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Self Help for Your Nerves’ helped me through a really tough time in my life. I bought several other ‘self help’ books during this time (in an attempt to avoid the inevitable trip to the doctor), but all of them seemed insincere, synthetic and unhelpful. Dr Claire Weekes’ book became a light in an interminable darkness. It gave me the courage to seek professional help for my anxieties and stress - for which I shall be forever grateful to her: There's a part about how if you face your "terrible feelings" and try to make them worst you will find that you cannot. We shrink from feelings for fear of making them worse but by facing them we lose some of the fear and it may actually have a calming effect. So much of living with anxiety is the anticipation, the nerves are intimidating and feel over-powering. In this section, you will find CBT-inspired self-help strategies, techniques and guidance you can try. With a friendly and comforting voice Claire Weekes goes through various symptoms of overactive nerves. She demystifies these feelings and the fear and shame surrounding them. Talks a little about why different bodily reactions happen but not too much. It's not about why your hands are tingling and shaking, and then judging and fighting that, but about knowing it's a natural reaction and you don't need to panic. The normal evolutionary animalistic first fear. You don't need to control or stop that - it is the fear of the fear that takes over our lives. Needless to say, I'm glad I still held onto it. I felt like I was able to better understand how to cope with a lot of things that I never knew how best to cope with. There are so many ways to look after your mental health and well-being that I have always had the tendency to overthink it. In the past year, I had been working on a lot of things I know needed working on (i.e. overthinking). Anyhow, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and for what it read as. Largely common sense and parts of it were pretty eye opening.
In your tense effort to control yourself you have been releasing more and more adrenalin and so further exciting your organs to produce the very sensations from which you have been trying to escape."The guidance you need is in this small book. The perseverance and courage you can, with help, find within yourself. The strength to recover is within you, once you are shown the way. I assure you of this.” – Dr Weekes. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) only recommends trying treatments based on cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Whether breakdown be mild or severe, the basic cause is fear. Conflict, sorrow, guilt or disgrace may start a breakdown, but it is not long before fear takes command. Even great sorrow at the loss of a loved one is mixed with fear, the fear of facing the future alone. Sexual problems are most likely to cause breakdown when accompanied by fear or guilt. Guilt opens the door to fear. Anxiety, worry, dread are only variants of fear in different guises. (p. 19).
Taking steps to enjoy a healthier lifestyle can help boost both your physical and mental health which can also help combat feelings of anxiety. If we have unhelpful thoughts and feelings, this can lead to unhelpful behaviour, which can turn into a vicious cycle of further negative thoughts and so on.
Support groups can often arrange face-to-face meetings, where you can talk about your difficulties and problems with other people. She is considered now to be the pioneer of modern anxiety treatment via Cognitive Therapy, and she even has a little rule; Claire B turned it into an acronym faffle.
Claire B named her inner critic Frank and tells him to F**k off all the time, too - each to their own. My retraction of 1/2 a star wasn't because this book has any negative aspects but simply because I am yet to fully explore it's full potential and to put it into practice, as mentioned earlier on in my review.
Tips on managing anxiety
I recommend this to anyone who suffers with anxiety, nerves, or is experiencing what seems like a ‘nervous breakdown’. Dr Weekes talks directly to you, the reader, and is endlessly sympathetic and encouraging. This is shown from the very beginning: Mental health is one of those uncomfortable subjects that we, as human beings, try to avoid discussing; it is because of this reason that I feel it is important to review this book.
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