Most people looking to cure anxiety naturally will probably be looking for herbal remedies but this is not going to be about anything like that. I am going to discuss the most natural cure you can possibly have and that is to do what we should be doing naturally, force yourself to act out some basic human behaviour. I use the word force because it’s quite important. The reason we suffer anxiety so badly in the first place is because we have forced ourselves into a very unnatural way of thinking, so forcing our way back out of it is the best cure.

Once you are in too deep you lose the ability to stop yourself thinking about. You expect anxiety to consume your everyday activities. It’s easy for a non sufferer to simply say, “don’t think about it, relax” but we already know it just isn’t that easy. It is my belief that the only way to truly take your mind off of this unnatural behaviour is to find an interest that is powerful enough to make it happen naturally. Nothing under the sun can turn your thoughts off like a switch, there is no drug and no trick.

The best thing you can do is make sure you are in a place where you feel most relaxed. By this I don’t mean you will necessarily be relaxed but somewhere where you feel the least threatened by an anxiety attack. For most of us this will be somewhere that we won’t be seen by others or not trapped somewhere like driving on a motorway. Unfortunately this is also the most difficult part, especially if you need to go to work everyday.

At the very least take a few days out and then find a way to occupy yourself with something that requires concentration and physical movement, i.e., gardening, decorating, washing the car, change your house around, move the furniture, have a massive clear out, etc. What you don’t want to do is something that requires concentration without physical effort like a jigsaw puzzle or computer game, at least not at this stage . If you can’t stop thinking about anxiety or having a panic attack then don’t worry about it, let it eat you up if it has to, let it do it’s worse.

The reason for this is because it’s less stressful than trying to run away from it. It doesn’t matter what you do to occupy yourself but the most important thing is do not stop, not for a second. Don’t take time out to lie down till the feeling wears off, just create a task and see it through to the end, preferably something that will take you all day or a few things that will take a few hours each task. If you need to stop what you are doing then stop but fill that time with a long brisk walk or a run. Your goal is not to cure your anxiety right here and now but to force yourself into a non stop action plan for at least a few hours and then monitor the result.

When you have finished a task, try to take yourself back through what you were doing and how you felt. You should notice there were quite a few moments where your mind was completely off of the anxiety. If it wasn’t then find something different to do and start again. If you do this every day for as long as you can you will notice that less of your day is about anxiety and there are quite a few moments where you feel completely normal. Use this as your proof that this is all in your mind and that you can get over it.

The most important thing I figured out from my anxiety and panic attacks is the more I was in a situation that I would least like it to happen, the more likely it was to happen, in fact I’d go as far as saying it was guaranteed to happen. I went through years of this. The times I would be least likely to have an attack would be when it mattered the least to me, this would be when I was home alone with nobody to have to hide it from and no plans made for that day where I would have to leave my safe zones or stressing about having to go somewhere. The more things I got involved with that required concentration, the less I would think about my anxiety, this was especially so when that activity was also physical, or at least not sitting down or standing still.

This was consistent for me and I would suggest you try the same. Add to this some regular exercise, better diet if necessary and you should be on your way to recovery. One more thing you notice with sufferers of severe anxiety is they don’t laugh or have a great time very often because the anxiety tends make us avoid it. It’s not easy but try to change that, look for some fun activities to get involved with, regular laughter has an amazing effect on health.

One thing to realise with exercise is the benefits aren’t shown immediately so you mustn’t get disheartened. Workout for a few weeks under an advised programme and you should start to see an improvement in your anxiety level which in turn will prevent panic attacks.

During my years of anxiety I never actually gave much thought to how exercise might aid my recovery, it’s only looking back on it now that I can clearly see how my two year break from anxiety, where I was completely free of it,  (you can read my anxiety story here) started with me taking on a new job that required physical effort everyday. It was probably within a few months of starting that job that I became anxiety free. At the time I hadn’t put the two and two together, it’s not until my anxiety came back that I started tracing and remembering my previous years.

One of the hardest things with an exercise routine is keeping it up. I’m not lazy and I am more than capable of exerting myself physically everyday, no problem. The thing I find the most difficult is finding something that interests me enough to want to do it. If it’s a job then you just get on with it, it’s easy, but when you have to plan it then it’s easy to get idle, unless of course you enjoy it. I personally find the typical exercise routines extremely boring and hard to keep up the enthusiasm so whatever you do make sure it’s something you enjoy otherwise you might find yourself slipping back and skipping the exercises.

