As we all know, anxiety can cause a lot of mental, physical and emotional symptoms. You can find the most common symptoms here.
But the question is how do we deal with the symptoms? What do we need to do to feel better? The answer is -nothing- I know it’s easy to say and it might not make any sense at this moment to you, but with 10 years of experience dealing with anxiety and seeing many people recovered, I can assure you that it’s the best approach to combat anxiety symptoms. Let me explain.
Assuming that you have been given a clean bill of health from your doctors and are told that you have anxiety. Then whatever the symptom that you are experiencing is caused by sensitized nerves. Your headache is not a brain tumor, it’s the upper back, neck and scalp muscles tension that lead to pain and discomfort. Your heart palpitations, chest pain and discomfort are not a result of a heart disease, it comes from excessive adrenaline and tight muscles around your chest area. No, you don’t have MS, your muscles are trembling from excessive adrenaline. I can go on until the cows come home with all the possible symptoms sensitized nerves can cause.
Most of us with anxiety are afraid of the way we feel. And no other system in our body holds more responsibility for feeling than our nervous system. Unfortunately, this system is the one getting hit the hardest with anxiety. Adrenaline activates and sensitizes our nervous system to prepare us for battles. Our nervous system then responses by tensing up our muscles, redirect our blood to our vital organs and pull it away from the non-vital ones. Our heart rate and breathing speed up, digestion slows down, pupils are dilated and a whole lot of other changes in our body during the sensitized mode.
In normal circumstances when the dangers are handled or avoided, we return to safety, our nerves start to desensitize, our body then returns to the calm state. But with anxiety disorder, there’s a “leakage” of adrenaline. A constant present of adrenaline continue to heighten and sensitize our nerves all day long. Days after days, weeks after weeks, our overly sensitized nervous system will find a way to burn off this excess adrenaline. Paul David in his book calls this a “release of anxious energy”. And this releasing mechanism is felt in every part of our body and mind, hence our symptoms.
Symptoms caused by anxiety don’t come from specific health issues, they only mimic those issues. That’s why they are endless! You go from fighting one symptom to the next. Feeling excited to be free of one symptom and 5 others are lining up waiting for their turn. Weeks, months and even years go by and you’re still fighting with symptoms.
So, what do we need to do?
We need to allow our nerves to desensitize. I have good news for you, our body can do it all by itself – all I’m asking is for you to allow it to happen. Anxiety sufferers often don’t believe that the “things” they’re experiencing are caused by anxiety. They make great effort to find answers by Googling their symptoms, asking for reassurance, relying on WebMD and other medical websites. The more they look, the more scared they become. They scan their body to see if the symptom is still there and will do everything possible to get rid of it. They believe that “if I can get over this one symptom and I will be free of anxiety”, or “I just need to go get tested to make sure this symptom is nothing serious and I will be happy again”, only to find themselves drown in other symptoms later.
By struggling with an illness that is not there, by fighting to get better, anxiety sufferers continue to add stress onto their already tired and sensitized nerves, keep them more and more sensitized. They don’t understand that they are pouring fuel into the fire which they’re trying to put out. Your fire (symptoms) will eventually burn out by itself with time, but you have to stop adding fuel (stress) into it.
Apply A.C.E.R. Method to fully accept and give up the fight with your symptoms. Do nothing to get better. Accept them, feel every bit of them, fall right into them, surrender to them and do absolutely nothing to get rid of them. This will not help with your symptoms; they will still be there for some time to come. But by cutting off the fuel line, your symptoms will subside like a fire is burning out.
This is only my personal opinion since I’m not a doctor. Medications can act like a fire distinguisher and quickly put out your fire but if the fuel line is still leaking, your fire will ignite again at a much higher intensity. This is why many anxiety sufferers experience relapse with stronger and much worse symptoms when stopping their medications. Medications might be helpful for some people, but not for me. I tried them and couldn’t handle the side effects, so I decided to approach it the natural way with A.C.E.R. and I’m glad I did. I’m symptoms free and am living the best life. You can too.