New Year

 I wish you guys all a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

A new year is on its way and I am sure many of us have plenty of good and bad things to look back onto. Hopefully, more good than bad, but at the end of the day life can’t always be all good. We have to accept the good with the bad. We don’t realize how good we have it until we get it bad.

This year has been full of happiness, laughter, good moments, bad moments, some sorrow, a little bit of pain, some new learning experiences, new discoveries and so much more. It’s hard to describe a whole year in words, but nevertheless I have had a blessed year. Although, I have experienced some pain I am blessed to be where I am and to have lived through what I have. I don’t know where I am going, where I am going to be the next year, what challenges are coming my way, all I know is that I will be fine and I know you will be too.

I know this coming year will bring its own moments, its own memories to look back onto and I know that not all moments will be happy ones and not every memory will be pain free, but regardless of what the new year has in store for me, for you, for us we will end up where we are exactly suppose to be.

To look back and visualize how one year has unfolded can be very overwhelming. There are so many things that may have happened and that may have changed, but there is a reason for every change. You may not know why something changed, but you don’t need to know why. In due time it will fall into place and you’ll understand everything.

I look back at this year and I happy to know that I have lived a good year. I hope that next year will be just as amazing, if not better. To be alive and be with the people I love is in itself the biggest blessing. Often times, when things aren’t going our way we tend to look at all the things that are going wrong, but regardless of all the pain or suffering you may have experienced you are still alive and I am sure there are many great things that happened and that will continue to happen.

I look back at 2013 and it brings back happiness and joy. I know that this year may not have been perfect, probably far from perfect, but I lived through it, I faced the challenges that came my way and I did the best that I could and I gave 2013 my best.

I hope you guys have had a blessed 2013 and that 2014 brings joy and happiness in your life. Regardless, of what may come, I know that you will be able to get through it. We all have that power and sooner or later we will get to where we are meant to be.

Good luck!

-Abigail Monroe

Surround Yourself with the People You Love

Now, a lot of what I talk about in my blog may seem like advice that you may think is not going to help your anxiety. However, these are things that I have learned a long the way and things that may seem so simple and easy, but work like a charm.

Surround yourself with the people you love and want to spend time with. I know that if I am feeling a bit down and I go hang out with my younger sister I am going to feel ten times better. She has so much energy and this love for life that spills onto anyone she talks to. It reminds me of myself when I was younger and her age. Listening and watching her walk to the beat of her drums is amazing and instantly makes me feel happier. I tend to forget about my problems and start to focus on the present, which is talking and being with her and my bad mood is gone. I am so engrossed in something I love doing that I am no longer aware of my problems.

You may find that you can find that kind of relief doing something you love such as, baking, walking, playing your favorite sport and so on and so forth, but I would still encourage that you go out and hang out with someone you love. It is a whole different experience to go out and have fun with someone you love and you just have to trust me on that. When you are doing something alone you will engross yourself in something and be stress free for a moment or two, but you will miss out on the great conversations and laughs you could be having with someone else. I find relief in making things for others and that can be making cookies or decorating something for someone. However, while I am doing those activities I am alone with my thoughts. Even though, I am having fun doing what I love I am not as engrossed in the present as I would be if I were with someone else. Therefore, go out, make plans and surround yourself with someone you love. Someone that uplifts you.

Now you may think to yourself that you are too busy or that the other person may be too busy and so you don't do anything. You don't make plans and don't go forward with hanging out. If they don't have time today, they will have time tomorrow or on a later day. The point is for you to go out and have fun. It can be at a later date or today, but make that call or write that message and send it.

If you live with your family, friends or roommates. Try to get out of your comfort zone or your room and hang out with them if you don't already do so. Talking to people and being around others is a relief in itself. If you enclose yourself in a room or are alone all the time you will only be left with your thoughts. Being with others, listening to them, hanging out with people will allow you to feel happier and much more uplifted. However, try to stay away from people that bring negativity into your life. You don't need negativity in your life and to be honest it is better to be alone than to be with people who can only bring you down.

Lastly, talk to someone about your anxiety. Find someone you are close to and talk to them about how you are feeling. When thoughts are left in your mind and you do not share them they seem so much scarier than they actually are. When you talk about them with someone they seem not so scary after all. When I went to my psychologist I would have so much to tell her and when I would start telling her things that made or broke my life I would realize how minor they were. I would find that those thoughts that had been bothering me for a whole week and made me so scared were very silly. Therefore, talking to someone is essential. Anxiety is not something YOU can alone get yourself out of. You need the help and support of others. Having someone you can confide in will make things that much easier for you and will take away a lot of the fear so find someone you can talk to and talk to them. You will experience relief right away. Try finding someone you can go to at any time. Because I live with my parents, I chose my mom. Whenever, I felt scared or fearful I would go to my mom. If it was 3:00 in the morning and I was scared I woke her up. I would have her come to my room and stay with me until I fell asleep or talked to her until I felt better. Being a little selfish at this point is not bad! Try finding someone you can go to for help and you will feel a lot less scared. It work!

I hope this has helped you and I will talk to you in the next blog.

-Abigail Monroe

Stop Worrying

Many of us worry a little too much. However, worrying is not the solution to any problem and I can assure you of that.

Many of us worry about the future. What's going to happen the next moment, what's going to happen tomorrow or next week, next month or next year. Regardless, of what is going to happen in the next moment or month or year, worrying will not change it. You can worry all you want, but what is going to happen will happen. You worrying for countless hours will not prevent what is to come. If worrying about something could prevent it from happening then worrying is understandable; however, if you worrying can not prevent misfortunes from happening then what is the point of ruining this moment for what may or may not happen in the next. Enjoy what you have now and let go of your worries for the future. The future is not here yet, therefore, do not worry about something you do not know of.

We all know that life is not always going to be happy dandy and perfect. But why ruin the life we do have worrying about future events? The future is a mystery. No one knows what is in store for them, and now is not the time to stress about what may come. You just have to trust and have faith in yourself and understand that regardless of what will happen tomorrow, you will have the courage to get through it. You will have the knowledge and skills to move past the problems that may arise and you will face each challenge as it comes and come out victorious. You have to accept that regardless of what happens life will be amazing in its own ways.