I love cycling so that’s what I do a lot of but I’m not so keen on it in the winter and I must admit I tend to lapse when it’s too cold out. I don’t mind walking in the cold so that’s what I do mostly in the winter, even though it isn’t as physical as cycling it’s better than doing nothing.  Make yourself a plan and get physical, do it for at least a month or two and monitor the results. You might be pleasantly surprised just how much better you feel and your anxiety is greatly reduced, or better still, cured altogether. If that’s your result then remember to keep up the exercise routines to keep the anxiety away for good.

If you suffer from panic attacks then I urge you to think about this and constantly remind yourself what causes your panic attack, or more accurately, what triggers it. Make no bones about it, I know exactly how it feels, when it happens it can be traumatic, the physical symptoms are real, they are happening. Despite this, everything needs a trigger. If I fall off of a ladder and break my leg because I forgot to tie my shoe laces then it wasn’t the shoe that caused the leg to break, that was just the result of me being careless. Now this might sound like a pointless thing to say but bear with me because it is extremely relevant.

The trouble with us anxiety sufferers is we are so caught up in the fear of having another panic attack that we lose sight of reality. Yes the symptoms are real, yes it seems like you have no control over them, the heart might be racing, the numbness, the dizziness and fear of passing out, the real physical pains, none of those things are imagination, they are real alright, but just like the broken leg, something has to cause it to happen. Something causes your panic attacks and this is the trigger for the physical outcome. No trigger, no outcome, that’s pretty simple. So how do we trigger them?

There’s only one way to trigger a panic attack and that is to simply expect one in the first place, even if you don’t realise you are thinking about it, rest assured you are even if it’s within your subconscious. The physical symptoms makes it very easy to think that you have a medical illness and so believing that you think your way into an attack is easily dismissed. This causes you to have doubts that this problem is caused psychologically. If you were utterly convinced that it was your mind that causes a panic attack without any doubts, then you would be well on your way to curing your anxiety once and for all. Don’t forget this, it’s the doubt that won’t let it go.

It’s easy to prove that it’s only your thoughts that lead to a panic attack. Depending on how much you can remember, try tracing back to your first panic attack, try to remember exactly how it happened and how all the consequent ones came about. Now forget about the first one, it could have been anything but you can bet your bottom dollar it was the frightening experience of the first one that never allowed you to forget it.

Look for the patterns, how and when they got worse, what you were thinking at the time etc etc. If it was some time ago then chances are you won’t remember a lot but if you do then you should see a pattern emerge, how each attack was feeding your thoughts and adding fuel for the rest of them. More fear, more remembering, more avoidance and so on. Most of us sufferers can find a pattern, first it’s only in the supermarket, then it’s in the car, then on a plane, then walking to the shops, or standing in a queue. After having an attack in a specific place for the first time, almost guarantees we have them again when we go back to that place or do that certain thing, so we avoid it.

Nearly all my anxiety attacks were in the same places or doing the same things. This would just so happen to be in all the places I least would want one, i.e., anywhere I couldn’t walk away from, or get out of easily, anywhere that would cause humiliation or embarrassment or anywhere that it meant I had to come clean and tell someone. For the first year or two I got them nowhere else. It would only be in a queue, in a shop, in a car or on a train. A few years of this and it becomes easy to forget that it only ever happened in certain places or at certain times.

As time goes on and anxiety starts to take you over they get more random and can happen anywhere. Eventually you are in a mess that you can’t escape from. If you are a long term sufferer then they are probably much worse now than they used to be. Where you are now has been a natural progression, nothing has changed from the first ones that only happened in certain places. The only thing that’s different is it has consumed you. You now think about it and fear it continuously. You forgot how it progressed.

If this was a medical illness it would have killed you by now, it would have been discovered by now and above all it would never have only affected you when you were in a place that you couldn’t escape from or could have gotten embarrassed or whatever your fears may be. This is not a disease, it is a natural progression of your inability to clear your mind and forget all about them. Once you can see this and believe it you can finally let go and realise that your panic attacks can be gone for good. I know it’s easier said than done but all that’s required is belief and willpower. You already have all the proof you need, it’s your job to see it for what it is.

• Light headed or dizziness – feelings of dizziness or light headed, tingling in the head or around the eyes like you are going to pass out.

