Freedom from anxiety, after 10 years searching. My story and offer of support..

[Garlleg8]

Hi everyone,

My name is Dan..and since 2017 I consider myself free of social anxiety and low grade depression. My life is very different to how it once looked, and i'm here to share, for those who will benefit from my sharing, in the hopes I can make a difference. For so long, it was my belief and experience that I would never be free from anxiety, even though it was my deepest desire. I believed even though others recovered, I was simply too broken and conditioned, that I really as an exception. Now I know, that anyone can be free of anxiety, anyone. There are no exceptions, only is it true, to the extent that we believe it is the absolute truth. This is a long post, though its actually my attempt at making what I wanted to share quite succinct.

I suffered with social anxiety since high school, life being very difficult and just getting through each day feeling like such a monumental task. I had no idea what I was experiencing at the time, I just thought I was weak and everyone else around me dealt with difficulties much better than I did. Around the end of my time at university (which was an extremely difficult experience due to my anxiety, but so was my entire life at that time) I went through a relationship breakup, that in simple terms, completely and utterly shattered my reality. While being plunged into a deep depression, I went through an intense experience which changed everything I knew about myself and my experience. During this experience, it was as if the weight of all my combined worrying and suffering, collapsed in on itself, and I experienced myself completely free of anxiety, depression, worry. I saw for the first time, who I truly was. I had believed myself to simply be this anxious person, to be weak, and be sad, to be afraid. In those moments I simply knew directly, that it wasn’t true, that in truth I contained within myself everything that I was searching for, already. I saw that anxiety was simply added on top of the freedom I already had. I saw this was true for everyone. Not just for me, but as a universal principle of how human beings work. Even though my anxiety and depression returned, the knowing that I could be free from anxiety, and how beautiful that experience was, did not leave me.

With this knowing, I spent the next many years with my life completely on hold, looking, searching, to find the solution to the freedom I knew existed. I tried many ‘approaches’ and methods, and even though they had some effectiveness and were of a relative help, none could get to the root and give me the freedom I knew was available. Actual freedom. It was only coming across a different understanding of anxiety itself, that pointed to the root behind anxiety, instead of trying to manipulate the symptoms of anxiety, did anything begin to truly change. Unfortunately without support or guidance in this, it was a long process for me, with a lot of desperation and misunderstanding. But after 10 years after beginning my journey, after seeing clearly the nature of anxiety, my life began to change dramatically, from that in 2017 onwards. There was a period of readjustment, but I began to live my life again, with anxiety being no concern for me, not out of effort, but as a natural consequence of this change. It was as if everything looked different to me now, even though nothing had changed on the outside. There was a lightness and ease about life, a simple flowing where before there was nothing but forcing and resistance. It was the biggest shift I have and possibly will ever experience in my life, and all from seeing directly the misunderstandings about where my experience was coming from, and how I was innocently creating my experience. There was no doing, methods or effort involved, just a realisation of what was true, before all the concepts, ideas and beliefs I had about my anxiety and experience. And I can’t put into words, just how liberating that was, how little there now was to do about managing myself, about fixing myself. Where there was once only noise and confusion, there was now this beautiful peace, quietness and feeling of contentment, It was like waking up for the first time, out of some nightmare that I had been trying to escape. For the first time since I could remember, I wasn’t living in a nightmare in my head, but actually present to reality, curious and alive, a part of life instead of separate from it.

It’s been a few years now, at first I didn’t know how to best share my experience and this understanding with others. I trained as a personal coach, in order to most effectively support others in seeing and realising for themselves, the understanding that creates transformation. My desire has always been to help others to overcome anxiety. Not to just manage, to cope, but to fully overcome it, to understand the true nature of it and to be free of it being a problem in their life, for good. I am working with others already as a personal coach but not specifically for anxiety. But I am so deeply drawn to specifically helping those who have had similar experiences to my own, experiences which were the entire focus of my life for so much of it. So I am here, not to convince anyone of anything, only to share what I have seen to be true, in the desire that it will point to something others will sense to be true for themselves too. I can only remind you what you already know, at a level beyond all the noise that we hear in our heads. What I experienced wasn’t personal to me, but is something universal to all human experience, and available to everyone. I have seen for myself, how others have discovered and shared from that same understanding, in the last few years. Where once it seemed you were once consigned to accepting the fact you were ‘broken’ and do your best to manage with your experience, now there is already so much out there, especially during the past few years, to show that there is truly a way to freedom, if only you choose to look in a new direction. I believe in the next 10 years this will shift massively, and it is my desire to be a part of that process.

