Therapy for anxiety Therapy for anxiety
Related Articles
The black hole of anxiety.
For most people, anxiety seems to come from nowhere and hit them like a sledgehammer. One minute, more or less happily living your life, the next, terrified and distraught, struggling to breathe perhaps, convinced you are dying, or that someone else will die and it will all be your fault.
Maybe you visit your doctor straight away, maybe you struggle on alone for as long as you can, but sooner or later you will be told that it’s Anxiety. Just anxiety.
This doesn’t make any sense. You know what anxiety is. It’s glancing at the clock and wondering uneasily why someone is late. It’s double checking that you put the handbrake on when parking on a hill. It’s not
this living nightmare that turns every minute of every day into a torment of worrying.
Except that it is.
Your normal anxiety has got out of control and turned into an Anxiety Disorder. In other words, everybody has some anxiety, but not everybody has Anxiety. In this book, when we give anxiety a
capital ‘A’ we are talking about an illness, and you can recover from it. There is good help available on the NHS, but it can mean a long wait as your name works its way up the list. If you are housebound, the wait for a visiting therapist is likely to be even longer. Why not try to help yourself in the meantime?
Some people are able to stage a full recovery through self-help.
Others may still need help from a professional to finish their work.
The Black Hole of Anxiety go into the sessions armed with self-knowledge and an improved understanding of their illness.
Anxiety is a black hole.
It sucks in your hopes, your pleasures, your plans for the future and above all your energy. It’s picky though. It leaves behind fears, worries, and exhaustion. No wonder it’s hard to pick yourself up and find the energy for a recovery programme. No wonder you feel like staying in your safe place and doing as little as possible.
It is possible to turn this round. It is possible to come back from the black hole of Anxiety. The aim of this book is to help you set up and follow a self-help recovery programme. Working at your own pace, in small steps, you can learn to let go of Anxiety and reclaim your life.
