The Anxiety Relief Program
by Dennis Radha-Rose
Published by Mushroom eBooks at Smashwords
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Copyright © 2004 Dennis Radha-Rose
Dennis Radha-Rose has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.
First published in 2004 by Mushroom eBooks, United Kingdom.
First paperback edition published 2004 by Mushroom Books.
This
ePub edition published in 2011 by Mushroom eBooks,
an imprint of
Mushroom Publishing, Bath, BA1 4EB, United
Kingdom
www.mushroom-ebooks.com
Also available in paperback (ISBN 978-1-84319-303-6)
All rights reserved. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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Contents
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BEFORE YOU BEGIN
The Anxiety Relief Program is not a substitute for professional attention, but a guide to self-help intended for those who suffer from any form of anxiety to a not overly severe degree. Those whose anxieties and symptoms are acute should take medical advice before doing the Program. The author or publisher cannot be held responsible for the consequences of following any of the suggestions made in this book or of doing any of the exercises in it.
Selecting your program
Read the whole book through before you try any of the exercises. Then, using the questionnaires, identify your symptoms. This will give you a guide to the type of anxiety you have, though this is not a medical diagnosis. Then turn to Chapter 8, “Your program” select those exercises you want to start with. You may want to change them later as you try them out.
Psychic and other illness
If you are having or have had any treatment for anxiety, many of the exercises may not be suitable for you. If under these circumstances you still want to do the program, you should refer to your doctor first. You should also consult him if any anxiety symptoms get worse or new ones appear. If any of the physical exercises gets painful, stop immediately and take medical advice. If you have severe emotional difficulties or other symptoms you should immediately discontinue the program and refer to your doctor.
Medication
The object of the Program is to overcome anxiety and phobias without medication, but if you feel you need it to keep your symptoms under control, consult your therapist or doctor. On no account simply stop the medication without medical advice.
Legal Disclaimer
Any use of the Anxiety Relief Program shall be deemed to be an acceptance of and agreement with the above and constitutes the Contract between the author and the user. This Contract shall be governed by and interpreted in all respects in accordance with the law of England.
1 — INTRODUCTION TO ANXIETY
Anxiety is a feeling like hunger – it creeps up on you whether you want it or not.
Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize winner
What is needed rather than running away or suppressing it or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.
J. Krishnamurti
Introduction? Who needs an introduction to anxiety? We all have it at least from time to time, and if we didn’t we would often find ourselves in threatening situations, for it is a warning signal that something is not right with our world, that there may be something dangerous out there – or worse, in here, in our body or mind.
How the program helps you to cope with anxiety
You can’t stop the waves of anxiety but you can learn to ride them. No program, medication or therapy will cure a severe illness or change a situation such as your bank account being in the red. External circumstances remain as they are. But what we can do is to change the way in which we react to the situation so that the object of anxiety does not control us, which means keeping ourselves under control. Then we are in the best possible position to cope with the outside situation and improve it as much as it can be. The Anxiety Relief Program will help you to do this. Of course, some anxieties are imaginary, such as that of a person who continually washes her hands because she is afraid they are “contaminated”. Here the ARP helps by changing the relationship to the thought of contamination.
Since 9/11 there is a new and appalling cause for anxiety – terrorism directed against us all. It is all the worse because there is no way to know what will happen next, and we cannot do anything personally to prevent it. But we have to learn to control our anxiety about it so that it will not destroy us.
Sometimes anxiety becomes excessive and to overcome this you need to understand why and how it happens. Although the popular (and not so popular) press often prints lengthy and colorfully illustrated descriptions of the neurophysiology of anxiety, we need not concern ourselves with that here. It is far more important to discover from our own experience what gives rise to our anxiety, how we feel it and above all what we can do to overcome or at least cope with it. If you have, say, acute anxiety when you have to board a plane, you will hardly be helped by thinking about what your amygdala, limbic system and other parts of your brain are doing. But you can be helped by the Anxiety Relief Program, therapy or both. It may be early in the book to say so, but though a quick Valium taken at the check-in may help you board the plane, tranquilizers lead to dependence, and so on your next trip you will probably have to take two...
Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If allowed to do so, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained. You can’t think of anything except what you fear. It does not help to try to suppress or deny it or merely to try to distract yourself from it. You cannot run away from it because it will follow you wherever you go. You have to face up to it, admitting to yourself that you are excessively anxious and that this can dominate your life. True, you can take tranquilizers to get over a crisis point, but they only work for a limited time and help only with the symptoms. Tranquilizers do not solve the basic problem but cause you to avoid confronting and accepting your anxiety, which is the only way to cope with it. You can go to a therapist, who will be a help, but even he or she will tell you that in the end you must do the actual work of coping with your anxiety yourself.
Anxiety can get you into a vicious circle
Anxiety, if not kept under control, can change from being a thin stream to become a raging torrent, overflowing its banks and sweeping away everything in its path. But you can control it and so avoid the disasters that can result from anxiety. It may only be one particular worry or anxiety that develop into the “General Anxiety Disorder”“. It is important to be able to recognize it in its early stages and to take steps to cope with it, otherwise it can paralyze your thinking and make you act irrationally and you will no longer be able to take effective steps to protect yourself from danger. Uncontrolled anxiety can lead to panic attacks, which can begin with a feeling of intense terror and impending doom followed by physical symptoms. Or it can lead to compulsions or phobias, which are unreasonable fears of objects, activities or people, these being quite unrelated to the real cause for the anxiety.
Anxiety brings much physical discomfort. This includes shakiness (both inside and outside), rapid heart beat or palpitations, stomach distress, sweating, dizziness, rise in blood pressure, rapid breathing, and an increase in muscle tensions; the intestinal blood flow decreases sometimes, resulting in nausea or diarrhea as well as numerous other bodily sensations. They are naturally worrying and so can cause further anxiety. Now you are in a vicious circle and have a double problem – you are anxious about becoming anxious! This is one of the paralyzing aspects of anxiety. You can’t walk into the elevator or drive your car because you are afraid you will have an anxiety attack – and its accompanying physical symptoms, causing still more anxiety
To get out of this vicious circle an anxious person can learn to raise his tolerance for discomfort and so not get obsessed with the bodily sensations. If you do focus too much on the symptoms you will inevitably become anxious about them and they will dominate your thoughts. You need a change of attitude towards the symptoms and sensations.
Accepting it – “I’m an anxious person”
One of the most important skills one can hope to master in order to bring an anxiety disorder under control is acceptance. It can be difficult but is the essential first step in coping with anxiety in all its various forms.
The typical attitude to the physical symptoms of anxiety is that they are “horrible, terrible things”. If you can learn to regard them as merely “uncomfortable” you begin the process of accepting anxiety and so reduce the tension it causes. An example might be having tight and tense jaw muscles. Instead of thinking “This is intolerable”, try to see it simply as a passing discomfort – after all it cannot last forever. Acceptance is not approval of what is happening but only the process of rethinking what is going on in your body and telling yourself the truth about your present reality.
Anxiety stops us from doing many things we would like to do (flying is an example) but once you have mastered the skills of proper breathing, relaxation and countering unrealistic thoughts, and practiced graduated exposure in facing your fears, you will no longer be concerned about feeling symptoms of anxiety but will simply be able to do whatever you choose to do as if you had no anxiety and are free of all the restrictions you used to impose on yourself. You can honestly ask yourself if you would do a certain thing if you did not have anxiety. If the answer is “Yes”, you can simply do it. This is the ultimate acceptance and freedom from any bonds that anxiety ties you with.
A further level of acceptance is broader and more personal. It requires learning to approve of oneself in a very realistic way. If you are a person with anxiety, it does no good to berate yourself about it. Anxiety is nothing to be ashamed of or to feel guilty over, for we do not have direct control over our emotions. You do not have to keep it a big secret or hide it from the world and there is no need to be ashamed of anxiety – it is something you have in common with the rest of mankind.
The anxiety film
One of the destructive effects of anxiety is that you get lost in it. Your thoughts are so focused on the reason for your fear that you lose all consciousness of “what is going on in your head”. What in fact frequently happens is that you make a “film” of the future events about which you are so anxious and run it over and over again. Because you yourself are the script writer, producer and director all in one you can change or add new scenes and details to the film, which gets nearer and nearer to a catastrophe every time you run it. The leading role is always taken by the same player – yourself. But it won’t earn you an Oscar, that’s for sure.