I also want to connect with others who are open, to personally support them on their own journey to discovering that freedom for themselves. I will be doing this for free, as a way to gain more specific experience in this process, for those people who I believe will benefit and would be committed. I will also be sharing this understanding, in the best way I can.
That’s it for now, thanks for reading.

[Garlleg8]

So, here is my first additional post that I wrote, to begin sharing the understanding behind overcoming anxiety:

So, let me shock you at first, then try to shed light on, what i’m sharing. I didn’t beat social anxiety, I simply discovered that I was never actually broken, there was never anything wrong with me. Well being and mental health are actually innate to all of us, we just really really really believe it’s not, that we’ve lost it. We don’t create well being, we just realise we never lost it in the first place. That’s not to say for a second, that any of my or anyone else’s experiences of anxiety weren’t or aren’t real, because they certainly are. But anxiety isn’t just made up of symptoms and anxious thinking. If you look for yourself, the experience of anxiety is always accompanied with the deep desire to rid those symptoms and thoughts. All of our efforts are directed towards resisting, changing or getting rid of our anxious experience. We believe we can’t live our life until these things change, until we’re fixed.
Once it was clear to me, that all my efforts were directed to controlling and eliminating my experience, and maybe, just maybe that wasn’t necessary, there began a little bit of space in my mind. What if, just what if, all these things I was trying to get rid of, were essentially normal, only my focus and great resistance had turned them into a ‘problem’? I had encountered other people throughout my life who were shy, awkward and nervous, but who were perfectly comfortable with that experience, and made no attempt to ‘fix’ themselves. From my own experience now, I still feel nervous and embarrassed at times, and don’t know what to say around others, but now I know that is a normal human experience, that every human being goes through. Occasionally I do some of the same awkward things from before, that I was so ashamed, frustrated or fearful of, but now they just seem quite meaningless, even funny at times. I make no attempt to do anything about these things, because they aren't a problem. Not because I think really hard and make myself believe that they aren't a problem, I just know them for that they actually are. And as I simply be with that experience, it naturally changes to something else, and continues to change..that is the nature of experience if we just let it flow. Experience is fluid. That's how human beings work. But when we believe we're only supposed to have some experiences, we jump in and try and try to ‘fix’ things. And when mess with it we start making a mess. Because it's designed to flow. We can be happy one minute and sad the next. That's not broken, that's just the transitory nature of experience. But we develop preferences, that we don't think of as preferences but as right and wrong, about how we should be. I shouldn't feel this or be that way, I should feel that way..my experience should be different than what it is. Then we have created a problem.
This is a radical understanding compared to traditional psychology, which bases it’s approach on the understanding that there is a problem to fix, or manage. But there really is is no approach or method, just an understanding or a realisation, to see. And as a result, that seeing or realisation, the ‘problem’ disappears by itself, naturally, effortlessly. As long as we hold firmly onto the belief that we need to fix ourselves, we keep looking in the same direction, over and over for a solution to our problem. We never look in a different direction, we simply perpetuate the same patterns, over and over, hoping to find something new. But to find something new, you need to look in a genuinely new direction. Even if, everything inside you is telling you no..only by taking a look for yourself, by testing it experientially, will you discover what is true.
If the solution was obvious, you would be in possession of it right now. We have to be prepared to put down what we ‘know’, and to be open to something new. Often the the most simple solutions are hiding in plain sight, closer than close.
And I will share with you, it’s a genuinely indescribable feeling to discover that you are not broken, that there is nothing you need to fix, that life can be easy. You don’t realise until after the fact, just how much energy actually goes into trying to fix yourself, control yourself, resist yourself. I wish I could share with you now what I see, but as I can’t do that I hope you take this invitation to simply consider what if you’re not broken. Just consider maybe, what if? What if that were true? And If you find yourself falling into in a quiet space while reflecting, stay there a moment, sitting with that, before jumping immediately into telling yourself ‘...but’. That’s a place you know well, but in my experience, no real answers lie there.
Again, I will share more in depth, in the hopes that someone sees what I share and connects with something deep inside them, that they suspect even just a little, that it could be true. That was my journey, when this was shared with me.

[Consolida]

It's great to hear that you experienced a personal awakening that led you to the realisation that you didn't need to be fixed. I think that's the gist of it?

I don't agree that this could free anyone, without exception, from social anxiety because I think for some people it's all a lot more complicated than that.

Thank you for sharing your journey though. I'm glad that you found something that helped you - and may help others - although regrettably I don't feel it would help me.

