Free Yourself from Anxiety Read Online Free Page B

phone numbers are in Appendix 2.

    Questionnaire – are you ready for recovery?
    How committed are you to recovery?
A bit/quite a lot/100%
    How much time can you give each day to the work?
Very little/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. We don’t mind if you get angry with us – 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 programme. 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, but gradually you will turn things around, life will be less fraught, and you will have more time available.
    GROUP MEMBERS TALK ABOUT MOVING TOWARDS RECOVERY.
    ‘I just felt relieved. I absolutely believed it, because I knew they’d done all the tests.’
B RIDGET
    ‘I kept going back to the hospital for various things, and eventually I did accept the diagnosis of anxiety.’
J ULIE
    ‘As I sat in the Accident and Emergency waiting room … the situation began to sink in. Here I sat, an acute agoraphobic, prone to panic attacks, unable to walk beyond my own street and I had dealt decisively and efficiently with an emergency. Now, of course, I was wondering how the devil I was going to cope with getting home. It was an extraordinary switch from complete confidence to impending panic … ’
M ARGARET
    ‘If it were humanly possible to remove every ounce of anxiety from an individual, that person wouldn’t survive for very long.’
N ORMAN
    ‘My brother died three hours after our mother’s funeral. No one was expecting it, we thought it was just a kidney infection. And my boyfriend died in my arms – he had cancer. When these things happened, they didn’t make me anxious, they made me stronger. When you’re tested like that it’s as if someone else takes over and you get through.’
W ENDY

6
Two Key Skills: Goal Setting and Relaxation
Key skill – goal setting
    Recovery work for Anxiety is based on setting and achieving goals.
Goals need to be realistic
    Are you an impatient person? Do you want to rush in and do everything we suggest in the first week? You’ll need to curb your enthusiasm. Taking on a goal that is too big for you will lead to failure, and you will feel like giving up. Always make goals small enough that you have a good chance of succeeding. Are you inclined to be over-protective of yourself? In that case, you may need to brace yourself and take a little more risk. Goals that are too small don’t provide any challenge and achieving them doesn’t bring any reward.
Choose specific goals
    Don’t say ‘my goal is to be happy’. Do say ‘my goal is to stop counting my coat hangers’ or ‘my goal is to post a letter’.
Break goals down into small steps
    The answer to both the above difficulties is to break goals down into small steps. Start by choosing an overall goal and then see what smaller goals you could set to help you towards it. The smaller goals can also be broken down – there is an example of how to do this below.
Keep a record of goals and progress
    Use your notebook to record the goal and the steps.
Learn from your failures
    Counsellors and therapists say that failures are more useful than successes because we learn so much from them. If you fail at one of your goals, don’t let yourself plunge into despair. Instead be your own counsellor and try to analyse why you failed – this is