Hope and Help for Your Nerves

It’s so easy to feel alone and like a freak when you are drowning in panic and anxiety. I had stuff going on but nothing that “should have” been making me so frantic and unwell. Yes, there are aspects of this book that are a bit dated but honestly, it was the only thing I read that made me feel like I wasn’t alone. She’s very empathetic in a way that most experts are not. She takes the intensity of the feelings very seriously and doesn’t make them sound less than they are. I cried my eyes out reading this. My only regret is that she isn’t alive to speak to, she’d be the one expert whose podcast I’d listen to.

I read this book decades ago when I was battling severe anxiety/depression to the point of becoming agoraphobic (housebound). I carried it around with me for years. Never found anything to equal the help I got from this book. back then I was able to get a copy of it on an LP album. Dr Weeks gives you clear cut and simple explanation of what's happening to you when you are anxious and depressed. then she gives a very simple system to get out of it. And yes, it's easy too. At least it worked for me. It's all about breaking down our fears into first fear and second fear and learn how to "float". try this book. That's all I can say. It couldn't hurt and it probablly will help.

Buyers of "self help" books about anxiety, of which I am one, are serious customers. They are not buying to amuse themselves with a tale of espionage or high drama. They are not buying to inform themselves of the complexities of world politics. If they've reached the point where they feel they must buy a book to "help" themselves, then the book they buy is not a book at all. It's a "religious" tract to save themselves from the daily torment that serious anxiety (GAD, PTSD, OCD, etc.) may bring. It's a serious purchase filled with hope that the next book holds the secret to normalcy. A life without anxiety. I've bought literally dozens of books on anxiety and find they are well meaning, well informed, and mainly (not always) ineffectual. Along these lines I have developed an invaluable tool which reliably predicts the relative value of a self help book: It's called "underlining". In this regard, Claire Weekes is without peer. The well worn, tattered and underlined books of Claire Weekes are well known to those who read her little books (Mainly: Hope & Help For Your Nerves and Peace Through Nervous Suffering) And why? Because you sense in every line she writes a person who understands the mind of an anxious individual and who more importantly can transmit a positive message that affords the anxious mind a comfort that no other book can. Is the book dated? Yes. No GAD-OCD-PTSD But that's part of its charm. Instead, she uses the language of comfort. And that's a word that a serious customer can relate to. I"ve read in these revuews some pros and cons, to which I'd like to respond: 1. Con: This is a book about dealing with anxiety. It's not about trying to solve the problem that initiated the anxiety. For that, Dr. Weekes, talks about "need[ing] a wise counselor" who will give to a "point of view" that you can "glimpse" to get a "new perspective". Pro: YOu may trivialize this approach, but the anxiety problem becomes an issue in and of itself, and sometimes drawfs the original problem. Sometimes, as in the case of a Panic Attack, there may be no reasons causing you to be nervous, just body physiology and biochemical interactions. In either case, the anxiety becomes the issue. You may feel anxious for no special reason, and then attribute whatever you were thinking or whereever you were with "danger". You feel fear, and then you feel fear about feeling more fear. And try to avoid that thinking or situation for fear of duplicating that experience. She calls this "second fear". It hits the nail right on the head. 2. Con: It has a quaint anarchronistic approach: Pro: Enough can't be said about the tenor of the book. No anxiety book I have ever read has taken a non-clinical way of describing a problem. This factual approach may describe the problem and profer a solution, but reads like a veritable textbook.I wonder how many of you out there started reading a self help book, and came away with a jumble of facts, and more nervous than

I've suffered from anxiety and panic attacks and agrophobia for over 6 years. I thought I was alone until I found Dr. Claire Weekes book. Her advice and explainations and my hard work led to recovery. I since helped start up and lead a self-help group based on her teachings. I've read many books on this topic and I have found Dr. Claire Weekes to be the absolute BEST. Any question you have, any symptom you experience, she explains. There is a pattern to this illness and she helps you understand this, there is a path into this illness and there is a path out. Many could be spared much suffering if we had been educated along the way about our natural responses to prolonged stress. Dr.Weekes has since passed on but she has left a wonderful gift of freedom to those who follow her advice.

There are many self help books on the market, but none are written with more compassion and insight than Dr. Weekes does in this wonderfully supportive book. Dr.Weekes, the renowned Australian pioneer in Panic Disorders and Agoraphobia, has a special way of relating to her readers- a way of talking as if she was sitting there besides you. Anxiety in it's many forms, can be a lonely, isolating illness. And the sufferer well knows how difficult it is for one other than himself to understand what they are going through. Dr. Weekes though, truly understands and appreciates the mind of the sufferer.On page after page she articulates feelings and thoughts only vaguely aware to the sufferer themselves. This connection -the awareness that Dr. Weekes really understands you- lays the groundwork for acceptance of the method that Dr. Weekes then enunciates. A simple, yet ultimately profound, 4 step approach to Panic Disorders and Phobias, that effectively deals with the devilishly paradoxical nature of the diso