[biscuits]

^ yea, I have been told by counsellors on many occasions that there is nothing wrong with me, my problems are silly, and it's all in my head. I'm really struggling at the moment, but those experiences have made me feel like I can't seek help.

I've been told by a counsellor that I'm attractive and came across as friendly in a support group, so I can't have the struggles that I think I have. I also got told to have a drink to help me to relax in social situations.

It's very damaging to have your feelings invalidated like that. I'm very good at masking (which is exhausting) so maybe that's why I'm dismissed?

I don't mean that it's damaging to have your negative thoughts about yourself challenged. I hope I'm making sense?

(Please don't quote)

[Dougella]

^ Yes, having those types of things said to us is not helpful at all and like you say just makes us wary of seeking further help. I'm sorry that counsellors actually said those things to you.

There is a difference between social anxiety, which is something that everyone might feel from time to time, and social anxiety disorder which is obviously a mental health condition and by definition has a huge impact on a person's life and ability to function. I think people sometimes forget that.

To the OP I wonder if you have heard of, or your approach came from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy?
Something I have found helpful alongthe lines of what you're saying is not trying to fight against my anxiety or berate myself for feeling it, but be kinder to myself instead. My anxiety hasn't improved hugely from doing that but some of my depression and low self esteem has.

[Amara 94]

Thanks for sharing. It seems feeling the need to fix something or putting people on different levels can cause depression, anxiety, insecurities and can result in defensive behaviours.

On the other hand I also think there is nothing wrong with wanting to improve an aspect of ourselves.

I guess it's about not attaching our worth to things although that's easier said than done.

[dustyfied]

Originally Posted by Garlleg8

Once it was clear to me, that all my efforts were directed to controlling and eliminating my experience, and maybe, just maybe that wasn’t necessary, there began a little bit of space in my mind. What if, just what if, all these things I was trying to get rid of, were essentially normal, only my focus and great resistance had turned them into a ‘problem’?.

I would be interested in reading more about that, as I think it's the essence of your posts. Can you give some examples of situations that you couldn't cope with previously and which you find normal now?

Personally, I really struggle in groups. When I go to a dinner party, art opening or whatever other event anxiety strikes and takes over everything. My only thought is: I need to get away, and I invariably sneak out. I don't quite see how positive thinking can change that. I also don't see how the panic I feel is normal.

I'm not trying to argue against what you wrote. It's just all a bit abstract.

[Consolida]

Originally Posted by GirlAfraid

My anxiety started when I was very small, so maybe that's why I feel we're coming from different places.

Yes this is how it was for me too. My SA kicked in when I was around 13/14 years old but in hindsight it's clear that I suffered with anxiety from a very young age because I was so painfully shy that I barely talked at Primary School. I would have only been about 7/8 years old at that stage

This is only my general observation, and I'm sure others might disagree, but I've noticed that the younger someone was when they started to experience anxiety type issues the more ingrained it was and the less straightforward or successful to fix. Also, as others have said, so many SA sufferers have other deep seated mental health issues of which social anxiety is merely a symptom of, rather than a stand alone problem. If that makes sense?

The folk who experienced a relatively 'normal' childhood when it came to social interactions but then developed social anxiety in their late teens always appeared to me to be somewhat more receptive to CBT, ACT and other positive thinking and/or acceptance type therapies.

Again, I'm probably talking out of my bottom here

Garlleg8, it would be interesting to hear more about how social anxiety impacted your life before you eventually felt free of it

[Tonkin]

There can be physical causes of (social) anxiety too, such as differences in the brain:
https://www.verywellmind.com/social-...causes-3024749

So without being too much of a downer, I don't think it's helpful or true to say that anyone can be free of social anxiety (using your Method).

Even seemingly simple issues can be very complex, and there's rarely a one size fits all solution.

I'm glad it worked for you.

[biscuits]

^^ aw sorry for not allowing the quote. Please accept a multi-pack of wotsits as compensation hehe.

It’s awful. I understand that it must be difficult for counsellors to understand something that they have never experienced. I’ve even had one list off terrible things that their other people have had happen to them, which made me feel incredibly guilty. I think it was meant in a “things could be worse” way, but at the time it made me feel ashamed for being depressed and anxious. Feelings that I felt were out of my control at the time, I had stopped eating and was sick every morning (I was 18).

Sorry that you have experienced similar. I think saying that we are attractive and friendly was a way of saying we have that going for us. I think it came from a good place, but it is incredibly misguided and damaging. It makes you feel like you somehow shouldn’t feel these horrible intense feelings of anxiety and depression. Again it made me feel ashamed and like a freak.