At the end, all I would like to say is that life isn't suppose to be easy and it's not going to be easy. Life isn't about having only happy memories to look back on. It is about knowing that you were able to get through life's challenges as they came. Knowing that you've had your good moments and your bad. Looking back and knowing that you've been through rough times, and still not losing hope for a better future.

Life is about being knocked down and getting back up. It's about being able to be hopeful even in the hardest of times. It's about finding that ray of light in the midst of darkness.

We all know life is going to be easy at times as well as hard. Just go with the flow and takes things as they come. If life is bad it is also good. If life is hard it can also be easy. If life is sad it can also be happy. Life is like a coin. There are two sides and when you flip the coin and it's in the air you never know what side it is going to land on, but you still hope for the best and no matter what side it lands on you move on. So what if it didn't land on the side you wanted, doesn't mean you have lost. Just means you have to try. So even if the coin has landed on the side you least wanted it to don't make the mistake of thinking you have lost. Just move on and try and maybe then things will go your way.

I hope this has given you hope and I will talk to you guys all in the next blog.

-Abigail Monroe.

Let go of the past and stop worrying about the future

Again, I would like to apologize for not posting yesterday. It is finals week and I had 2 finals that needed to be taken yesterday so I was pretty much out of the house, taking those finals, but all that is done and I am back with another blog which I hope will help you.

Living in the present is probably the most difficult thing to do when you are suffering from anxiety. It's actually difficult for many people, regardless of whether they have anxiety or not.

Many times we sit and think about "what if's," what if I don't get better? What if I am never normal again? I have some questions for you as well, what if you get better and what if you are more normal and happier than ever before? What if that happens? You never know what is going to happen. You never know where life is going to take you. You probably didn't know years from now you would have had anxiety and you probably never thought to yourself "what if I get anxiety?"

Life takes its unexpected twists and turns. We end up where we least imagined and that is fine. Life isn't suppose to be planned. The spontaneous twists and turns that life takes is what makes everything so much more memorable and worth living. Nothing is mundane and that's just the way it is suppose to be. At the end no one gets out with out scars. Each of us has bad memories that effect us in one way or another. The bad memories are what makes us who we are. They strengthen and deepen our character and make us proud to be who we are. Those memories give us personality and each of us is unique in several ways. Our experiences shape our future for the better.

After going through anxiety, I caught myself wondering how my grandma does everything with so much ease. Life's struggles and problems do not scare her and she goes on with her life without a worry. When I asked her how she lives life so freely, I was able to hear stories of her life in which she struggled. Listening to those stories made me realize that her life isn't and wasn't as free and happy as I had always imagined. She has faced many problems in her life and those are her scars. Her experience is always by her side which builds her character, but at the end she knows that holding on to worries and past experiences isn't going to take her anywhere.

The moral of the story is that the past has passed by. There is no point in holding on to it and worrying about it. Chances are there is nothing about the past that you can change. It's done and over with. It's a done deal. You can't bring it back and change it so why worry? Just try to move on.

With anxiety it is hard to move on from the past. We have two types of pasts with anxiety. The first one is our past with anxiety, which we are not able to let go of because of our fear. We are always afraid that we may experience anxiety in the future. We remember our experience with it and carry it with us in the present. The second past is the past that we had before anxiety. We carry that around with us because it was our happy past. Even though it had ups and downs we were happy and we cannot let that go. We remember the small happy moments we spent here and there and wonder when all of that will come back to our life again.

We remember the first past when we are happy. When we are happy we become afraid of our past with anxiety and start to wonder "what if it comes again?" At times we feel like "you know what if it comes I will deal with it again." Yet, deep down we know that, that may not be true and that if it does come again we may not be able to be happy with it and there is no need to beat yourself up for that. Nobody in their right mind would want to deal with such pain again. It's not that you haven't accepted it, it is just that you are fearful of it. What you need to understand is that just because anxiety happened in your past doesn't mean it will happen in your future. Just because you've faced setbacks before doesn't mean you will face another setback. Furthermore, with time and experience you will accept that anxiety is just a feeling and it will not take control of your life. I am not able to write this blog because I had a quick experience with anxiety and was able to get myself out of it with a snap of a finger. I am able to write this blog because anxiety was something I dealt with. It is something that scarred me. A scar that I will happily carry with me. It makes me who I am and I love that part of me regardless of the pain it once caused me.

We remember our second, more happier past when we are feeling down. We think back to the times we were happier and wish that we can be the same way again. We remember all those happy moments wondering when they will come back and if they will come back. We compare our life now to our life in the past and assess how much easier it was. If you look back at your life in kindergarten or as a kid you will realize that it was a lot easier. However, as you grew older, life become tougher and tougher and that is just the way life is. Life gets tougher and tougher as we get older and as more responsibilities are put on us. That is one of the reasons why you shouldn't compare your life now to your life before. Things change and our lives change. Expecting things to be the same as they were before is kind of like setting yourself up to get hurt. You cannot expect your life to remain the same and expect things to always be constant. Things change, life changes and we change. Each day, each minute, each moment we learn something new. It may not seem so, but we do. After you are done reading this blog you will have learned something new because you have now read my perspective. It doesn't mean you will apply this perspective, but you have read, understood and learned my perspective, hence, something has changed. Life is constantly changing. Therefore, do not expect for it to be the same.

I am going to end this blog here. I have written the second portion of this blog and I will post it after I have posted this one. I hope this has helped you and I will talk to you guys all in the next blog.

-Abigail Monroe

Self-Pity

There are times when we feel bad for ourselves and that is completely normal. We are not always going to love the challenges life throws at us and therefore we will at times feel bad for ourselves. While a little bit self pity can be good for us, too much self pity can be dangerous.

