I had this email from on of our readers who needed some reassurance because of her severe struggle with Anxiety. This is her email with names and locations changed for privacy. Please read to the end because the story gets much better.
Dear Jacob and Emma,I don’t really know what I’m doing writing this email. I wrote a very long comment on the article Managing and Diagnosing Extreme Anxiety Disorders, and then was too chicken to post it. I think I just need to reach out to someone who ‘gets’ it, you know?
Anyway. So, about a year ago, a bunch of really crap stuff happened in quick succession – a bunch of stuff I had no control over. I don’t want to go into detail about it, really, but the worst of the things that happened was my husband (who has Crohns disease) had a serious attack which almost killed him, and ended up having to have emergency surgery for that. That was probably the worst and scariest month I’ve ever had to live through.
It seemed like everything – big and small – went wrong. Everything. I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I tried my best to be the strong, together one who dealt with everything, so my husband wouldn’t have anything to worry about but getting better. I managed it, for the most apart. Until he started to fully recover, and then I had a month-long panic attack which just didn’t let up. I couldn’t eat, I barely slept. I threw up everything I tried to eat, and when it got really bad, everything I tried to drink, too.
I felt constantly nauseous and terrified, all the time, and couldn’t figure out why. I felt like I was waiting, in terror, for the next awful, horrible thing to go wrong. I went to doctors, who ran every test under the sun, and couldn’t find anything wrong with me. One of them even told me he thought it was psychological, but they all just sent me home without help.
After a month of this it got so bad I couldn’t move off the floor. I just lay there, crying, so scared I couldn’t even look up. So I called an ambulance and begged them to help. Got taken to a psych ward, where I stayed for a week. (Honestly, that was a relief; it felt safe there. For the first time in months, I felt safe.)
Since then, life has had its ups and downs. I’m doing everything right: trying to challenge my fears, taking all my medication, going to therapy… okay, I lied a bit about the last one. I haven’t been to therapy in a few months now. But I missed an appointment and am embarrassed to call her back because it’s been so long now. Plus, we can’t afford it. It’s been almost a year since this started, and I’m supposed to be getting better, I think… but I’m not better. I still don’t feel like me. My agoraphobia has flared up again and some days I can’t leave the house at all. Some days I can, as long as someone else drives. Some days (rarely) I can drive. Never on my own, though. I’m sometimes having trouble eating, but refusing to obsess about it because I’m too scared to end up throwing up all the time again. (Because that REALLY sucked, and if I go back there again I’ll end up on the psych ward again and back to square one.) I just feel like I’m not ever going to be normal again, you know? I can’t work, and the thought of doing perfectly routine things scares me, so I end up sitting at home doing nothing, trying to distract myself from life and all the scary things in it, and wishing I was ‘me’ again.
What if I’m never ‘me’ again? What if I have to fight to be happy and healthy for the rest of my life? I don’t think I can bear that thought. I’ve been having thoughts of suicide… not serious thoughts. Those horrible intrusive thoughts you get when the anxiety gets really bad, and everything is terrifying and everything you think of sends a fresh wave of panic through you, and you sit there thinking, “Jeez, I can’t do this. I can’t see any way out. I want to bang my head against a wall until I knock myself unconscious, just to stop these racing thoughts.” And then you think, “Why bother? I mean, it all ends up the same way anyway; we all die eventually. Why must I fight and suffer so much in the meantime? Let’s cut to the chase…” They’re horrible thoughts, and I’m not serious about them. I don’t want to kill myself. I don’t want to die. But I feel so trapped. I want to be alive again! It’s been so long since I’ve felt alive, and like myself.
I want to be better so badly, because I can’t live like this. I guess my question is this… will there come a time when I can look back on all of this and not remember what it was like? Will I ever be fully ‘me’ again, that fearless person who thought nothing of hopping on trans-atlantic flights, alone…? Will I be happy and hardly even think of anxiety at all, ever again? Or am I going to be fighting every day with this, for the rest of my life?
Where do I start putting my life back together – is there a place to begin, a path to take to being me and happy again? How do I do it?
Please help. I’m typing this at 1am because I can’t sleep, I’ve been terrified and crying all day. I hope I’m just hormonal or something (always seems to get worse at certain times of the month)… but part of me is so tired of fighting to get better. It’s like swimming upstream; you swim and swim and swim, as hard as you can, and then you look to the bank and see you haven’t moved at all. You’re just treading water, just fighting not to get dragged even further back. I guess it’s because it’s been so long since the initial attack that I’m feeling despondent and helpless. I had so much confidence in me, and that I could get better, half a year ago. But it’s been so long, it’s totally sapped my belief in myself.