Originally Posted by Dougella

^ Yes, having those types of things said to us is not helpful at all and like you say just makes us wary of seeking further help. I'm sorry that counsellors actually said those things to you.

Thank you. I hope that things have changed now that there is more awareness of anxiety and depression. And a lot of people have had very positive experiences

[Dougella]

^ I would hope that counsellors and therapists who are properly trained would be aware that saying things like you've mentioned are unhelpful and sometimes damaging now. Also we could all compare ourselves to others who have had more difficult experiences but that doesn't help with our individual problems and struggles. Everyone's pain and distress is valid and is worthy of help.

[Garlleg8]

Hi everyone. Sorry for the delay in responding. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and what you are seeing, from what I shared. I will do my best to address all the points and any questions people have made in one post. I hope you are able to read it all, but for those wanting to go directly to my sharing on this understanding, that’s from paragraph 5. What I am sharing is only information, it can only be a pointer to the actual experience or understanding, which is something experiential (direct experience), as opposed to an intellectual or conceptual understanding. What I'm sharing is in no way whatsoever intended to disregard anyone’s experience that seems to be contrary, to the understanding that i’m sharing. It’s actually not contrary at all, but I fully understand it appears that way, and hopefully I can clarify this as I share further. It is not about judgement or any denial of any experience, whatsoever, that would only be piling more judgement and resistance, on top of the resistance and judgement that anxiety is already made of. So please let me preface (I hope that’s the correct word) everything that I share, in that there is absolutely no judgement, either explicitly or implicitly in what I share. Because of the inherent limitations of language, which is naturally dualistic (‘right’ or ‘wrong’, ‘this’ or ‘that’, as opposed to ‘both’, ‘and’) trying to describe what I am pointing to, is always going to be clumsy, and open to misunderstanding. I understand that at first glance, what I share may be taken as my belief in something ‘right’, and therefore anything that conflicts with that must be ‘wrong’. It isn’t so. I am pointing to something beyond a belief, something more principle and fundamental. Any judgement or invalidation would be going in the opposite direction of what i’m pointing to, and would have the opposite effect.

@GirlAfraid, I understand, and thank you for bringing that distinction up. I’ll share more details below which might address that. I was very shy from a young age actually, very quiet but also a happy child, from what I remember. It didn’t bother me that I was quiet, it was simply my temperament. My anxiety started at the very end of primary school (so 10 or 11 years old), as we had moved to a new area. It was quite a different environment than I was used to previously, and I started to notice myself becoming very self conscious and insecure. It was the next year though, as I started high school, that things started to become very difficult. I was quite quickly singled out at the school as a target, as someone weak, and so became the focus of a number of bullies. This quite quickly progressed to physical intimidation and violence, along with the same experience outside of school. There was no escape from it, no place I felt safe apart from my house. It felt like sleep was the only rest bite from the experience. This lasted the entire duration of high school. In short, it's something I truly wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, if I did have one. I remember dissociative experiences, and the constant, literally constant fear of being attacked. Every part of me was picked apart, my appearance, my personality, my voice, my clothes, until I was such an empty shell of a human being, I even felt inferior looking in the eyes of an animal. So to question @GirlAfraid, you could say my experience of anxiety was also made up of many years of ‘objective’ negative experiences from my external environment and those around me, too. I could write a whole book on my experiences as i’m sure the rest of you could too. I do remember vividly feeling that if my suffering were to get any worse, then I simply don’t think I would notice it, at that point. And I didn’t feel that as pity, but as the truth. When I think about those experiences now, I don’t feel angry or upset, just feel a quiet sadness for that little boy, and pity for those bullies who must have been disturbed, to treat another human being in such a way.

You’re right @No_Longer_Human, no amount of positive thinking can change anxiety. And it isn’t necessary. This has nothing to do with controlling thoughts or positive thinking. As i’m sure you all know, it isn’t possible anyway. When we’re anxious and our mind is racing, telling yourself the thought that ‘this is all normal, everything is ok’ will achieve nothing, telling ourselves we are ‘ok’ when we are lost in our experience of anxiety, would be us trying to deceive ourselves. Actually, that was exactly my ‘approach’ that I used for many years, in an attempt to correct my ‘wrong’ thinking and to try to accept myself. I was trying to get rid of my problem by ‘thinking’ it wasn’t there, using effort and denying what I was believing. What I'm pointing to, is our relationship and understanding of the problem in the first place. This is where it becomes incredibly easy to hear what I'm saying as ‘your problem isn’t real’. It’s not that it isn’t real. It's just not what we believe it to be.

