Is Anxiety a Mental Illness? (Part 3 Brain Science)

Here’s the key thing I want people to take away from these three blog posts; it actually doesn’t matter what anxiety or depression is. All that matters is that you feel like shit and it’s wrecking your life. But the more you focus on labelling yourself as ill, sick, anxious, depressed, weak etc, the more you will continue to feel that way. That’s because you are building up the habit of negative thinking. Now this IS scientifically proven!

NEUROSCIENCE

The more you focus on one type of thought, one habit, the stronger it becomes. It used to be commonly believed the brain stopped developing at a young age but we now know this isn’t true.  Parts of the brain CAN become altered –  it’s known as neuroplasticity. The neural pathways in your brain will change and become more ingrained if you continue thinking in the same manner. Those pathways eventually become so strong that new habits are formed that are intensely hard to break down. This is how we learn to drive or ride a bike at an automatic, unconscious level. This is also how anxiety and depression disorders are caused.

It’s not from genetics or chemical imbalances. Many think that it’s passed down from their parents but actually, it’s a learned habit that is either picked up from parents behaviours, someone else we spend time with or from our environment. Those who have it their entire lives (as I did), will have got it in childhood but are too young to remember the process forming or the triggers involved. But as I say – it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you stop putting labels on yourself and start taking action to get rid of it.

Too many people are just coping. Looking for techniques to quell the physical symptoms. Why would you want to do that if you can get rid of it entirely? This is what baffles me! Fuck the tips. Fuck the coping mechanisms. Anxiety and depression are TEMPORARY states. Start listening to people who have actually overcome these things, NOT spending all your time immersed in conversations with other sufferers who are struggling still. Whilst that is fine and for some, it’s a necessary part of the recovery process, if that is all you are doing, how do ever expect to recover? You need to be learning how to overcome it FOREVER. Not dealing with it and hoping for the best, or worse still, giving up and deciding to accept this as your fate.

YOU  ARE NOT YOUR ANXIETY! YOU ARE NOT YOUR DEPRESSION! Don’t become a slave to them. Because neuroscience proves that the more you focus on those negative thoughts, the more they will become part of you and the harder it will be to change them.

DISCLAIMER:

I know that some of you reading this will be angry. You won’t like to be told that meds are no good for you. You won’t like to be told your problems are not genetic or a chemical imbalance and are a result of your own thinking. That’s because it puts responsibility for your recovery totally in your own hands. But you have to take the positive viewpoint. If recovery is in your own hands, it means that YOU have the power to crush anxiety or depression. It can be done, but not unless you believe it! Not unless you have faith in yourself.

THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND

Again, I don’t say these things to make it seem like you are to blame. IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT!! Remember, your thinking is being done at a subconscious level. Biologist and expert on subconscious beliefs, Dr. Bruce Lipton, claims the following (taken from BruceLipton.com):

“The major problem is that people are aware of their conscious beliefs and behaviours, but not of subconscious beliefs and behaviours. Most people don’t even acknowledge that their subconscious mind is at play, when the fact is that the subconscious mind is a million times more powerful than the conscious mind and that we operate 95 to 99 percent of our lives from subconscious programs.

Your subconscious beliefs are working either for you or against you, but the truth is that you are not controlling your life, because your subconscious mind supersedes all conscious control. So when you are trying to heal from a conscious level –citing affirmations and telling yourself you’re healthy–there may be an invisible subconscious program that’s sabotaging you.”

This is why it’s so hard to overcome anxiety or depression and why “Just think positive!” doesn’t work. The best way to attempt this is at a subconscious level. Bypassing the conscious mind, to get access to those fears which have become deeply ingrained and strengthened through repeated  negative thought patterns. Hypnotherapy can do this. It worked for me. One hour of therapy erased 20 years of negative thinking.

I’m speaking from personal experience, which is something most doctors and mental health advocates ARE NOT. Because they haven’t been through the pain of anxiety or depression AND overcome it. Chronic, debilitating anxiety and depression are REAL. That’s all that’s important. But they are caused by repeated, negative thinking which CAN be corrected. They are habits; strong neural pathways created in the brain which are stuck and play over on a loop. They are fears, deep in your subconscious which control you without you being able to consciously prevent it.

The word “disease” or “disorder” or “illness” suggests that you can’t overcome it without meds – which is EXACTLY what Big Pharma want you to think! This is why the chemical imbalance and genetic disorder lies gets traction.

If it was an imbalance, how did one hour of someone talking to me, cure my social anxiety? When I had post-traumatic anxiety, why didn’t my meds turn me fully back to “normal” and balance me out? If it’s in my genes, how did online CBT (no meds, not even talking to anyone!) cure me of post-traumatic anxiety? I cured myself!

LISTEN TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE RECOVERED

All I’m asking is that you open up your mind to the possibility that what you’ve been taught could be wrong. Try listening to people with real life experience who had what you have but came out the other side. Every single person I’ve met or read about who has crushed anxiety or depression, says the same things:

• They are NOT diseases.
• They CAN be eradicated forever.
• You CAN do it yourself, maybe without seeing a therapist and definitely without meds.
• Most of them think that it’s NOT a mental illness.

Understand this; if you become angry and fixated on trying to force everyone to believe you are ill, or you are never going to get better or some other negative thing, then it’s not helping you get better. Every single person who fully recovers from anxiety or depression, first of all BELIEVED they could do it. They took action and they stuck at it. They were positive (as much as they could be). They didn’t get dragged down by other people. If you’re happy moaning every single day about your predicament, getting involved in angry debates, then continue that way. If you want to find a better use of your time, one that will cure you fully, then start trying something different.

I’m not saying all this to win an argument or be controversial. I’m saying it because I have valuable life experience, something most people who debate mental health haven’t got. I am one of the people who have had anxiety AND overcome it. And I’ve done it twice!! Once without medication. Once without speaking to any therapist. I don’t use coping mechanisms. I don’t have good days followed by really bad days.

IT. HAS. GONE.

And I want to help all of you out there who are struggling because I know that you don’t have to. I’m not the only one saying this by the way. Here are five people I know who had anxiety/depression and crushed it forever:

Free From Social Anxiety

Always Greater

The Anxiety Guy

Clinical Depression – The Learning Path

The Worry Games (Anxiety site)

And if you do still require someone with a qualification of some sort to make you believe, here’s some blokes with a PHd:

Phillip Hickey – Depression is not a Mental Illness

Bruce Lipton’s “The Biology of Belief”

Bottom line; learn how to change the way you think and you will change your life. CBT is regarded as the best and most successful way of doing this. It’s proven time and time again and as I keep saying over and over, if you do the research, you will find out these things. In this Internet age, there really is no excuse for educating yourself. The help is out there. Give hypnotherapy a go if you can afford it – ONE HOUR cured me of social anxiety. If for some reason you are thinking:

“That worked for you, great. But it probably won’t for me.”

THAT is the negative thinking I’m talking about which is causing you so many problems! If I’d thought that, I’d never have recovered. Give them a shot. It’s gotta be worth a try when it’s your LIFE we are talking about.