Often times, people going through anxiety feel bad for themselves. They pity the state they are in and want to be "normal" again. Wanting to be normal is a good thing but consistently feeling bad for yourself is not good. You will not be able to get better if you feel like life has done you wrong.

No doubt, you don't deserve anxiety, but take this as a learning experience. I can guarantee you that after dealing with anxiety you will see things more positively. When I had anxiety, all I could think of was how horrible it was, how life with anxiety is the worst kind of life to live and so on and so forth. Having dealt with anxiety very recently, I can sit here and tell you today that I would not change my experience with anxiety. I wouldn't erase it or undo it. I have learned so much from anxiety. It has been the best of teachers. It has taught me how to live a balanced life as well as how to be hopeful, positive, compassionate and more understanding toward the problems and struggles of others. Most importantly it has taught me to live in the present. It has taught me to let go of the past and stop worrying about the future.

Anxiety came as a boon in disguise. It would have taken me years to learn what I have learned in such a short time span. I do not feel unworthy or less fortunate than others for having dealt with anxiety. I, in fact, have much more respect for myself for having gone through what I have gone through. The amount that I have learned from anxiety is overwhelming. So don't feel bad for yourself. Instead, understand that this is a lesson that life is trying to teach you and when you learn it, you will be much more happier.

Now, when I was dealing with anxiety and I read articles like such where people talked about their positive experience of dealing with anxiety I would think to myself "well then they didn't have my anxiety" and "they don't dislike or hate it as much as I do." Not true! Anxiety is a fear and who am I to say or judge on a scale whose fear is more and whose is less. For each person their fear is overwhelming, therefore, I disliked it as much as you disliked anxiety now, but in time I understood that anxiety gave me the opportunity to learn many great life lessons that I will take with me forever. It will save me from making New Years Resolution only to fail because with anxiety I had no choice, but to learn. There are two ways you can go in life with pretty much anything. You can be positive and take the happy route or be negative and take the sad route. It is not easy to take either route when you have anxiety and a lot of it may seem out of your control. But everything is in your control and that is something I need to you understand.

These thoughts, these emotions are not monsters coming from above ready to harm you. They are thoughts and feelings coming from within you and with a little bit of help you can change those negative thoughts! Anxiety is not something you have to overcome by yourself. Having others there for you, ready to support you and talk to you is important. Do not look at anxiety as a battle that you must fight yourself because firstly, it is not a battle, secondly you must not fight it and lastly you definitely shouldn't try to overcome it yourself. Talk to someone near and dear to you whether that is a spouse, a parent, a friend or cousin is up for you to decide.

But remember that feeling bad for yourself isn't the solution. You shouldn't feel bad for yourself because when you feel like you've being wronged, you are less likely to achieve all the great things you need to achieve. What I am trying to say by this can be better explained with an example so for example, when you are working for a promotion at your workplace and you do everything exceedingly well, but at the end your friend who doesn't do a thing at work gets promoted you will normally feel like you have been wronged. The next day when you come to work are you still going to put the same amount of effort into your work? Most likely not. That's what humans do.

Try to understand that you haven't been wronged in fact you are the chosen one. How ever funny this may seem try to think that the stars aligned and picked you to deal with anxiety because they knew you were courageous enough and strong enough to overcome it.

I hope this has helped to give you hope. I hope you try to apply this in your life. Also please comment to let me know if this is helping. I would love to know that these blogs are in fact helping someone out there! With that I hope you have an amazing day and I will talk to you in the next blog.

-Abigail Monroe 

Agoraphobia

 This is a blog that I have been meaning to post for a long time, but it escaped my mind. It's something I dealt with when I had anxiety and I am sure many others did or do as well.

"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear."-Nelson Mandela

Agoraphobia is the fear of being in certain situations that a person perceives as being dangerous and is related to their anxiety.

For me, I think people tend to have these fear in places where they think they can have a panic attack or things that they associate with a panic attack or anxiety. For example, for me night time, being bored or a movie theater were sources of fear because I associated those things to my anxiety and my anxiety attacks. Wherever, I would experience a panic attack would be the place that I feared of going to so I wouldn't go there all together and that is completely normal. It's hard to forget our suffering.

However, one of the things that I want you to realize is that a bridge, the mall, the movie theater are not the things that cause your panic attacks or anxiety. It's your fear of having anxiety while you are at the mall or on the bridge that causes you anxiety and the panic. For example, I was terrified of the night time because the first time I experienced a panic attack was at night. Therefore, when everyone was ready to sleep I would get anxious and get very panicky. The reason why I got panicky around that time is because in my mind I associated nighttime to anxiety, to panic attacks and to all my suffering. However, nighttime wasn't causing my anxiety. It was my fear of "Oh it's night time, now I am going to have a panic attack that caused my anxiety." I would literally sit there as soon as it got dark waiting for my panic attacking. Preparing myself for it in any way that I could. How am I not going to going to get a panic attack when I am waiting for it? As soon as it got to night time I would release stress into my body that didn't react well with my sensitized body. I would notice every sensation and wait for my panic attack to come. Because I was so stressed and so fearful I would release adrenalin and that would start the "fight or flight response" mechanism and boom there I was with another anxiety attack.

The point is, that regardless of what your fear is you have to let it go. It is hard to do, but it is not impossible. You have to understand that the only reason you get so anxious and fearful when going to the movies, the mall or places that you are fearful of is because you have associated them with anxiety and suffering. The truth is, if instead of trying to fight off anxiety and worrying about how you are going to get anxious when you get to such places you were to remain calm you wouldn't get anxious at all. Your fear causes you to release adrenalin into your bloodstream and then your hit with an anxiety attack or anxiety. If you were to remain calm and accept things, you would most likely feel nothing. However, it would be highly unwise for me to suggest that you could lose all your fear at once. The first few times you go, you will be slightly nervous and that is fine. But just remember you don't want to fight off anything and you most definitely don't want to be fearful. Instead you want to face, accept, float past your problem and with time it won't be a problem!

Your fear has everything to do with your anxiety and panic attacks. As soon as you are able to understand your fear and realize that it is a figment of your imagination the sooner it would stop bothering you.