I don’t know where to turn any more.
Thank you for listening. I’m sorry that you’ve got a long and rambling email from a stranger. 
I hope you don’t mind too much.
All the best,
Jenny
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Our Reply
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Hi Jenny,Sorry to hear you are stuck in the painful stages of extreme anxiety. Everything you have described is classic, and unfortunately VERY common in this new world of ours. All of the stressors that hit you have overwhelmed you, and the ONLY way leave behind the suffering is to learn the art of acceptance. I know that is a cliche and not something you want to hear, but in the end all of us humans have to learn to be like water – let go, let God, and move with the stream down the mountain side and avoid getting hung up when BIG changes come. Negative change is very hard to deal with, but you can (and will) succeed in re-adjusting your outlook.
The good news is; all of this anxiety and suffering is not REALLY you. You are going to have to disconnect from your mind to finally get back on track.
Ask yourself this right now;
Close your eyes, and slowly ask yourself this question;
“At this very second of time – at this very moment, is there REALLY any problems.”
The answer is most likely no.
This is called becoming present in the moment, and understanding what is real and what is false. Frightening thoughts about the future, and negative thoughts about yourself (or anyone else) in the past is completely false. The past is gone and not real – the future is not real either. You must learn to understand that the ONLY THING REAL is this very moment of time.
Your mind, and it’s endless negative thoughts, are false and NOT real, so begin learning to disregard all your frightening thoughts, and only embrace good thoughts. Good thoughts are REAL and bad thoughts are FALSE. Ever religion know to man points to this. Don’t take your thoughts and mind activity seriously, because right now it’s just obsessive ego thinking that is scaring you. Imagine grabbing a big lever and pulling down to shut off your brain and constant thinking. The sooner you slow down your thinking, the sooner you will begin to feel better again – your true self.
Repeat this to yourself this when you are alone.
“What am I going to think of next?”
Then wait. When the next negative thought comes, say this to yourself;
“That’s just my mind and it’s not reality – it’s fantasy. The reality is that everything is going to be fine.”
Then start again;
“What am I going to think of next?”
At some point you can ask yourself the same question and there will be no thoughts – THAT is when you will feel a great sense of relief. Thinking is NOT required most of the time in our lives. We need to need turn off our thinking AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.
You are going to be OK Liz. I repeat. You ARE NOT losing your mind, and you are not going to hurt yourself or any one else. You are a loving and caring human being who was born beautiful and perfect. You are a very beautiful person and your mind (charged by ego) has hi-jacked your REAL self. Your real self is always with you in your body too. Listen to your breathing and pay attention to the sensations in your body because that is a true connection to the universal energy of intention, and perfection.
You will get through this, and you will be a much WISER human being with a great deal of compassion for others.
Love Jacob and Emma
September 28th, 2010 at 11:06 am
Yes. Your ideas are correct.
You are approaching enlightenment from “the way of the cross”, which is what many religions teach, but the teachings of Jesus the man have been grossly distorted by men using their minds to create rules and dogma. Jesus was a man who realized the truth in all men – he realized that our thoughts were nothing more than that. His many parables were distorted by many a man who was using their minds and egos to define his essence and convince humans that he was the son of God. In reality Jesus was no more the son of “a god” than you are me.
The teaching of Jesus can be very helpful because he was an elightened person as was the Buddha, Krishna, and Mohammad. None of these teachers was the “special son” of any God. They were just aware of their minds and the suffering humans create with their minds. ALL of their teaching were misconcieved and documented by other humans whose goals were of ego and of mind. Organized religion has therefore become a blight on mankind.
There is no “he”. The word God has been abused for many centuries.
The word SIN comes from another language (can’t remember which one right now) that simple means, “to error in judgment, thought, or action”. It was never meant by Jesus so suggest that a human is lesser because of this. The fire and brimestone of the Bible (written by false prophets) is completely false.
To so-called “sin” simply means a person is not acting or thinking as their true selves which is “God Essence, or Universal Essence”. They are acting or thinking via the ego and their minds are “owning the day”.
The other big problem with organized religion is that so much emphasis is placed on words and their meaning. Words are nothing more than sign posts.
When I read your final comments regarding Jesus, Sin, and what you percieve as the truth as according to the people who taught you, and raised you, is a testament to “the way of cross”, and that is OK. Enlightenment can be found this way.
