diets and doing rigorous exercise. Therefore, the efficient way is to follow an average diet and do basic exercise. It's you ability to put effort in challanging your belief about symptoms that will make the difference. Lie #2: My anxiety is the worst kind No matter how bad you think you have it, there will always be someone else who has...
Health anxiety is overwhelming Health anxiety makes you feel overwhelmed with symptoms and thoughts associated with them. Life becomes burdensome and deprived of joy, as you get annoyed by literally everything, as overcoming health anxiety seems like an impossible task. However, desperation makes you vulnerable and ready to do anything just to soothe the discomfort. You try distracting yourself, avoiding anxiety, suppressing anxious thoughts and for a moment these coping techniques may work. However, problem with distraction, avoidance and suppression is that you will fully attribute your "success" with anxiety to the behavior (let’s say breathing) not to yourself. This is crucial. So next time you feel overwhelmed, guess what you will do? The same exact behavior that helped you...