However, I would still like to say that if something or some place causes you to feel anxious and if you do not want to go to these places right now, that is fine. With time you will be able to go back to all the places you once loved and do all the things you enjoyed doing. If you cannot go now, do not try to force yourself. There is no need to rub salt on to fresh wounds. With time things will become easier. Allow yourself time and when the time is right and you feel ready to accept the next course, then you can go where ever you heart desires so don't worry if you don't want to or cannot go to these places at once. Time heals all wounds and with time your wounds will be healed .

I hope this has helped you. I know this is a very important blog for many of you and I have made it shorter than most normal blogs so that I don't scare you off before you even start reading. Remember you don't want fear to control you. You want to control your fear. I will talk to you guys all next time in the next blog. Till then!

Abigail Monroe

Next Post

Hey everyone, I will be posting the agrophobia blog tonight. I write the blogs a day in advance and I was writing agrophobia when I edited and published the positive attitude blog! I will post it by tonight! Sorry for the wrong update! I also apologize for publishing late today. I have been super busy today. Finals weeks so I was out taking finals this morning and came back just now.

Abigail Monroe

You Think You Can Never be Anxiety Free Again, You're Wrong

Through the course of you trying to get better, there will be many times that you may tell yourself that "you may never be the same again," or that "anxiety is a never ending problem that is here to stay."

Trust me when I tell you that it is not a never-ending problem and it is not here to stay. At this point, you may be think of all the people who have dealt with anxiety for years or you may remember your own struggle with anxiety, because you have been dealing with anxiety for a quite a long time. But the truth is that regardless of how long you have suffered from anxiety, there is always a way out. You may know suffering more than someone who has had anxiety for 1 month and you may even have collected more memories of suffering than someone who hasn't suffered anxiety for a long period of time, but regardless of all those things, anxiety does not reach a stage where it can no longer be fixed. Sure you've collected more painful memories, but with time and when you start to improve you will chose not to focus on those memories and they will go away.

You think the memories will be there for forever? They won't. Once you are getting better it will become hard for you to remember how it felt when you were suffering to a great extent. As an example, (think about a problem that has been resolved) try remembering a time you suffered in the past. Can you remember everything? How it felt, what your thoughts were? Chances are you can't remember everything too much, and it probably doesn't effect you too much. Of course it pulls at your heart a little bit, but it is not something you carry with you every moment of your life. You don't remember it all the time. You might remember it here and there, maybe when someone mentions it or you come across something that reminds you of that time. They only time I remember anxiety is if I see my Xanax bottle because it was directly related to my anxiety. Even when I am writing these blogs I do not get sad thinking about the past. It makes me feel strong and proud of myself for having dealt with and overcome such a problem. You will have a lot more respect for yourself at the end of all this and you will be a lot more positive as well.

I can't stress to you enough how much Claire Weekes method face, accept, float and let time pass works. I am an example of its success (don't worry if you don't have the book or know what I am talking about, my previous blog explains this method in depth). Before I came across this book, I most likely tried just about everything. I tried not to take Xanax and heal naturally, I tried to take Xanax and see if that would work, I stopped Xanax to take Saint John's Wort, I tried fighting my anxiety, I tried to forget, I tried to go away from it and so much more. No matter how much resistance I put, no matter how much I tried to fight it, it would never go away. When I was tried of fighting a battle within myself I stopped trying. Every time, I stopped fighting myself and my emotions and just accepted them my anxiety would get better. Every time I got a bit better, I would realize that I was getting better and that I wasn't going to let myself breakdown this time and I was going to fight to the finish line and that is when I would get myself back into the cycle of anxiety.

Why that happened? Well every time I stopped trying to fight myself, my emotions and my thoughts, I faced my problems and accepted them. I knew I was too tired to put up resistance so I just went with the flow and let all my worries go. I didn't care if I got anxious because I didn't want to fight it, I just floated past it. I would then get better and notice that I am getting better and then start putting up resistance again, fearing that anxiety would come back into my life and I would tell myself that if it came back again this time I would be shattered because my hope would be broken. I kept adding fuel to the fire and hoped that it would eventually die down.

I don't blame myself and others for fighting because that is all we are told to do. We are told to fight off anxiety and to get over it because that is the only way to move on, but is it really? Fighting is not the way to get rid of anxiety and that is something I learned through this method.

In life when we have a problem the first thing we must do is face it and that is the same thing this method teaches you to do. If we chose to run away from the problem we are facing, chances are it is not going to go away by itself. Sooner or later we are going to have to face the problem because running away doesn't solve anything. 

The second thing we do in life when we have a problem is we accept it. Acceptance is the key to making things easier. When unexpected changes occur we must accept them in order to move past them. If we sit there in denial, pretending those changes doesn't exist or that we are never going to come to terms with them than chances are we are never going to come to terms with those changes and they will forever be uncomfortable to us. At the end of the day, it is up to you to accept or to deny. Accepting is a lot easier than denying and living uncomfortably. You don't have to like anxiety to accept it. You just have to have to accept that you have it at the moment and with time it will go away.

The third thing we do when we have a problem is float past it. For must of us when we have a problem we do tend to think about it quite a lot, but at the same time we also know how to float past it by not worrying about it all the time and letting some of the pressure of solving the problem rest in the hands of time. That is why most people tell you to go with the flow of life.

Lastly, let time pass. New problems need understanding and time. If your problem was to find a job, you would know going in that it is going to take some time. You will not get a job right away, but as you keep going and facing your problem you will eventually find a solution and move past them and things will be okay.

Now you guys must be thinking, you just rewrote what you've told us in a previous blog again in different words. The reason why I chose to rewrite giving different explanations is because I always felt the need to be explained over and over again why this method works and look at it with a different perspective when I had anxiety because my mind would always come up with questions and excuses for why this method may not work. However, when it was explained to me in a new way I was able to grasp it again and focus on why it works. This happens all the time when people have anxiety. There mind always comes up with a million reasons why this method is not going to work or that they are not going to get better and they need to constantly be given new explanations so that they can move forward.

