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Worry and anxiety
Anxiety is not a character flaw and it is not weak faith. It is a body doing what it was built to do, at a moment when it is not needed. The practices here work on the loop itself: what worry promises and never delivers, what avoiding costs you, and how to let the body come down.
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3 practicesTheme · Treatment and medication
How long you have
When · In a change
This explains how treatments work. Never start, stop or change a medication because of something you read here.
These medicines work on a timescale of four to six weeks, not days. Say the number out loud at the start, because someone expecting relief this week will have decided by Friday that it failed.
Something does happen on the first day, but it is only the first step of a change that takes weeks to finish. The useful version of this is a date:…
Describe what the first fortnight might feel like before the first tablet, not after the first worried phone call. A warning given in advance turns a bad week into a milestone.
The wording can be plain. Some people feel more wound up for the first week or ten days, it usually passes, and nobody changes anything without…
The first week or so on one of these can feel worse rather than better: jittery, restless, sleeping badly. For most people it settles within a fortnight, and it is a known part of starting rather than a sign of harm.
Untold, a person quite reasonably concludes the medicine is making them ill and stops. Told beforehand, the same week becomes something to sit out,…