Overcoming Anxiety Attack Symptoms

Anyone can apply the principles of self-help for overcoming anxiety. It doesn’t matter if your Anxiety attacks are mild or severe, new or long-standing. There is always something you can do to start yourself on the road to recovery. What personal qualities do you need?

Commitment: you may be at the stage of researching your options, with the intention of reading through this site to see what it’s like. That’s fine, but when you are ready to start work it’s best to do so with the determination to give it a fair chance.

Time: you will need to set aside some time every single day for working on overcoming anxiety. The amount of time needed will vary from person to person and many of the tasks you undertake will not be too demanding, and may even be pleasurable.

Patience: there is no miracle cure or magic wand for Anxiety, and in the early stages your progress may feel painfully slow. If you stick with it you will find that you do make progress and it does get easier.

Motivation: how badly do you want to be free of your Anxiety attacks? That is what gives you motivation, and our experience shows that most sufferers have plenty of it.

Courage: you probably don’t feel courageous at the moment, but just stop and think. How hard is it to face every day knowing that you might have a panic attack, or that your phobia will haunt you, or your OCD will dominate every moment? Doesn’t that take some courage?

Support: many people don’t like to admit to having an Anxiety problem, but if you can find someone to support you it will help you through the difficult patches. An alternative is to make use of one of the help lines that exist for just this purpose.

How committed are you to overcoming anxiety?
A bit/quite a lot/100%

How much time can you give each day to the work?
Very litlee/30 minutes/at least an hour

Are you prepared to wait a while for the results to show?
Yes/No

How do you feel about living with an Anxiety disorder?
Not bothered/fairly unhappy/find it unbearable

Are you ready to face up to what needs to be done?
Yes/No

Have you found a source of support?
Yes/No

Perhaps you found these questions annoying. Did you want to shout ‘of course I’m committed and motivated, just show me what to do’? Good.

I don’t mind if you get angry with me – anger gives you energy, just what you need right now.

Perhaps the hardest thing for many Anxiety sufferers is simply finding the time for a recovery program. Many Anxiety sufferers are very busy people, juggling family commitments, work and Anxiety in one endless rush. Others are kept busy by their Anxiety – OCD in particular can be very time consuming.

It will be difficult to find enough time at first for actually dealing with and overcoming anxiety, but gradually you will turn things around, life will be less fraught, and you will have more time available.