I hope this blog has helped you. I would just like for you to remember that you should be positive and hopeful and leave the rest in the hands of time and this method. You've come along this far just fine and I am sure you will continue on amazingly well. With that I am going to end this blog. If you have any questions, concerns or anything really you can always message me or comment and I will get back to you.

-Abigail Monroe

Positive Attitude

I want to talk you about positive attitude in this blog because I think this is an essential part of life for anyone, not just someone who has anxiety. It is something that everyone should have.

A positive attitude is so important in life. I know when you have anxiety it is very hard to be positive and it seems as if it is an impossible task to complete. But in reality it is so important to be positive and to think positive because positivity is what makes things good or bad.

I know it is very hard to think positive when you have anxiety. I for one know that. I am on your side. I know exactly how it all feels. Before I had anxiety I was a very positive person. I had a very positive attitude about anything. I always had hope for myself and hope to give. When anyone came to me with their problem I would give them hope. The only reason I able to give myself credit for being positive in the past is because I at one point noticed how negative I had started to think because of my anxiety.

I remember very clearly that I would sit and think to myself that I really miss the old me. The one that was happier and more positive. I thought to myself, "nothing was ever too hard for me. I was so positive and look at me now suffering and in my miserable state." That is when I realized that anxiety had NOT taken away who I was. I had made myself negative and taken away the part of me that I loved.

I realized that I always dealt with problems before I had anxiety, I just happened to have a positive attitude then. Everything was so easy because I wasn't always thinking about "how miserable I was," instead I was thinking about how amazing everything in life was. Our perspective is everything. If you learn how to change your perspective I am sure you will be a lot happier. If you're constantly reminding yourself of how miserable and sad you are then how can you expect yourself to happy? You keep reinforcing this idea that nothing is going right than how will you be able to appreciate everything that is falling in to place just perfectly.

You have to let go of the negative and accept the positive because a lot of us are so sad with our anxiety because we are constantly being negative and finding faults. It's not all or nothing. Enjoy the small pleasures of life. I can guarantee you that your life before anxiety had its up and downs, but sure it wasn't "as horrible as anxiety" because you didn't look at it so negatively.

You cannot expect to be happy if you keep on bringing yourself down. So what I would like for you to do is notice every time you have a negative thought and try to think of it in a positive way. It will seem like a chore in the beginning, but with time it will become the way you think. It will become a habit that will shield from all the problems that are yet to come in life because a positive attitude can make a HUGE difference. 

An example:

Negative: Great, I am stuck in traffic! It's going to take forever for me to go home now.
Positive: There's traffic. Well that means I get to spend time with myself and enjoy my music.

The list can go on and on. But I am only going to write one example because I want you guys to come up with examples that are suited for your life instead of covering everything and leaving little for your imagination to do.

I just want you guys to know that having a positive attitude is important for everyone. When your anxious and you're going through a tough time in your life it is hard to think positive, but it is not impossible. You can start with little things and gradually become more and more positive. For example, you can get up and admire the weather even it is raining outside instead of thinking about something negative. It will make a huge difference. Trust me on this one.

Well I am going to end this blog here because I don't think I can say anything other than the fact the positivity is an essential part of life. Being positive is very important. I hope this blog has given you a reason to be more positive. I am sure positivity will bring great changes into your life. Till next time!

(The next blog will talk about agoraphobia, the fear of going to certain placed or leaving your house because you're scared of anxiety. I hope you guys will stay tuned.)

-Abigail Monroe 

The Setback and Memories

I am back with another blog, but this time I am not going to talk about a method. I am going to talk about some of the things that keep a person from achieving their goal of getting relief from anxiety, the setbacks and the memories. Also, if you read these blogs and they do help you please remember to comment and let me know. I feel like I am not doing a well enough job to explain so I wanted some feedback, good or bad, to know if I need to change something or improve in anyway. Please comment and let me know, I would really appreciate it.

Often times, we are plagued with memories of our life with anxiety as well as not being able to overcome our anxiety so even when we want to make an effort we really can't because the only memories we have are of our unsuccessful attempts of trying to feel better which hinder our motivation to start another attempt.

Other types of memories that hold us back are the memories of our happy past, at least that was the case for me. I often tried to recreate past experiences so that I could get a glimpse of/relieve my life before anxiety. Needless to say that does not work. Those attempts only held me back. You just have to let go of the past. If you live in the past or constantly think about the time before you had anxiety you will always be stuck in the past and constantly compare your life to what it was like before. Surely, your life will be better in the future, but it will never be the same. What I am trying to say is that, this moment, this day, this hour, this second will never ever come back again. That doesn't mean you won't be happy in the future. It just means you will have different moments and different memories that evolve with time.

You have to let go of the past in order to be happier in the future. Life before anxiety must have been a lot better and even though you had problems then they were not so bad and thinking about that makes you happy because you were happy regardless of the problems you were experiencing at the moment. Well sure you were happy and sure there were problems, but the truth is you are looking at back at solved problems. Problems that you now know how to deal with and so they don't seem so difficult or life changing, but maybe at the time those were the problems that stressed you out, that kept you awake at night, but you're not going to remember all of that now. All you remember is that there was a problem and you solved it and moved on. You learned from experience and if that problem were to knock at your door again you would be able to solve it again.

That is how this problem, your anxiety will be. In the future it will become a problem that will seem so easy for you to solve. I am saying that with experience. Had I started this blog when I had anxiety you would be able to connect with me a lot more because I would tell you my firsthand experience and not one that is remembered through past memories. At times when I am writing these blogs I have to really make an effort to remember how it felt because once you have improved, all this will be gone. You will know that it was not a pleasant time of your life, but at the same time you won't be able to remember exactly what/how you felt like when you had anxiety. You won't remember the panic attacks and how you felt when you got them. You will move on and this will become distant. You will never really be able to go back and remember your exact feelings. I can't. Even if I look back, I can't remember how I felt and that is the magic of time. Time does heal your wounds.