If at any time, judgement becomes the result of this understanding, then it has turned into something else, and will actually point the opposite direction, increasing anxiety and just compounding more of the same. Anxiety is already made up of judgement, it is already made up of resistance. We cannot ‘change’ what is true for us, we can only see something differently, actually discover something new, and it is that seeing that change occurs naturally, not because we want it to or because it’s a good idea, but because we have seen it clearly for ourselves, insightfully, directly, in our own experience. Then we know it to be true, not because we believe it, but because we have experienced it as so, in the same way that I know I 'am'.

It took me a long time to see this understanding i’m pointing to, because I believed it would have to be something complicated, and difficult to come to. My head could not comprehend something simple, I couldn’t understand it. Stripping away all the efforts to get rid and fight it, is completely counter intuitive to how we feel and think when we are actually stuck in anxiety. The solution to the problem is not at the same level at where you experience it, but at a more fundamental and core level, at the whole motivation behind your approach to the problem.

And here is where the distinction between true acceptance, and simply trying to accept, to get rid of a problem. True acceptance isn’t something you do, it’s a release of the doing that is already taking place. That isn’t something you can force, or even do, only realise. Our anxious experiences are real in the same way a nightmare is real, it is real until you wake up from it, to realise that it wasn’t what you thought it was. The nightmare is real from inside the nightmare, but once we wake up, we know the experience to be different than it appeared. Imagine if we were able to wake up whilst in a nightmare, and realise this reality. In that moment, the experience/nightmare itself transforms, not because you changed it, or got rid of the scary parts, or fixed anything, but because you saw the experience for what it truly was. You woke up to something truer. Even while the experience is still happening. And that is the completely wonderful and unimaginably beautiful thing, we don’t need to change anything, push anything away or constantly try to be somewhere else than where we are right now. We can be safe in our experience exactly as it is, right now. I know how radical and challenging that appears, because it is challenging to what we believe to be true. It is radical, but so is living a life that is truly free, a life where we don’t have to simply cope, or just ‘struggle less’ with anxiety. Living a life without suffering, whilst in the very midst of any experience, whatever is appearing at that moment.

At first, trying to understand that there was no method, way or even need to change anything, was something I wasn't yet able or ready to accept, so I just used the information that I had learnt as another form of trying to rid what I thought was wrong with me. It was a long process of stripping away layers of 'doing', which includes me going through phases of 'doing' not doing, which was the same thing in a different form, if that makes any sense. It was only the seeing, or realisation that no part of this anxious experience was separate from my other, non anxious experiences (there was no right or wrong, they were both two sides of the same coin), and that any effort 'to do' would cause me suffering because there was nothing to do, I had mistaken certain feelings and thoughts to be a problem, to be something I needed to annihilate, when thought it by itself is completely neutral, emotion itself is just a collection of sensations, only by turning them into an enemy, do they become one. It was clear that all the weird emotions and sensations I was experiencing were essentially normal, and I didn't have to do a thing, I didn't have to fix anything. Everything was as it was meant to be, the system wasn’t malfunctioning, I was simply lost in the nightmare, of compulsive treating and fixing what I saw to be broken. When I was lost in the nightmare, the nightmare was truly real, and my attempts to escape it only perpetuated the nightmare itself, and made it more real, and painful. Only the dreamer can wake up to the nightmare. Only by looking back to the source of your experience, will you discover what you are looking for. Trying to use your anxious mind to escape your anxiety, is like the character in the nightmare trying to get rid of itself, it is not possible.

[Garlleg8]

Yes @Dougella, ACT therapy is something that was developed as an approach from this same understanding. I do find ACT is truly effective, especially in clearing up the misunderstanding in what ‘acceptance’ is and what it is not. True acceptance is not an approach or method though, paradoxically it is the falling away of any method or approach, and it is there where the root lies. The understanding I am sharing goes deeper in that one comes to see not just aspects or certain areas of anxiety for what they are, but the entire experience of anxiety altogether. The entire structure on which anxiety is built is seen, one see’s directly for themselves the nightmare that anxiety is made up of.


