Acceptance and Claire Weekes.

[Ryukil]

Hi all. I'm looking to implement the Claire Weekes approach and she says that you should physically loosen your body, like sag into your chair. I have anxiety 24/7...does this mean I should be loosening as much as possible 24/7? That honestly sounds a bit exhausting to me...I'm wondering if just not looking for "the cure" will be enough for me. For years I have tried to figure out anxiety, get out of it, etc.

I also figure as I stop searching for the way out, my body would automatically relax?

[Davit]

That is only a coping skill, not a cure. Is that good enough?

[Ryukil]

The idea is that in order to be "truly accepting" you need to give up "physical resistance". However...I figure the physical thing is just because we're tense if we're anxious because that's what anxiety does...makes us tense. I wouldn't call it "resistance".

[sial72]

what I do is try to accept how I feel and not try to fight how I feel.
Easier said than done, but with practice I can do it so much more than before.
Claire Weekes' approach has helped me very much.
And yes, as you say, when you stop trying to figure a way out your body does automatically relax.
Hope it helps you too x

[Poppy Girl]

Hi Claire Weekes is really good but I found the book At Last A Life by Paul David invaluable. He suffered with anxiety himself for many years and his advice is based on his own experiences and the approach he developed. It is very similar to CW's way but gives more coping strategies from a sufferer's perspective rather than a doctor's.
Ultimately it really is a case of acceptance and ceasing TRYING to get better. It will take a while but with a bit LESS effort you will get there!
All the best :)

[Ryukil]

I read that book too...he doesn't really talk about "loosening your body" or "floating" etc., which makes it a lot simpler.

[MyNameIsTerry]

I haven't read any Claire Weekes, I've only read about her methods in summary but what she appears to be saying is to stop fighting against your anxiety and learn to relax. If you panic about your anxiety, you either intensify current symptoms or invite new ones.

The trouble is, its far from simple to do and you have to re-learn how to relax, something we all took for granted before we experienced an anxiety disorder. GAD is a bad one for 24/7 symptoms when compared to other disorders where they may come & go unless they are significantly severe.

You are right, it would be exhausting to try to relax your body constantly. But I don't think you should do that because you can't practice anything constantly and the way to tackle this type of issue is you start small and build up. Set some periods to practice relaxing in this way and then increase them in stages. Change where you do them, how long you do them for, etc because the goal should be that you don't need a strict protocol to do it but can bring it on when you need to until eventually it becomes intuitive.

Does she explain how to relax your body? If not, why not look to incorporate something that does? For instance, Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) is still used today and thats been around since the 1920's! This will teach you how to tense & relax muscles and how to tell the difference.

On top of PMR, another technique that predates Weeks is Applied Relaxation and that is still used today as it has enough clincal evidence to support it (NICE have it as an alternative to CBT for GAD & Panic Disorder in the UK...yet I've never seen it even mentioned on here since I joined!).

Applied Relaxation is interesting because it takes PMR and then blends in some other techniques that evolved in the 1970's and it is structured so that you start with with the basics and work towards shorter & shorter periods of bringing on relaxation which is also tested in anxiety provoking situations.

I think this is an interesting one and I don't understand why it seems unused in the UK. I've only just started researching this and I've also seen it is referenced as being combined with Cognitive Restructuring too.

So, if Claire Weekes doesn't quite give you enough direction on how to relax your body, why not see if they do and then go back to Weekes for the rest?

Floating is another very vague term I've seen discussed on here a fair bit. I understand what it means but without reading the books I question why so many people have to raise threads to ask how to do it - that should be quite clear in the book.

The question over searching for your anxiety is one that differs for everyone because there are so many possible causes of anxiety and many were not known in her time e.g. new meds, new science and new knowledge of physical conditions. I believe you rule things out and research your disorder to understand why you are this way and then you push on to recovery. If you get stuck constantly researching then I view it as an obsessive problem since that time would be spent better trying to recover.

I also think if you keep researching "cures" then you need to think about whether that time would have been better spent actually working on using them. (I've been through a stage of this myself with constant reading about "gurus", the internet is full of blogs and not all of them are even genuine...if you look at who is the registered owner of some of these websites you will find they have multiple identities because they are cash generators and not former sufferers. Some of them post on here and I report them so they are removed)

[Davit]

The amount of stressors now compared to 50 years ago has gone up a lot. Support within and without the family and community has gone down too.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Yeah, I think another big one is technology. Work is certainly vastly different since back then it was still "job for life" and "you knew your place" and now people expect more. The financial times have changed dramatically too which was the 80's for us in the UK.

I think from what I've seen, some of it is still valid but I think you have to take all of that and see how more modern sources have moved forwards. Some of what Weekes says easily maps to other therapies (CBT came in the early 1970's, didn't it? Aaron Beck?) so she was around as it was all emerging but things like OCD were barely known back then so whether it translates to them I'm less sure. Reinvented/recycled Weekes methods (the gurus seem to love passing their methods off as their own yet they seem to be Weekes derived from what I've seen) may help bridge the gap if we are talking reputable sources.

Personally, I prefer scientific but if something helps, its worth a try I guess.

[Davit]

Placebo effect is an accepted coping skill. If it works, it is right, even if it is wrong. Like sticking with a losing team because you are loyal and loyalty makes you feel good.