However, in this last paragraph it is clear you believe Jesus or God is an entity seperate from you, and this is the fundamental error of all organized religions. Jesus was not a God, or the special son of a God that was sent to save us. He was just a man as you and I are, and he was no more special than any man. He knew this, and if he was alive today in flesh, he would agree.
You/we as humans are NOT seperate from and entity known as God, and do not require guidance from another man, or some entity known as God that man created with it’s mind. You ARE a piece of the entity known as God. I am a piece of the entity known as God. We are all a piece of the entity known as God. (God being grossly misused since the dawn of human thought – labeling)
One fine day, ALL organized religions will perish from this earth, and human beings will wake up to the actual truth that every blade of grass, human being, animal, particle, and atom are simply physical forms of matter that exists in our universe. This matter all comes from a kindly and supportive place. The warmth of the sun and kind expression you give to a stranger passing by is from this same source.
When we as humans learn to stop listening to the constant judgments our minds make, and stop comparing each other, creating seperation between ourselves due to judgements based on a set of “mind created” belief systems, religions, rules, etc., we will be finally on our way to creating heaven on earth.
When we stop judging and reacting to form (thought form, physical form, situational form) then we are on our way. When we finally get to the point when, “we don’t MIND what happens”, then we will be wholly enlightened.
Don’t get me wrong – if a ditch is coming, we can change course and bring our form to a more comfortable and palatable place that we may judge to be better, but when we judge a “life situation” as a ditch, we are back in thought and unconciousness.
What is a ditch. What is our definition of a “bad place”. Being poor, addicted, alone, cold, hungry, lonely? There is no ditch – just current moment life situations that are going to change whether we do anything about it or not. Of course, we have the free will to choose a better situation, and make form change sooner, and have the free will to “judge a situation differently” – but regardless, all form will change.
Everything you know – your life, your parent’s lives, your siblings lives (physical form), and their memories (thought form) will very soon be gone with no trace. These houses, streets, trees, cities, towns, countries, and earth will very soon be gone. In just a very small amount of “earth time” ALL of this will be gone. No Rome, England, or United States will exist or have existed in the minds of the new physical forms that wander the earth (if it still exists) or other planets, and no memory or human beings will remember it either. It will all be vapour. So what do we need to worry about or THINK about now?
Nothing – just take pleasure in this very second, and dwell in the warmth of the sun, the refreshment of the wind, rain, and changing seasons. Our only true path to enlightment – to our TRUE selves is to be “present” in this very second – our next breath.
I send my warmest thoughts (form) to you today, and thank your for stopping by to visit this digital piece of form.
September 28th, 2010 at 9:22 am
I have been reading through your advice and on the surface it all sounds ok, i.e., bad thoughts aren’t real or anxiety is an opportunity to discover who you really are, etc., but in the end your advice denies reality that we all have to live in every day. It’s like telling someone who is walking straight into a ditch – don’t look at the ditch it’s really not there – don’t look at the way your percieve reality with your five senses because it’s not true, it’s your ego lying to you so you will feel anxious, scared, and have to take some drugs. I admit that anxiety can be a good thing as it is a warning system and a result of living and knowing that you are finite and will eventually die. It raises the question, who am I, what am I here for, etc.. But your philosphy would have us deny even death and prepare for it ultimately by finding the answers to the questions it raises. I agree, we have to live with the reality of our past and future by living in the present. But we don’t deny our past or not prepare for our future. The reason folks go insane is they creatively try to not deal with reality – past and future – and are unable to live in the present. Why, because of what they believe to be true about their past or future and present reality. People suffer becasue they have to be God or in control and they absolutize in their thinking. But, they still need to think and be rational to live in the present.
People need not deny reality but deal with it by changing their perception of it. This requires rationality not a blind hope in the universal mind. What is the universal mind but some projection of your own imagination. Now if you mean by universal mind, God, then you have to understand who God really is.
God is a being who we are the image of. He is infinite we are finite but He who is infinite became finite in the person of Jesus Christ to save us from ourselves (sin). Jesus actually was, is, and will continue to be a real person and God forever. This is a mystery. He is the logos who became flesh. The reality is that God uses anxiety to draw us to himself – so in way you are right – but at the same time he accepts us as we are – sin or our reality and all. God through Jesus helps us change our perspective of our reality by giving us faith to believe in his reality. He forgives our past and helps us live for the future. He in his person is our healing , our hope, our life. In that sense we can let go and let God. He is absolute we are not.