• Shortness of breath – feels like you are being smothered, can’t get a full breath and not taking in enough oxygen (even though you are probably taking in too much).

• Heart palpitations – The heart can race and beat very heavily, or skip beats as adrenalin is being released into your blood stream

• Numbness or pins and needles – can happen in the head, face, neck or shoulders arms, hands, legs or feet

• Chest pains – As the muscles tighten it can cause pain in various parts of the body. It becomes much easier to notice or worry when this happens in your chest, the first reaction is to believe you are having a heart attack.

• Stomach cramps – feelings of your insides around the stomach and under the ribcage are tightening up and being twisted inside you.

• Dry mouth – In the flight or flight response, fluids are diverted to where they are needed more, this can lead to the mouth drying up and a feeling that you have a lump in the throat and cannot swallow.

• Sweating – Is a normal reaction to the body’s flight or fight response so you will often sweat during a panic attack.

• Feeling of losing control – During a panic attack your stress levels are high, you will be thinking the worst and those thoughts combined with worry will be racing around your brain like crazy. You are not going mad even if it feels like you are. It soon goes away.

The physical symptoms that occur are very real, whatever your symptoms are while having a panic attack, these are actually happening, your body is physically going through it. If you have never had a panic attack then you would probably never be able to understand just how frightening this can be or just how real it is.  Symptoms vary from person to person but in severe cases you can easily lose control. This almost happened to me once during my worst attack which was after ten years of suffering panic disorder. You can read about it in my panic attack story.

It’s important to have a clear understanding between the physical and psychological parts of anxiety. It is widely recognised by health organisations that a panic attack is purely a psychological phenomena and not a medical condition. This is without doubt very true in that it is your mind, or subconscious that triggers the anxiety attack. By observing my own anxiety disorder for many years I have absolutely no doubt that this is unquestionable. This doesn’t however deny the fact that the physical part is a very real occurrence. So what actually happens?

According to Charles Linden, a panic attack is brought on by severe anxiety when the body reacts to the flight or fight response, which in turn is brought on by a sudden release of adrenalin, or too much of it to be more specific. In other words your body is responding to a threat of danger and prepares itself to do whatever it would normally do in a life threatening situation, the release of adrenalin causes the muscles to tighten up, your breathing rate increases, blood pressure rises etc, all the things necessary to prepare your body to do what ever it would normally do when in danger.

The symptoms are real and physical, the only problem is it is happening when you are not in any kind of danger so your body is preparing for something that doesn’t actually happen. This naturally leads to you wondering what the hell is happening to you and you start to panic, thinking maybe you are having a heart attack or something. This immediate worry leads to more adrenalin released and the whole thing becomes self perpetuating. The panic attack itself ends up as a result of hyperventilating which causes a reduction of carbon dioxide in the blood. Controlling a panic attack can be done through correct breathing

This is a very basic explanation but what Charles Linden has to say about it is pretty much in line with the explanations found at Wikipedia and the NHS. There is no doubt that Charles has done his research, he is fast becoming the authority on the subject, the Linden Method has many endorsements from medical authority’s and is now being used by the NHS in the UK and other medical organisations around the world.

The simple answer to stop anxiety becoming a full blown panic attack is to correct your breathing. This will be harder to do once you are right in the middle of an attack but it is surprisingly easy to do just before you feel an attack coming on. Getting the breathing right will stop the panic attack but my own experience has shown me a few things that might help you if you find the technique isn’t working.

By not allowing yourself to hyperventilate you will stop or prevent an attack from happening but be warned, it won’t stop the feeling of general anxiety. It’s important to realise this, in my years as a sufferer I had tried the breathing techniques and believed they didn’t work. There were two problems, the first one was I never learned the difference between a panic attack and the feeling of bad anxiety, or to be more accurate, the different stages of anxiety. Secondly, I never experimented with the breathing to get it right. What ended up working for me was not how it was described in books or any advice I had found, or more realistically I probably wasn’t doing it correctly. But how would you know if your body is not maintaining enough carbon dioxide?

The answer is you don’t. All you have to remember is if your body is regulating the correct amounts of oxygen and carbon dioxide then you won’t have a panic attack. So in other words if you are still getting the attacks then you still don’t have the breathing under control. It’s important that you learn to recognise the various levels of anxiety before it leads to panic, brought on by hyperventilation. If you don’t then you might think the breathing isn’t doing it’s job. The feeling of normal, or even bad anxiety is nothing like a panic attack, they are miles apart and have no similarity.