Don't let the memories of your anxiety plague you, but at the same time don't try to push them out of your mind if it does not seem possible. Accept that these are your thoughts for now and that with time your thoughts will change. All you have to do is accept and that will help you move on. Your thoughts and feelings are your thoughts and feelings and there is no wrong way to feel or wrong way to think. However, I cannot stress this enough that these memories will fade with time. As you learn the method to get rid of your anxiety, which I have discussed in my blogs ( Face, Accept, Float, Let time pass), these memories will start to fade. But do not be surprised if the memories last longer than your anxiety. Just know that with time they will go away and they do go away.

Now lets talk about the setbacks.

There will be times when you are feeling amazing and you feel you have finally conquered anxiety and you are well on your way of getting better and suddenly feel anxious and feel like you have taken 10 steps back. You have not taken 10 steps back. You have improved and no matter how you feel at this moment, your improvement has not been erased. You will pick up where ever you left off when you find the hope and courage to do so again. Often times when this happens we lose our confidence and we don't want to continue to move on because it is too painful to think about it now. We need some time to be sad and that is the best way I can put it. It's fine. You can take that time. Nothing is wrong with that. But just know that as humans we will always find ways to be happy again. Even in the worst situations we will find something funny or happy and smile and at that moment you should know that we still have the ability to be happy and feel pleasure even at the worst of times. I can guarantee that your journey with anxiety has not been all sad. I am sure you have had pleasant moments where you laughed or your smiled and were a bit happy, just like you use to be when you did not have anxiety. That's human nature. We will always the courage and hope to lead us to happiness even if we have a small or large setbacks. You will always get back up and fight. Trust me.

I am going to end this blog right here because I feel like it is getting too long and I am sure not a lot of people want to read on and on. But I hope this has helped you and given you a little courage. Just know that with time things do get better. This phase of your life will be distant in the future and you will probably just remember it as a time of your life. It will not be in your thoughts all the time. It will be experience that you learned from, solved and then moved on.

Acceptance will help you let go.

Lastly, please, please, please let me know if these blogs are helping. Anything you want to me change. Anything I am doing right so that I can get some feedback.

-Abigail Monroe

The Next Two Steps in Recovery

I hope that you have worked on the first two steps and have gained some success. You wanting to follow those two steps is progress enough, so don't worry if you have not been able to accept those steps wholeheartedly. At least you are trying.

The third step in this process is

3) Float past it: This is exactly as it sounds. Float past it by not fighting back. Pretend your in a swimming pool floating on water. Apply that to your life. Let lose and go along with the flow. Do not stress and do not worry. Things will turn out to be good just as they are. Do not fight hurdles just float past them. As you do this, you will be left with calmness, which will then help you heal. Now this is easier said than done. I for one know that. I know that it is hard to accept and float past when you're dealing with emotions. I know that is hard to even think positive when you are in such a position and even when you try to think positive, your mind comes with a hundred reasons for why you shouldn't be so optimistic. Your brain throws at you a hundred "what if's" and questions you don't have the answers to and even though you want to be positive there are so many things holding you back. For each person, what that stress is may be different. For me, and I think many of you guys will be able to connect, the stress was not being able to get better. I was fed up feeling the way I was. I hated the fact I had anxiety and I wanted to get better as soon as possible. I did not want to wait. I would continuously think about my life before anxiety. All I remembered before this incident was happiness. Sure, I had problems, but I was still so happy with my life. I remember always thinking to myself, "wow, I love the college I am at. I love life. There is nothing to be sad about." I kept remembering how I could turn even the most negative situation into a positive one. No problem was hard enough to make me feel sad or to make a time of my life feel less joyous. I was always under the impression that having a positive attitude came to me naturally that, that was something I was born with because for much of my life I never had bad days that stretched to weeks or months. These thoughts roamed through my head for much of the day and they were thoughts that made me very sad. I thought I had lost apart of myself that I loved the most. The part of me that I was so proud of and had hoped to keep forever. Now, I am going to end this story here for just a second so I can tell you why I brought this up in the first place. I brought this up because that was my drive to get better. I wanted to be the same person again because I didn't want a lose a part of me that was so special to me. I decided that I would accept this condition and follow these steps if that meant getting my life back. Nothing was more heartbreaking and tough than the thought of not being normal again. I knew that I could gather any amount of hope and courage to make myself become the person I loved most and that is exactly what I did.

4) Let time pass: Everything takes time. Most of us have probably heard the quote "time heals all wounds," and in fact that is very true. With time anxiety and all of this will become a distant memory that you will only remember as a time in your life that has passed, much like high school. Bittersweet memories are something we all have. We don't go around remembering them each day. Just like so this will all fade away into the past, but you have to give it some time. Let's go back to our broken leg example. If you break your leg, you know that it will take time for your leg to become normal again and you understand that. The body needs to heal itself and the body will take its time. We wait patiently or impatiently, but we know that ultimately our leg will be fixed and we will continue on with our life. The same is true for anxiety! You have to give your body time. You cannot expect your body to heal itself with in a day or automatically. Even if you use this method and it works it will take time for anxiety to go away completely. You cannot be disheartened by the small setbacks or by the fact that the method is taking so long. When you break your leg, you should not expect for it to heal the very next day. When you see signs of improvement you do not rip off your cast and start running. You let your body rest and heal. You slowly incorporate your old routine and without a doubt one day you will be doing the things you once did, but you have to let time pass in order to do so. The same is true for anxiety. You cannot get slightly better and try putting yourself through a test to see if you are really the same again. You are still healing and life is not a test, it is a practice. Tests make people nervous and stressed while practices allow you to perfect your skills. Don't add stress and anxiety to an already stressed body by testing yourself. Instead take everything as a practice and perfect your skills. With all that practice your skills will become refined and you will know exactly what to do. Notice that this method does not ask for you to be patient. It tells you to let time pass and you should do just that.

