How long?

[pav1984]

Hi guys i am wondering if there is anyone here who has recovered from health anxiety. If so how long did it take you before you could say you were better? I am working on cbt and mindfulness and was wondering as a guide when i will feel better. So far I feel worse 😂 but i think that is just because i am out of my comfort zone so to speak.

[Ben1989]

How long is a piece of string? It’s one of those. Obviously if you ‘catch’ your HA earlier the faster the recovery but it depends on so many factors. One thing is for certain, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Does your therapist know you’re practising mindfulness? Sometimes during therapy it can contradict the CBT. My therapist noticed I was using it to prevent anxiety but your therapy requires you to experience anxiety and work with methodologies to cope with it and reduce it. After therapy she said go ahead and use it but during therapy it can be counter productive. Just to keep in mind to let him/her know.

Also, I do a little mindfulness. You cannot approach mindfulness with an expectation and a goal. It’s all about being in the present so if you’re thinking ‘how long is this gonna take to work’ you’re thinking into the future and that’s not mindfulness.

You’re taking the right steps to get better though. Keep it up!

[lofwyr]

There is no timeline. There are no guarantees. I feel pretty good, overall. It took me 20 years. I still have backslides, sometimes big ones, but the longer I go feeling better, the easier it is to recover myself, right the ship, and get back to where I was.

Anxiety isn't something you ever walk away from completely. It is part of who I am, and accepting that helps me deal with it too.

Don't worry about the destination, or what it will be like when you get there, or how long it will take to reach it. Worry about right now, this moment. Not tomorrow, not next week. Be focused on feeling good now.

The more often I was able to do that, the easier it became to be happier more often than I was unhappy, to be anxiety free more often than I was anxious.

Twenty years ago today, I was a complete wreck. I was sleeping four hours a night if I was lucky, I was at the bottom of a deep, deep hole, and doubled up with a huge dose of depression to go along with my anxiety. That bottom started a long road which has given me a lot of hope for a happy today, and a happy tomorrow. I try not to push my thoughts too far beyond that if I can help it.

[pav1984]

How long is a piece of string? It’s one of those. Obviously if you ‘catch’ your HA earlier the faster the recovery but it depends on so many factors. One thing is for certain, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Does your therapist know you’re practising mindfulness? Sometimes during therapy it can contradict the CBT. My therapist noticed I was using it to prevent anxiety but your therapy requires you to experience anxiety and work with methodologies to cope with it and reduce it. After therapy she said go ahead and use it but during therapy it can be counter productive. Just to keep in mind to let him/her know.

Also, I do a little mindfulness. You cannot approach mindfulness with an expectation and a goal. It’s all about being in the present so if you’re thinking ‘how long is this gonna take to work’ you’re thinking into the future and that’s not mindfulness.

You’re taking the right steps to get better though. Keep it up!

Thats interesting. I never thought they might conflict but makes perfect sense now you mention it. I will mention it to her.

Thank you to everyone who replied. It makes sense also that it is something that you learn to control rather than cure as such and that timelines are different for different people.

Once again thanks for the replies.

[Ben1989]

Thats interesting. I never thought they might conflict but makes perfect sense now you mention it. I will mention it to her.

Thank you to everyone who replied. It makes sense also that it is something that you learn to control rather than cure as such and that timelines are different for different people.

Once again thanks for the replies.

Yes it doesn't seem like it should be but it was seen as an avoidance tactic in her eyes. Just mention it they might be able to incorporate it somehow but without noticing I was meditating before situations where I knew I'd be anxious. She'd get frustrated basically saying she needed me to experience the anxiety. She was correct though as it is important as you need to be able to score different anxiety situations.

Anxiety will never be cured. It is wired into our brains as primates. But we are able to choose when to be anxious. We have 10's of millions of thoughts every minute of the day. Anxiety is a response to those thoughts that we latch onto. Mindfulness certainly helps that. For instance, the chance of being killed driving in a car has a far far greater chance of occurring then developing a serious rare disease but we don't think about that do we? Because we decide to let that thought come and go and we 'latch' onto the latter.

You're taking the right steps, you're gonna smash this. I feel like I've put meditation down a little but I'm directly talking about during CBT. At end of my CBT we built meditation into my 'going forward plan' .