Anxiety on it’s own can be mild or quite severe. Everyone can get mild anxiety, the feeling of being worried about something would describe it. Severe anxiety is different. This is closer to being extremely fearful of something or waiting around for the possibility of extremely bad news. The tight feeling around the chest, the body tensed up, fast or heavy breathing and completely on edge. Mix this feeling with fear and it will feel quite unpleasant but it’s still not a panic attack. When you have anxiety disorder various levels of those feelings might appear for no apparent reason. When this happens it can easily lead to panic simply because you have no reason to expect it.

A panic attack is horrendous, it can ruin your life, it can debilitate you, it can leave you jobless and lead to agoraphobia. Mild or severe anxiety is nothing like any of that, at it’s worst it’s just a horrible feeling, unpleasant maybe, but that’s all. It doesn’t stop you in your tracks and you can live a perfectly normal life with it and it’s curable (so is anxiety). Because a panic attack always starts with the feeling of anxiety it is difficult at first to separate the two. This was the problem which made it difficult for me to get the breathing right and stop the panic attacks from happening.

Once you understand these things you can start to monitor your breathing and figure out how to get it right. If you are feeling light headed like you are going to pass out, your arms or legs have pins and needles or go numb etc then you can be sure you are breathing incorrectly. Like many things in life, this might take some practice and the only chance you get to try it out is when you are having a bout of bad anxiety. So how should you breath?

I found slight differences among the various pieces of information I found on this subject, although they all said you should breath out for longer than you breath in. Some say you should breath in for five seconds and out for eleven seconds, some say breath very slowly in for three, out for five etc. The trouble here is this alone doesn’t tell you whether or not you have got the balance right. Two different people could breath in for a duration of three seconds and absorb massive differences in the amount of oxygen they took in. I found none of those things working for me. Simply having your in and out breaths guided by a number to count to doesn’t let you know that you are breathing with the correct flow rate.

What did actually work for me is just letting my inward breath do whatever I felt my body wanting to do naturally, whether that was a large long intake or short, light or heavy, just whatever feels right at the moment and it might be something different with each inward breath. The outward breath is simple, I tighten up my lips like I am about to whistle and simply let out as much breath as I can for as long as I can without forcing it too hard but still using some force. If I tried to breath out too softly then it didn’t work. For you it might be something different, you will have to experiment but just remember if you are still having full blown panic attacks then you still have not got the breathing right and you are probably taking in too much oxygen.

Believe me you can get it right with practice. All that’s left then is to deal with normal anxiety, which incidentally I do still suffer from although it’s not as bad as it used to be, it’s easy to live with and doesn’t stop me from doing anything. I can live a normal life once again. Even this can be cured, I still follow some of the things outlined in the Linden method and my anxiety is getting better all of the time but because it’s now at a stage that’s easy to live with I have become a bit lazy. Mild anxiety isn’t a big deal in my life but panic attacks were, and now they are not!

For hundreds of thousands of anxiety sufferers, panic attacks are a thing of the past. How they did it is what’s important, so what cured them? There are only a few cures so think about the following…

Either it went away all on it’s own, very possible and this does sometimes happen. Note the common denominator here, they are usually confident people to start with and would never have allowed it to control them. The majority of sufferers don’t have this kind of personality however. Most of us sufferers are of a passive nature, lack a certain amount of confidence and worry a lot. For the rest of us it only leaves professional medical help or the use of something like the Linden method, which incidentally has cured over 125,000 sufferers with more than a 96% success rate.

Click Here to visit the Linden Method website

Health organisations and anxiety professionals all agree on one thing. This is not a medical illness, it is a condition brought on by psychological behaviour. If your doctor diagnoses you with anxiety disorder then he or she will do one of two things. Prescribe an antidepressant or recommend Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). CBT has a higher success rate than the use of medication which tends to mask the problem rather than solve it. So what is CBT? It is essentially counselling therapy designed to change your thinking habits and behaviours. The biggest drawback with CBT is that it can be very expensive and there isn’t any consistency between practices and therapists so some are better than others. Some are not so good. Finding the good ones might not be easy and if your first experience with CBT is not a good one then you are very likely to lose faith in that method.

This just leaves us with the methods designed by individuals, ex sufferers including some private organisations and they all have something to sell, this is where your natural instinct is to be sceptical, and why shouldn’t you be?