Now, if the methods that I have mentioned have helped you in the slightest I would recommend you buy the book by Claire Weekes that is titled "Hope and Help for Your Nerves. I know that at this point it probably seems that I am affiliated with this book or I am pushing for you to buy it. I am not affiliated with this book whatsoever. This book was published in 1962, years before my own mother was born much less me. The methods that I am talking about are from this book. And this book has helped me become myself again, and I want everyone to feel happy and healthy once again. My goal is not to have you buy this book, but is that you become happy and get over anxiety or whatever that is that has brought you to this blog. I know how it feels and I wouldn't want anyone to feel the way I did when I had anxiety and that is why I decided I was going to make this blog. Even though I am summarizing what the book has said and putting in my own input, I feel like I am not doing it justice. I would also like to mention that you can get this book from Amazon or eBay for a very low price, around 98 cents. If you need help finding this book for cheaper, you can always feel free to let me know and I will help you find the cheapest edition out there.

With that, I am going to end this blog. I hope that this has has helped you in the slightest and remember to never lose hope. Things always do end up getting better you just have to give them time. With time, thing will become better. I will talk to you guys all in the next blog.

-Abigail Monroe

The Method to Get Rid of Anxiety

I am posting several blogs today because I want to get as much information out there as possible so that you can begin the process. It is always the toughest to start and I don't want to leave you hanging without a method.

If you are anything like me you have probably spent countless hours trying to find out

• Why you got anxiety 
• What caused your anxiety 
• What was going on in your life that you all of a sudden had to deal with anxiety

For me, I could not look back and find a single reason for my anxiety. I just did not understand where it came from. When people asked me what I was stressed out about I didn't have an answer because I was never stressed about anything. Even when I was anxious I did not have any external stress that was making me feel anxious. For many of us our anxiety causes us to be anxious.

We don't want to feel anxious anymore! We want to feel the way we did before. Happy! So we look toward other happy people and long to be like them again. But what I need you to do here is stop! Don't look for what caused your anxiety because that will be of no help to you. I give this example often, but if you fall down and break your leg, does it help you to remember what caused your leg to break? Will that help heal your leg and will it prevent your leg from becoming broken in the future?

I hope your answer to those questions is "no" because it really doesn't matter what caused your anxiety to begin with because chances are you're no longer anxious because of the stress in your life. You are probably stressed because of your anxiety. Furthermore, you may not be able to look back and locate a cause because you thought you were happy up until now. But what I need you to understand is that your body was put under constant stress to have gotten to this point and that is one of the things that Claire Weekes talks about in her book.

So let go of trying to find out why you got anxiety and ACCEPT that you have anxiety.

The process that helped me to get rid of my anxiety and stopped my panic attacks is the one Claire Weekes talks about in her book. If you don't have her book, don't worry! I am going tell you what it is in this post.

1) Face it
2) Accept it
3) Float Past it
4) Let Time Pass.

This is what Claire Weekes has talked about in her book. I am going to reword it and change things up because I am writing a post and she wrote a book so I need to cut to the chase. 

1) Face your problem. Understand that you have anxiety and you are no longer going to run away from it. If the symptoms come do not shy away from them. Do not fear them. Just face them. Do not fight back because you don't want to release anymore adrenalin into your already sensitized nerves. Claire Weekes talks about how there are two fears. The first fear is our symptoms. The first fear is there because our body has been sensitized from all the stress. When our body starts to release those symptoms it releases adrenalin into our body which causes our body activate the "fight or flight" response. Are symptoms are caused by the "fight or flight" response that our body activates unnecessarily. By becoming fearful of those symptoms we add more adrenalin and second fear is added and again that activates the fight or flight response, which exaggerates things even more and makes our symptoms even worse. We can call this a panic attack or anxiety. However, if you were to remain calm and face these symptoms as they come and look at them for what they are merely uncomfortable feelings they would eventually go away. When you are about to get a cold and your throat starts to hurt do you fear it? Hopefully, not. Would that keep you up at night? Most likely not. Then why worry about these symptoms?

2) Accept it: Often times, the hardest thing to do is accept something. You do not have to like anxiety or panic attacks to accept them. You merely must accept them for what they are. Stop trying to fight your fears. Instead accept your fears and slowly let them go. You've fought hard enough and for long enough. Stop fighting. Just accept your fears and your state. Once you accept your state and your fears you will be less fearful of them. Fighting back is sometimes not the best option. In her book, Claire Weekes talks about how we release more adrenalin and tire our body even further when we try to fight back from anxiety. Why go through all those efforts when all you have to do is accept your panic attacks? I know I am making it sound easy, when in reality it is very difficult to do. However, it is only difficult in the beginning. Claire Weekes constantly reminds the reader and I would like to remind you the same that at first you wanting to accept your anxiety is progress enough. That will be the start. With time it will come naturally, just don't give up your hope.

I am going to stop here and let you soak in all the information. I will talk about the next two methods in the next post. I hope that you will practice the first two methods so that you are ready to complete the next two when I post them at a later time. I hope this has helped you or given you hope in the very least. Understand that you are not alone. I am with you in this journey!

Abigail Monroe.

The First Step in Getting Rid of Anxiety

Lets begin this journey!
You must first understand that the only person that cannot be helped is the person who does not want to be helped. You are not one of those people because you actually had the courage to understand that there is a problem and then tried to find a solution. I know this because you are reading this blog. You are in fact brave for trying. As long as you have hope everything will be fine.

Another thing I want to mention before I get started is that a lot of the information I am going to give to you is from a book titled, "Hope and Help for Your Nerves," by Claire Weekes. I am not trying to push anyone to buy this book. I just want to make sure I give credit where credit is due. I don't want to take someone's work and call it my own. I have learned from this book and others which I hope to incorporate into this blog to help others.