@dustyfied, @Consolida, I can certainly share with you some of the experiences of how things are different now, that come to mind. Large family gatherings and groups of people used to be terrifying for me before, I have countless memories of how I would avoid them all together. I remember not turning up for my 25th birthday celebration and instead sitting in my car, ashamed and so upset with myself. The constant fear of judgement from others, of zero self worth. Any attention on me, was absolutely unbearable. I used to spend hours thinking and going over scenarios over and over in my head before I would leave the house, if I was to leave at all.
Now, I live a normal life. I experience normal levels of negative emotions, just as any normal human being does. But all these experiences are no problem for me anymore, infact I actually enjoy those experiences that I once feared before. I spend no time worrying about them, at all. And shit happens, but it’s not a problem. I’m free to experience the full spectrum of emotions and thought, because I know now that non of it is my enemy, all of it is ok. Actually, one thing I did still struggle with for a while was dancing when in clubs or parties, I could do that but I did still feel quite awkward at times, but it wasn’t a big deal at all.

I would say that I also developed differently, and perhaps I am still missing some social development that was the result of those lost years, but that’s ok. When I had anxiety, I truly believed I was the most incapable human being during social interactions, everything seemed so difficult and unnatural. But what I also discovered, was that as anxiety became less of a thing in my life, I spontaneously had access to the things I thought I didn’t have. Maybe this isn’t the best example, but when we are infants, do we already have access to our innate ability to express ourselves? Aren’t we born happy and confident and whole, but it simply gets covered over with a lot of shit. In my experience, without that shit we are already whole and confident once again, with nothing lost. We don’t have to put effort in to do that, just as we didn’t when we were infants. And what i’m offering, is that we don’t even need to get rid of the shit, before we can experience that connection. We are innocently identified with getting rid of the shit, believing that if only we could get rid of it, then we would be ok. And we fall back into the illusion, and experience it as real. But we are always ok, we just forget, and with that falling back into the illusion, what we seek seems to be lost.

[Bored]

erm , so how did you achieve freedom from social anxiety disorder? just tried to forget about it?

[Mr. Nobody]

Originally Posted by Bored

erm , so how did you achieve freedom from social anxiety disorder? just tried to forget about it?

yes, I was wondering that too,

I'm not sure if this sounds advisable or could be adopted by another? :

I went through a relationship breakup, that shattered my reality. While being plunged into a deep depression, I went through an intense experience which changed everything I knew about myself and my experience it was as if the weight of all my combined worrying and suffering, collapsed in on itself, and I experienced myself completely free of anxiety, depression, worry.

sounds like the OP had a mental and emotional breakdown?

[Tonkin]

Yes, that's what I thought! Then turned into some messiah figure who is spreading the world of his "discovery" and is going to save us all.

This book has a good chapter on this sort of thing:
https://www.waterstones.com/book/the.../9780330535861

When people have a breakdown, they sometimes explain it as having an awakening as they don't know how to process it otherwise.

In the book, one guy had an breakdown like the OP describes and "found god" despite never being religious.

It's very interesting and explains things like Born Again Christians etc.

[AnxiousExtrovert]

Similar to some others I am a little lost regarding any conclusion to be drawn. But it sounded to me like garlleg is mentioning a lot about analysing why you have anxiety is almost counterproductive to letting the body do its natural thing?

He was mentioning about trauma of the past and how it is almost unnatural to not have some psychological reaction or outcome from it.

I did agree with the parts about running from the route cause and just managing the symptoms of anxiety isn't ideal. I think depending on the situation both need to be addressed.

[Mr. Nobody]

Originally Posted by Tonkin

When people have a breakdown, they sometimes explain it as having an awakening as they don't know how to process it otherwise.

In the book, one guy had an breakdown like the OP describes and "found god" despite never being religious.

It's very interesting and explains things like Born Again Christians etc.

I think having a breakdown can cause your normal way of looking at things and your day-to-day way of living to be disrupted to such a degree that you can possibly have quite deep insights and can make major changes to the way you have lived up to now.
the trauma of what's happening forces you to adopt new ways of looking at things,.. as the past ways seem to have brought you to this point of breaking.

some of what the OP says reminds me of some of the things this guy says;

[Tonkin]

Well put. I think someone needs to go back to the drawing board with their plans to teach us to overcome anxiety.

[Mr. Nobody]

^
I can relate to that NLH
A breakdown isn't something you want I think,
It's a dreadful experience in my opinion,
I've been a half-dead shell of the person I once was after it,

It made me physically broken too, somehow, ..
Like a great shock drives through your entire system,
Leaving you forever a much weaker person at every level,
Emotional, psychological, mental, physical,..

The only good thing that I got from it was to see unequivocally where exactly that particular lifestyle of mine would finally lead me.

I'm glad some people have got a lot of positive growth from that particular from of trauma,.. but I wouldn't say it's outcome could ever be a certainty or an exact science by any means.

