Claire Weekes and Unreality

[Ryukil]

Hi all. Claire Weekes says to go through feelings of unreality in as relaxed a way as possible, and by this she means to relax your body (loosen tense muscles). I have unreality all of the time, so to accept does it mean to loosen my body as much as possible all of the time?

Of course she says if you can't relax your body, it's enough to loosen your attitude, but is loosening your body somehow the optimal way of accepting? I just wonder because it seems to me like loosening ALL OF THE TIME would be the opposite of accepting, but that's what Claire Weekes is saying I think.

[Gotagetthroughthis]

Not sure which part of what Claire Weekes work you are referring to but often when she and others say accept or float through or going through things in as a relaxed way as possible I think they are more talking about your attitude towards your anxiety and your symptoms, rather than relaxing your body.

So yes obviously being relaxed in the body helps but the process of floating through and accepting your anxiety and your symptoms is how they begin to fade away. So the unreality you feel for example, when you think about it and how it feels strange it probably makes you feel even more scared and anxious but Claire weekes is saying is that these symptoms and what you are feeling are completely normal. So don't react to them, don't freak out about them, just accept how you feel and float through and know that these symptoms will pass. Whatever you resist persists. When you begin to accept how you feel and stop the cycle of anxiety - symptom - anxiety then the symptoms like the unreality begin to fade away and you start to feel more normal again.

Hope this helps.

[Mike_NY]

What she means is accept your anxiety, don't fight it, and the feelings of unreality will dissipate when you learn to accept the anxiety and not let it panic you. Her audiobook helped me immensely with DR

[Mojo61]

I'm trying my hardest to ignore my anxiety and "float" through it, but my God it's hard! I find distracting myself with jobs or going for a walk or making a phone call to a friend helps. It is a work in progress.....

I've just ordered another book from Amazon - "At Last A Life" by Paul David. It had been recommended to me by several members on here and I downloaded a sample onto my kindle this morning. From the gist of it he basically says similar to Dr Weekes - that to overcome anxiety you must ignore it, even if ignoring it seems impossible because you feel so bloody WEIRD. By ignoring it you are not entering into the cycle of "notice symptoms, worry about symptoms, feel worse because you're worrying about symptoms, symptoms increase, thus taking you back to stage one - notice symptoms"
It is so hard though, one of the hardest things I've ever done because every cell in your body is screaming out a warning that something is dreadfully wrong and you better sort it out or else! Of course there is nothing wrong, they are just thoughts, nothing more and nothing less.

I think the trick is not to let those thoughts stop you from going about your daily business. Yes you feel like s*** warmed up, but by God you are not going to let that stop you doing what you want to do. The theory is that eventually your anxious brain stops sending these signals out that you are in danger, because you are ignoring them and carrying on regardless. New neural pathways are formed and you go back to how you were pre anxiety when everything was normal and you dealt with stress and worry in an appropriate fashion instead of over-reacting and becoming crippled with anxiety.

Sounds easy in theory - in practice not so easy but we soldier on.....

[netminder1976]

I been reading that book too Mojo.. he talks about how he learned good things from Claire Weekes and that he uses some of what he learned in his own teachings. He seems to understand complete. I just hope I can put his thoughts to good use.

[Mojo61]

I thought he might have done. I could only read the first few pages as it was just a sample, but I could tell he was influenced by her teachings.

[MyNameIsTerry]

I haven't read Paul David's book or even any of Weekes. I have read about Weekes values though so understand the basics.

I've read a few other ex sufferers books though and a fair few blogs over the years. What I have found is that a good core amount of what any of them say...comes from Weekes. Get on with your life, use distraction, face fear, try to relax more, etc. It's all from Weekes with their additions. Many of these books are likely the same and some anxiety sufferers buy book after book trying to find the cure.

Just beware the sharks out there, there are many. Here is one such example we can't discuss on here anymore:

http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=152271

Plenty of Weekes in that one too.

People speak highly of Paul David though. I would just be wary of buying more. It's like the CBT books, once you've read one or two, they are repetitive with some twists and back story changes from the authors.

[Mojo61]

Just beware the sharks out there, there are many. Here is one such example we can't discuss on here anymore:

http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=152271

Interesting....

[MyNameIsTerry]

Hi all. Claire Weekes says to go through feelings of unreality in as relaxed a way as possible, and by this she means to relax your body (loosen tense muscles). I have unreality all of the time, so to accept does it mean to loosen my body as much as possible all of the time?

Of course she says if you can't relax your body, it's enough to loosen your attitude, but is loosening your body somehow the optimal way of accepting? I just wonder because it seems to me like loosening ALL OF THE TIME would be the opposite of accepting, but that's what Claire Weekes is saying I think.

Lets put it this way, when does a healthy activity become unhealthy? When you do it obsessively.

If you do a technique endlessly all day long, not that it's even possible to achieve this, you just create new obsession. As an OCD sufferer I have done this so that I felt I had to do things to keep my anxiety down and the opposite is true and you just never get better because you are then practicing avoidance.

I think with things like this you do it in blocks and train yourself to change over a period of time. The blocks help to show your body/mind that you can feel different and through repetition and with time you learn to be different.

If you force yourself to do it all the time out of fear, is that accepting? No. When your fear drives the process instead of you wanting to do it, you've lost that battle.

---------- Post added at 08:59 ---------- Previous post was at 08:57 ----------

Interesting....

Yep, I can tell you a lot about that as I was on here back then. PM only though, Admin trap posts with certain words in relating to this issue.