The first step in recovering is understanding anxiety. The unknown is always a little scary. That is why the first day of school, college, work or anything is always a little scary. You don't know what to expect because you have no previous knowledge, therefore, you feel a bit scared and that is fine.
Therefore, the first step in recovering from anxiety is understanding what it is. I am not saying that you should try to dig up the past to try to find out why you are dealing with anxiety at the present moment. What I am trying to say is to understand anxiety from a medical perceptive. Go on to Google and see all the symptoms people experience when they are anxious such as, not being able to breathe properly, fast heart beat, feeling lightheaded and so on and so forth. Then understand that, that is a normal part of anxiety. There is nothing wrong with you and no damage is being done to your body! Claire Weekes, explains in her book that the reason why our nerves are acting so crazy and we are experiencing these symptoms are because our nerves are sensitized from all the stress we have put them through. They are going to behave like this for a while and you must let them without being afraid.  She explains, that when you get afraid you add more stress to your body, which then becomes more sensitized and these symptoms are felt even more strongly. However, if when these symptoms came, you sat back and relaxed and told your self that "this is just my body trying to react to stress" then the nerves will stop acting up.

By stressing out about these symptoms you are adding more stress into an already stressed body. You keep on adding more stress, yet, keep wondering why you are not getting better. I have done the same thing. But as soon as you understand that these symptoms are not damaging and just sensations then you will stop being afraid of them. When they come you will accept them and by not adding more stress and fear they will gradually go away.

However, in order for these symptoms to stop coming, your body must be desensitized and that will take some time. Even after you have conquered your fear you will feel these symptoms for a little bit longer and that is natural. It takes time for anything to heal. But you must give yourself time and let the healing process do its job. I know being patient is not the thing you want to hear, which even this book acknowledges, therefore, just let time pass as Claire Weekes says. The more time you let go by the better you will feel. However, never lose hope and never let yourself feel fearful of the symptoms.
I hope this passage has helped you. That's all for this post. In the next post I will discuss other aspects of anxiety as well as a method that worked amazingly for me. Actually, the only method I needed to get better.

My Journey with Anxiety

The first thing I would like to start off with, is my journey with anxiety and how it all started for me.

Anxiety hit me out of the blue. For days, I was completely unaware of what was happening to me.

This is how it started, I was laying in bed trying to fall asleep one night, but I couldn't. Soon after, I felt like I could not breathe properly and started to panic thinking, "what is happening to me?" I somehow managed to fall asleep and woke up the next day without the slightest thought of what had happened the night before, yet, when night time rolled around again the next day I had this fear in the pit of my stomach that I could not seem to understand. I remember going to my mom and telling her "it feels depressing at night," not knowing what I felt was anxiety.

I continued many days trying to fight off the feeling that I got at night time. I didn't quite know what that feeling was. I just knew that it came at night time. Everyday, I would wake up with new hope and I would think to myself that "today I am not going to get that feeling," yet everyday at night I would get the same feeling over and over again. I started to lose my patience and started to become less and less hopeful because despite all my hope I still had to deal with the same feelings every night. 

This is when my mom decided it was time to take me seriously and tried to help me as best as she could. At this time she didn't know what was going on with me either. When I had felt like this for over 2 weeks I decided it was time to start searching Google for my symptoms and try to understand what was happening.  That is when I came across an anxiety article and quickly said to myself, "no that's not me." However, as the days went on I realized "oh yes that is me!"

I told my mom I was feeling anxious. That the feeling I have been telling her about is anxiety and that I needed to visit the doctor. My appointment was scheduled and my doctor confirmed to me what I had already known. I had anxiety. I was given Xanax and told to use it as a last resort. I took that too seriously and decided I was going to fight this battle without the use of any medication.

Then came a series of sad days because I couldn't get over the fact that I had anxiety. I didn't understand how I got it. I was a happy girl enjoying my life. At 20 what stress could I possibly have? I was on vacation and everything was perfect. Long story short, this is not something that came out of the blue. It was something I was leading my mind and body up to. With schoolwork and all my commitments, I wasn't living a balanced life. I was always under stress and my body wasn't going to take it anymore and it finally broke down. I took my body for granted and my body was going to put up with that anymore so it gave to me anxiety.

I went to a psychologist and a doctor who were helpful, yet, I was not getting any better. My questions were not getting answered. I still did not know what anxiety was. Why my body was acting the way it was and so on and so forth. Because anxiety was so mysterious to me it created a sense of fear. Fear of the unknown.

I started to search for articles to see how others have dealt with their anxiety and came across a blog post that talks about a person's journey with anxiety and how he cured himself. He recommended a book by Claire Weekes titled "Hope and Help for Your Nerves." At this point, I was desperate for help and decided I was going to order the book as well. By reading that book I was able to understand why my body was reacting the way it was. What anxiety was and what my symptoms meant. My anxiety and my symptoms were merely my bodies reaction to constant stress and an unbalanced life.

As I was able to learn more about the symptoms and become more familiar with anxiety, I was slowly able to lose fear of my anxiety, which then cured my anxiety attacks. I am not saying that you should go out and buy this book, what I am trying to say is that this book helped me and it helped me because it educated me on anxiety. So the first step in overcoming anxiety is to educate yourself on the subject of anxiety. I would definitely recommend this book if you would like to educate yourself, but at the end of the day, you should choose a book or article or anything really that you feel will help you.

I see that this blog posts has gotten too long and I know no one wants to read an essay so I will continue the rest of my journey in the next blog post. My hope for you for now is to educate yourself because the fear of the unknown is what keeps you in your position.

-Abigail Monroe

The Beginning of Something New

I hope to start this blog to help people like me, who are suffering from anxiety. Throughout, much of my life I have been very passionate about helping others. However, my passion never led me to act. This blog is my first attempt to try and help others. I hope that through this blog, I am able to help at least one person. 

I am not a doctor or therapists, but I know how it feels to suffer from anxiety and constantly having to battle with those emotions. Having dealt with those emotions first hand, I know how much a little hope can help when dealing with life's struggles. That is one of the biggest reasons why I decided to act on my decision to help. I truly hope this blog helps people to get over their fears and get their life back. 

Through this blog I hope to give you hope. 

This is beginning of something new for me and I hope it will help others along the way. 

-Abigail Monroe