[AnxiousExtrovert]

Yes I agree with Mr nobody. To think of a nervous breakdown as a temporary blip where everything is reset and it was worth the pain after is misrepresenting what one is.

That's not to say there are not epiphany type things that can come from one but as Mr nobody said its the actual damage it does that isn't necessarily temporary. Ptsd is most definitely something that can linger from a breakdown.
I think part of the problem which goes for lots of other mental health ailments is that the circumstances for recovery are often not ideal.
From my own experience and I'm sure many others it wasn't a case of everyone running round after me or I am relaxing in mansion with regular therapy and activities to help.

You are often making 2 steps forward, 1 step back, or even worse 2 or 3 steps back because the issues that created the breakdown are still lingering.

[Tonkin]

I guess breakdowns work in a similar way to psychedelic treatments (mdma, ayahuasca, lsd etc) that are used to treat depression, ptsd, anxiety, etc. They disrupt the pathways in the brain (probably not as dramatic as that but you get the point) and get you out of your rut and into a new way of thinking.

If you go back to your old life with nothing changed apart from your mindset, the problem will probably come back after a while. But it could be a catalyst for change.

This books is a good read on that topic:
https://michaelpollan.com/books/how-...-your-mind-uk/

[Marco]

I know of two people who suffered nervous breakdowns and made full recoveries and indeed emerged as stronger people, but it's certainly not something one should ever wish for. I guess it depends on the nature and the cause of a breakdown as to how a person may recover from it.

[Mr. Nobody]

^

yes,. that's probably too,.
it is a cliché, but nonetheless, it is often true.

we had mental health week announced in our work,. by our boss,

the very next day, when he came out to make his daily routine announcement, he looked at me and sarcastically remarked, "oh, it's great to see all the happy smiling faces"
yeah,. thanks boss,. great attitude to take in mental health week...

[Tonkin]

I'd guess that how people respond to a crisis, which might be called a breakdown, is the level of support they have.

If you have a "breakdown" and then lose your job due to it, start drinking, and end up on the streets to cope, you probably won't build back better.

But if you get help, have time to rest, get lots of support from friends and family and use it as a catalyst to change your life you might come out better?

[Garlleg8]

Thank you everyone for sharing what you see and think from what i’ve shared. I think it’s a really interesting discussion you’ve started and people have already made some beautiful points, which I really enjoyed reading.

I’ve never really considered my experience as a ‘breakdown’, but your comments made me reflect on it. For a few years I certainly did not understand the experience I went through. All I knew at the time was during this experience, that the entire negative narrative about myself, all the painful beliefs that I had assumed to be reality, were simply not true. When I describe the entire fabric of reality changing, I am referring to the deep seated sets of beliefs (that I had no idea were ‘beliefs’, to me they were simply a very harsh and negative reality) falling away, all at once. I discovered that when this fell away, I was left with the person who I wanted to be, that happiness and confidence were already there, not something to be achieved but simply uncovered. If you want to describe it as a breakdown then you can do so, but for me it was the revealing of something beautiful, it was an experience that had a clarity and clearness that made anxiety feel like insanity, not the other way around. I know now that it was simply a revealing of the true nature that we all possess, or a universal truth. whether you want to call that a spiritual awakening or something else. But I think I avoid those words because of all the ideas and preconceptions we already have about that. @Tonkin, I have no intention of being any sort of messiah, only that I have a genuine desire to help others free themselves out of the mental hell of anxiety. I can't save anyone, only point someone to a truth that they already know for themselves. But anyway, regardless of the experience of not, I believe that it was only a catalyst for me to see something new, and that is a possibility that is available to anyone if only they decide it’s a possibility and they’re willing to look.

For a long time I didn’t want to share this with others, out of fear of misunderstanding. But now I do have a very clear understanding of that experience or breakthrough, and the steps that I took between then and my actual overcoming of anxiety, over the next 10 years. That process took 10 years, mainly because after seeing that it was possible to truly free myself from anxiety, I made it an even bigger enemy now than it was before. I was now more determined than ever to fix myself, all I wanted was that freedom that I knew was possible. I tried every method, approach, that I thought could take me to freedom, but all my efforts just took me deeper and deeper into suffering and further away from where I was trying to get. It was only through a sort of surrender, or periods of truly giving up, that I began to see this understanding that i’m pointing to, as a possibility. At another other point my mind was too attached to the idea that I needed to fix myself, and I had no support that could have guided me to this understanding in a far quicker and easier way.

