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Lessons From Claire Weekes
Here is a checklist of the most important lessons I learned from Claire's book -- Hope and Help for your Nerves. She has 4 terms that she uses together. Face, Accept, Float and time. Which ones are you not doing?
This works as equally well for Pain as it does for Anxiety.

Dos and Don’ts
1. Do not run away from fear. Analyze it and see it as no more then physical feelings. Feelings are not facts, do not be bluffed.
2. Accept all strange sensations connected with your illness. Do not
fight them. Float past them. Recognize that they are temporary.
3. Let there be no self-pity.
4. Settle your problems as quickly as you can, if not with action, then by glimpsing and accepting a new point of view.
5. Waste no time on “What might have been” and “If only…”
6. Face sorrow and know that time will bring relief.
7. Be occupied. Do not lie in bed brooding. Be occupied calmly , not feverishly trying to forget yourself.
8. Remember that the strength in a muscle may depend on the confidence with which it is used.
9. Accept your obsessions and be prepared to live with them
temporarily. Do not fight them by trying to push them away. Let time do
that.
10. Remember your recovery does not necessarily depend “entirely on
you” as so many people are so ready to tell you. You may need help.
Accept it willingly, without shame.
11. Do not measure your progress day by day. Don’t count the months,
years you have been ill and despair at the thought of them. Once you
are on the right road to recovery, recovery is inevitable, however
protracted your illness may have been.
12. Remember withdrawal is your jailer. Recovery lies on the other side of panic. Recovery lies in places you fear.
13. Do not be discouraged if you cannot make decisions while you are ill. When you are well, decisions will be more easily made.
14. Never accept total defeat. It is never too late to give yourself another chance.
15. Practice don’t test.
16. Face. Accept. Float. Let time pass.
If you do this, you WILL recover.

I want to say what facing is where you know your about to have anxiety or a pain episode right. So you don't fear it, or judge it or criticize it. Wait for it to come if it must, most everyone has been taught to hate anxiety and Pain. Well the more you hate it the more it will become and the bigger it will get so you have to learn how to Float. I'd highly recommend getting her book ok.

Claire Weekes:
Float Through Anxiety
What did Claire Weekes mean by that? Here's how I understand it.
How Do You Swim?
It's complicated. You have to coordinate the movement of your arms, legs, and head to propel yourself through the water. You also have to breathe without taking in large quantities of water. And you have to keep going in the right direction, even when water gets in your eyes.
If you're like most people, it took a lot of practice to learn to swim, because there are so many things you have to make happen, and so many techniques to master.
How Do You Float?
You don't really have to learn to float. A block of wood can float, and so can a person. What you might have to learn is how to not get in your own way, how to simply let floating happen.
The block of wood doesn't have to make it happen, it just floats, as long as it's in water. People will float too, if they just lay down on the water.
But people, unlike blocks of wood, often find it hard to let go and trust in their body's natural ability to float. Their mistrust and apprehension will lead them to "do things" to try and stay afloat.
That's not floating, that's sinking! To teach someone to float, you might have to give them a few instructions - lay back, lay your head on the water, lay your arms and legs out, lie still - but the most important part of the "technique" of floating is...do nothing, let go, and let time pass.
Float versus Swim
When anxious clients come to me for help in dealing with anxiety, they usually expect that I will offer them the swimming kind of help: lots of specific ways for coping with anxiety, and many techniques to keep them "afloat".
But what they really need is more the floating kind of help. They need to learn to let go, rather than to make something happen, or prevent something from happening. That's the surest path to anxiety relief.
What did Claire Weekes Mean by "Floating"?
First and foremost, she meant to convey the opposite of fighting. The way to regain a sense of calm is to go along with the sensations of anxiety and panic, rather than oppose them.
She described floating as "masterly inactivity", and said this meant:
to stop holding tensely onto yourself, trying to control your fear, trying 'to do something about it' while subjecting yourself to constant self-analysis.
That's a tough sell! Claire Weekes knew that, of course, and wrote:
The average person, tense with battling, has an innate aversion to ...letting go. He vaguely thinks that were he to do this, he would lose control over the last vestige of his will power and his house of cards would tumble.
Claire Weekes Knew it was a Trick
The aversion Claire Weekes referred to is the result of the Panic Trick. It's the idea that a person is just barely holding himself together, and that if he relaxes his grip even a little, he will fall apart. In fact, it's his struggling to keep a grip that maintains the anxiety!
What I like best about the notion of floating is that it avoids two common misunderstandings about overcoming anxiety. The first one is the idea that you have to struggle against anxiety, fight it, and overcome it. And the second, related to the first, is that you have to arm yourself with all kinds of techniques and objects in order to enter the fray and confront anxiety.

In reality, you'll make much better progress when you let yourself float through the anxiety, not striving to overcome anything, not struggling to employ techniques, but simply allowing the sensations to pass over time.
The best kind of help, in my opinion, is the floating kind. It's help that assists you to rediscover your own natural abilities to cope with whatever comes, rather than arming you against potential adversity.

(Masterly Inactivity)
to give up the struggle to stop holding so tensely unto yourself by trying to control your fear, trying to do something about it while subjecting yourself to constant self analysis. it means to cease trying to navigate your way out of illness by meeting each obstacle as if it were a challenge that must be met if recovery is possible. it means to bypass the struggle, to float and let time pass. the average person tenses with the battle,they never will do this floating.

They feel they must stand on guard, "keep control" and (hold thereselves together) all the while this is giving more power to the problem.

(Loosen your attitude)

Practice masterly inactivity and let go -- if your body trembles - let it tremble - dont feel obliged to try to stop it. Don't try to appear normal.DONT EVEN STRIVE FOR RELAXATION. Simply let the thought of releaxation be in your mind, in your attitude toward your body. Loosen your attitude don't be concerned because you are tensed and cannot relax.
The very act of being of being prepared to accept your tenseness re-laxes your mind. And relaxation of body gradually follows.
You dont have to strive for relaxation you have to wait for it. When someone says i have tried so hard all day to be relaxed-surly he has had a day of striving, not of re-laxation.


Claire Weekes- Hope and help for your nerves


Dr. Weekes Biography
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Through her books and audio CDs Dr. Claire Weekes has helped millions of people recover from anxiety, panic, and phobic disorders. She is widely acclaimed for her revolutioary approach which speaks directly to those tangled in the web of stress, fear, and depression. Dr. Weekes achieved distinction as the first woman Doctor of Science at the University of Sydney, and was recognized by Queen Elizabeth H. for her contributions to medicine. Her books and CDs are recommended by doctors, psychiatrists and therapists throughout the world.


I got all of this off the Net, Although I learned my lessons from her book. At first we learn then we learn more ok.

Bless You

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--- Forest