If you search the Internet for cures for panic attack then you are likely to be greeted with the three most popular methods. These are Panic Away, The Panic Puzzle and the Linden Method. Now I don’t want to say too much about the first two because I haven’t used them so it wouldn’t be fair of me to share my thoughts without at least buying and testing them first. One thing however that‘s very easy to do is search forums where real people are talking and giving their views, i.e., non marketers. All of these methods, including the Linden Method will very likely be similar content anyway and all based on CBT, possibly even research done by Charles Linden himself. Now think about this…

Most of the Internet methods are just a pdf file that you can download in the form of an ebook. That’s about it really. I’m not saying they wont help you because I don’t know, I haven’t tried them, but what you get with the Linden method is however very different. Credibility! … Why? … Because his method can be bought as an ISBN registered hard copy in major book stores as well as a download version. It covers just about every aspect from anxiety to agoraphobia to OCD and is thoroughly researched.

Charles Linden is recognised by health organisations and officials around the world, anxiety is his life and career, he has (at the time of writing) five walk in centres in five countries, the Linden Method comes with 12 months 24hr telephone and email support, included free of charge where you can speak to his team of trained counsellors, psychologists and anxiety disorder coaches, he has done many radio and TV shows and interviews and to top it all, offers a 365 day money back guarantee if the method doesn’t work for you! If something’s going to work then the linden method is the most comprehensive researched and credible method out there.

The bottom line is it worked for me, it also worked for over 125,000 other sufferers. It absolutely can work for you but let me warn you, it isn’t a trick that you can simply act out when you have an attack, you have to put the method into practice. If you don’t then nothing is going to work for you!

Click Here to visit the Linden Method website

I was home alone with my computer in pieces, can’t remember what I was doing to it but anyway, I was sitting on the floor leaning over and peering into it when suddenly out of nowhere I felt light headed and thought I was going to pass out. I stood up quickly, wondering what the hell was happening. Because I was alone I quickly made my way to the front door and walked out into the street. It was my first reaction, get outside so that if I collapse then someone will see me and call an ambulance. By now my heart was racing and I was starting to panic a little bit but it only lasted a few minutes and then went away.

I went back inside and sat down for a while, feeling worried and didn’t have a clue what had just happened. I waited to see if it happened again, I didn’t want to go to the hospital, at this point it didn’t seem necessary, it may have been nothing. A few hours later and I had no repeat episodes so I carried on with what I was doing. I have no idea what caused it, it could have been anything. The feeling was nothing new to me, if you’ve ever stood up too quickly and gone dizzy for a few moments then you know the feeling I’m talking about, that’s exactly what I experienced, only this time it happened for no apparent reason while I was sitting still. It could have been bad diet, lack of sleep or stress related, a simple one off incident for all I know but the very fact that it happened randomly while I wasn’t doing anything, this made me take notice. This made me constantly think about it, worrying if or when it might happen again.

I went through the day and into the next day with no problems but now my mind was on full time alert. Even though I felt fine I did not stop thinking about it. Why did it happen out of the blue, there must be something wrong, surely?. These thoughts never left my mind. To this day I will never know what caused it, but I now have absolutely no doubts that it was the worrying, the constant fear and wondering if it might happen again that led to my long term panic disorder.

That very first occurrence is still very very clear in my memory, I remember it like it was yesterday but the details of what followed over the next few months is a little hazy. I can’t remember exactly when my next attack was after that, it may have been the next day or a few days later. What I do remember was the non stop worrying that it might happen again, and it did, and this time it was different, a bit worse than the first one and it lasted probably about five minutes. This may have happened a few times over a few days, each time slightly worse. I wasn’t now just fearing it, I was expecting it. I was worried and I could feel myself panicking and getting palpitations when it did happen.

Up to this point I had kept it to myself, I told nobody, not even my wife because I didn’t want anyone to worry but I knew that I had to see a doctor, which I did. He examined me and said nothing was wrong, he said I needed to stop smoking and cut down the coffee. He also sent me for a blood test. Him telling me nothing was wrong made me feel at ease and I was fine for a few weeks. The blood test result came back all good as well. Even though I felt somewhat less worried, it didn’t stop me thinking about it all the time and it wasn’t long before my next panic attack. They gradually become more regular, mostly in places I would fear it happening the most. These would be more often than not, anywhere that I couldn’t easily get away from or in situations that would cause me embarrassment.