So, back to the realisation of this understanding itself, and the overcoming of anxiety. What i’m sharing is not a method or approach, which is why it seems so abstract. I’m sharing an understanding, which is very distinct from an approach. I’m pointing to a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem itself, as opposed to simply another method or solution to the assumed problem. An understanding isn’t something you do or apply, it’s something you realise, and with that realisation, change occurs naturally. Take for example if we weren’t aware of the principle of gravity, and we decided that it was strange that we kept falling down when there was nothing supporting us, instead of simply floating. Just imagine if that were true. We found this a problem, and so from this assumption we came up with all sorts of methods and approaches to deal with this problem. We had all sorts of worries and thinking about this, and it caused huge amounts of distress and fear at the thought of what could happen to us with this dangerous phenomenon in our lives. We did our very best to avoid this damaging and strange thing from happening, and hoped one day to get rid of it altogether. Then one day, someone came along and shared the principle of gravity, that it was simply a result of the interaction between masses. When this was discovered to be true, that this was no mistake but a normal function, it became clear that there were no methods necessary to control or change it, and we didn’t have to do anything about it. Suddenly it didn’t make sense to do the things that we were doing before, because despite how scary gravity seemed sometimes. Upon the remembering that this was how it is meant to be, that there wasn’t something broken, but simply a misunderstanding of the experience of gravity, the ‘problem’ started to fall away. Each time we got into a ‘problem’, we saw that we had mistaken the experience of gravity for a problem that had to be solved, we had gotten lost again in a misunderstanding. We didn’t have to ‘do’ anything about that, we didn’t have to use any methods or approaches, all of those would just be perpetuating the misunderstanding that we were actually experiencing a real ‘problem’, taking us further away from the fact that we never had a problem to fix in the first place.

The more we desire to fix, the further we fixate on solving a problem that never existed in the first place. It is not about ignoring our experience or trying to make it feel better or less scary, simply to recognise non of it is truly a problem, the problem arises purely out of our deep deep desire to fix it. We revolve our whole lives, all our actions, our thoughts, our efforts, around ‘managing’ this problem, that only began as a set of uncomfortable emotions, sensations, and thoughts, all of which are completely normal, but we mistook to be a problem which needed to be fixed. And with that the focus of our attention grew, we tried to manage it more, and then we had an even bigger ‘problem’, a continuously self perpetuating problem, which seems to have a power of of its own, but at its heart is made up of the desire to get rid of it. Without that desire, there is no suffering, only a collection of experiences, thoughts, emotions and sensations that would flow freely through us just as with any other experience, that isn’t resisted and ‘managed’.

As for ways to point you to this understanding in a more direct, specific way, i'm writing something at the moment and will share, for those who see value in this.

[Tonkin]

What you describe there sounds very like the Eckart Tolle stuff or Buddhism in general.

Something along the lines of all suffering comes from resisting what is.

Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional etc.

It does sound interesting, but I'll be impressed if you can teach enlightenment to people!

And if you can, that it is enough to overcome mental illness. Or do you not consider social anxiety to be a mental illness? Or is your "approach" not aimed at people with serious anxiety?

[Mr. Nobody]

Originally Posted by Garlleg8

I’ve never really considered my experience as a ‘breakdown’, but your comments made me reflect on it.

no worries,..
I was just surmising, it kind of appeared to be some form of mental 'collapse' from your initial explanation, which appeared somewhat similar to a breakdown,
although I appreciate that the aftermath of your 'collapse' seems to have been entirely benign.

now, it would appear to be more of a spiritual insight almost, of sorts.

I do appreciate a lot of what you are saying, and it's certainly quite a different way of looking at certain aspects of social anxiety and general anxiety.

[Aelwyn]

I agree with Garlleg that worrying about the anxiety makes it worse, it feeds off itself. But a lot of what we’re worrying about is other people’s impressions of us, and telling ourselves that that isn’t a real problem would be pointless - it is a problem.

If people simply noticed me shaking with anxiety and thought no more about it, I think I would quite quickly get over the SA. But it has been noticed, and especially in a work setting this can cause difficulties. Perhaps stronger minded people than me could keep on putting themselves into these situations and ignore the impression they’re giving, but I’ve not been able to do that.

[Tonkin]

Often I forget how anxious I get in group situations and go into them not realising I'm going to get anxoius, my mind will go blank, I will not say what I'm trying to say, etc.

That part of my brain that makes me anxious is on auto pilot. It's not making me anxious because I'm worried about being anxious and if I was to just stop worrying, I'd be ok.

That's what it feels like to me, any way?