I still knew nothing about anxiety at this point , I’d only heard of it, but it was becoming obvious that my fear alone was able to bring it on. This kind of rational thinking didn’t help me though because no matter how obvious that might have seemed, I couldn’t see how it could result in such a real and physical thing. I had no trouble believing that the fear of it could make my heart race and maybe even the palpitations, you can experience those things when somebody startles you or you are extremely worried about something so that made logical sense, but by now it was more than this, the dizziness, the feelings that I might pass out and (by now) tingling in the face and hands. Each time it happened I worried more, and the more I worried the more likely it would end in a panic attack.

Up until now I was able to keep myself together and each attack would only last a few minutes. One day however, I was in the supermarket with a half full trolley and I felt an attack starting. This was the worst place I could be, full of people and the more I thought about that, the harder it was to pull myself together. Suddenly it was too much, the worst panic attack yet and I had to get out of there fast before I made myself look like an idiot. I left the trolley in the middle of the isle and walked as fast as I could to get out, I really thought I wasn’t going to make it out of the door, but luckily I did, I got to the car and sat down. This one I will never forget, I thought I was dying. This was really bad and now I was convinced I had something wrong with me. Fifteen minutes later I had calmed down but now I was very worried.

Over the next few months I was back and forth between the doctors and the hospital, more blood tests, and given a 24 hour heart monitor. All results came back clear. I didn’t know what to think or do. I was okay for a while after the tests but as you’d expect by now I didn’t stop thinking about it constantly and I still had not told a single person what was happening to me. I couldn’t hide the 24 hour heart monitor from my wife and so I just told her I was having a few heart palpitations, probably stress, and the doctor was just being thorough, which incidentally, the doctor was an idiot because he never once suggested I was having panic attacks, just kept blaming it on smoking and told me nothing was wrong.

By now however I had started to research my symptoms on the Internet and it was there that I learned about anxiety and panic attacks. There was one thing for certain that I concluded, either I was having panic attacks or I had a heart problem. I still had my doubts but after the tests I had recently been through, anxiety was looking like a probability. From this point on it just got worse. I can’t remember how long it was between this and my very first encounter (it was over ten years ago), maybe six to eight months or more but I was well and truly on my way to long term anxiety disorder.

Everyday life was getting harder to cope with, a constant battle trying not to let it take full control of me, almost everything was a challenge, driving long journeys had to stop, visiting friends, going in shops, on busses or trains and all the places that you might get caught out or trapped. The crazy thing is, going to visit friends and family and certain other things I would be okay for the most part, but what I couldn’t do was actually get to any of these places! It was the travelling that caused me the biggest problem, I think this was made worse by trying to hide it from everyone.

At first I wouldn’t tell anybody because I didn’t want them to worry but once I realised I had panic disorder, well, there was no way I was going to tell that to anybody! Although after about a year I did tell my brother but played it down and didn’t reveal too much. He had to know something because I worked with him and it was affecting my work. Nobody else knew, not even my wife or mother and I kept it to myself for ten years. This is a terrible mistake, all it does is make it harder to get over. The fear of sounding like a fool makes you fear it even more, an endless self perpetuating cycle.

For the next seven or eight years my life was ruled by fear and expectation of the next attack and fear of getting found out. I tried to ignore it as much as possible and attempt to do normal things if it wasn’t too far away from home but this often led to me getting off of busses and trains halfway into journeys. Anything that was more than fifteen or twenty minutes from home I would make excuses why I couldn’t go. Shopping for anything would be in and out as fast as possible and many shopping sprees would be abandoned half way through. Sometimes I would go into shops and check the queue size first, more than one or two people and I’d go to the next shop. What might take a normal person twenty minutes could quite possibly take me a few hours and that was if I could even get to the finish line! Living like this became normal for me. Constant avoidance and diversions was part of my everyday life.

I never become agoraphobic but my life revolved around safe zones and excuses. I could still do many things as long as I was never going to be in a situation where I might have exposed my secret and let anybody find out what was going on. I became an expert at suffering in silence. I knew by now that as long as I had an exit then I would be okay and I got used to the constant feeling of anxiety, which at times was quite bad. No matter where I was, as long as I knew I could get away quickly then I could keep myself together.

I think I was lucky really. I’m a fairly analytical person by nature and this probably helped me to cope. I lived like this for about six or seven years, my life rarely went outside of the safe zones, I knew what I could and couldn’t do and I’d be okay as long as I stayed inside them. I still had panic attacks often but they wouldn’t last and they didn’t matter as long as I was in a safe zone. I must have forgotten just how badly it was affecting my life and got so used to the way I was now living that I started to care about it less and less. If I had no need to stray outside my “safety net” then panic attacks were just a part of my life.

By the end of this seven year period I was having panic attacks less and less often until one day I suddenly realised I had done a few things outside of my safety zones and nothing actually happened. I can’t explain how this felt, it was like winning the lottery. Everyday was better and this might sound crazy but I now know what happened. I had got so used to living this restricted life style for so long that when I did eventually do something that I wasn’t meant to … I forgot to panic! (This is so important to remember)

Things were great. Weeks and months went past and not a single panic attack. I was straying out more and more and within a year I was completely back to normal, I could do all the things I used to do. Driving was the best, I was back to long journeys, I could go on trains and busses, into any shop, massive crowds, I could even be trapped somewhere with a bunch of strangers, not only would that not bother me anymore, it would be the opposite, it would feel great. I would get high on ordinary everyday things just because I knew I could do them again. Yet another feeling I could never explain. Unfortunately I couldn’t share this with anybody because it was still my closely guarded secret, but never mind, the buzz was unbelievable.

I went for about two years without a panic attack. I would still get stressed at times just like many people do but that was about as anxious as I got. I actually started to forget all about my anxiety and ended up completely back to normal, as far as I was concerned it was now all in the past. Everything was great, right up until March 13th 2009, a day I am not going to forget in a hurry.

I don’t believe in superstitions but I must admit I’ve long had an irrational ‘fear’ of Friday the thirteenth. Fear is probably too strong a word but let’s just say I’ve always got my guard up on this day. Luckily, I’m not a particularly organised person and most Friday 13th’s will pass me by without me realising. (If you are a sufferer then pay attention, it’s very important to see where this is all going!)

I had to meet my brother who lives fifty miles away. Driving long journeys was no longer an issue in my life and neither was anxiety or panic attacks. I hadn’t even thought about them for over a year. Just as I was leaving I looked at the clock on my PC to see what the time was and happened to notice the date. I immediately thought “oh, great!” and associated my long journey with something going wrong. At the time I was thinking about things like the car breaking down or a flat tyre. I got into the car and started driving but this thought was now with me. I got fifteen minutes or so into the journey and could feel my chest tightening slightly, I felt anxious. It wasn’t long before the only thing I was thinking about was how I used to avoid motorways and long journeys and I could feel myself struggling to keep a grip.

I had a battle going on in my mind. I could feel the panic coming but my logical senses kept reminding me this is just not possible. I knew that this could only be happening because I had convinced myself something will go wrong and it’s not real, so I carried on driving for what seemed like forever, trying not to lose it. I turned on the radio, wound down the window and tried to take my mind off of it. It was getting harder to stay focused with each minute. I decided I had better pull off at the next exit and calm down, which now couldn’t come quick enough. I have never experienced anything like this, I was wondering if maybe it wasn’t a panic attack. By the time I had pulled over, my right leg was tingling and so was my hands. I sat there for a few moments but it was getting worse.

Within a few minutes parts of my right leg started to go numb, both of my hands, my right forearm, my entire left arm was burning with very bad pins and needles. I couldn’t breath properly and felt like I was struggling to stay conscious, my heart was pumping like crazy and I was having palpitations, my chest felt like it was being crushed, my stomach was turning inside out like someone was physically twisting it, I had pains in my left leg and groin and I was shaking all over. I convinced myself this was a heart attack, I had to get out of the car quickly and get somebody to call an ambulance. There was nobody around, I was in the middle of nowhere but there were cars driving by.

I didn’t know what to do, I wanted to flag somebody down for help but I also didn’t want to look stupid. I was scared shitless, confused and couldn’t think straight. I started to walk fast along the road, and then run, and then turn back, and stop, and run again. I kept doing this (I don’t know why). If anybody had been watching they would have thought I’d just escaped the psychiatric ward. I was shouting to myself to pull myself together. I was totally and utterly f*cked!

As I was running up and down I could feel the pins and needles fading and my legs felt a bit better. I got back in the car and sat there for a while. I calmed down quite a lot but still wasn’t right for a while. I reclined the seat and just laid in the car for about half hour until I eventually felt better. I started thinking about the panic attacks I used to have and relating them to what had just happened to me. The series of events, the feelings were all similar only it had never progressed this far. Maybe this was a panic attack but I wasn’t convinced that they could get this bad. I had to get out of here but I couldn’t get back on the motorway, there was no way I could chance it. Luckily I didn’t have far to go and I managed to drive the rest of the way sticking to roads that I could just pull over without causing any danger to myself or others. I went the rest of the day feeling unsettled but okay and managed to get home but the next few months were a nightmare…

I was now having more panic attacks than I’ve ever had, not as bad as the one I just described but much worse than what I was getting a few years previous. I was on the edge continuously. I was tense everyday and once again my thoughts were dominated by it for every waking moment. This was not like what I went through years earlier because now there was no break from it, not even in my safe zones. I woke up feeling anxious and went to bed feeling anxious. I now couldn’t do anything without it being a struggle and I stayed home as much as I possibly could. There were times that I could now get a panic attack while I was at home, something I had never experienced previously. I now feared almost everything.

This just wasn’t going away. I was trying hard to remind myself how this had progressed again but rational thinking was not helping. I kept putting off going to the doctor, although I came very close to doing so. I knew the doctor would only give me two options, medication or CBT. The trouble is I wasn’t convinced of either but I had to do something. If I thought drugs would have worked then I would have taken them. There is nothing I wouldn’t have done to stop this but if I wasn’t convinced they would help then I was off to a bad start.

I done my usual and researched as much as possible on the Internet, it became clear that I have three options, CBT, medication or try one of the methods that are advertised on the internet. I actually wasn’t convinced by any of them. I spent a week or two mulling it over, trying to make a decision. If I was going to buy any of the methods then it was going to be the Linden Method for reasons that I describe here. You would think that as there’s nothing to lose, why is it so difficult to decide whether to try something when there is a full money back guarantee. I think the reality is it wasn’t about the money. Yes, there was an element of trust, is this just another one of those marketing tricks? But the real reason was fear! Why? Because if I’ve only got three options and the first one doesn’t work then I’m down to only two, and those I already didn’t believe in. This was what I feared the most. I had to do something though and eventually I bit the bullet.

One of the first things Charles Linden mentions in his ebook is how some people read through to the end and never have a panic attack again. My reaction to that was “yeah, right”. .. Well I can tell you I read through to the end (it never left my computer screen all day) and I have not had a panic attack since, which at the time or writing this is now five and a half months. He also says that some people have stuck to the method and their attacks have gone within weeks, some might take months, but they must stick to it otherwise it’s a waste of time.

If you want to be rid of your panic attacks then it is so important that you realise how they start and what they are. The Linden Method is absolutely jam packed with information and research explaining all of this and more. I think for all of those people that cured their panic attacks simply by reading the book are possibly a few steps forward in their understanding of this condition, or at least in their own confirmation that this is caused by our own thoughts which triggers a series of events. If you are having trouble with that belief then you may have to work a bit harder. Either way the method cannot fail if it is adhered to.

The education that I got was enough for me. Knowing exactly what anxiety is, how it progresses, how a panic attack escalates, how to control your breathing and things you should do when you feel a panic attack coming, it all made so much sense that I managed to put it all into practice straight away because I so clearly associated everything I learned with my own experiences. Everything I was doing to try to stop my attacks were actually making them worse. Simply having this knowledge was all I needed ten years ago and I would never have had to go through all those years of hell.

I’m not one hundred percent cured of all forms of anxiety just yet. I still get anxious or stressed at times but this isn’t a big deal to me. It will go when my life becomes less stressed generally as long as I don’t slip into old habits but the panic attacks are gone and that’s all I really care about. This is the only part of anxiety that debilitates you and destroys your life. With a bit of general anxiety I can still live a completely normal life and as my previous two year break from it proved, this will go too. Learning to recognise the various stages of anxiety and the things you can do to stop it is the key to curing your panic attacks.

Whatever choices you make are up to you but never allow yourself to believe you cannot be cured because I know you can do it. There is no need to spend the rest of your life in hell. Whether you use the Linden Method or CBT, don’t just sit there hoping for a miracle like I did, take action and do something about it right now, today, don’t allow yourself to waste any more of your life being controlled by this life destroying pointless crap.