What really, really helped me this weekend...

....Reading this from Claire Weekes "Hope and Help for your Nerves":

The Peak of Experience

When explaining utter acceptance to a nervously ill person, I stress that this means acceptance at the very peak of experience. The following is taken from a taped recording of a conversation with a patient who had been ill for many years.

PATIENT: You knew what was wrong with me. You knew that I should try not to tense up when I felt a spell coming; that I should accept and float. And here's the big point. You thought I knew and understood this, but believe me until now I did not. Sure, I accepted most of this and sometimes I was not tense. But at no time, up till now, had I really been fully prepared to accept the way I felt at the climax of my worst suffering.

DOCTOR: At that very moment. At the peak of experience! That's the important thing. You thought you were going through with acceptance. You let it come, but at the vital moment you drew back.

PATIENT: Yes. And my apprehension through the day was always of this particular time, dreading it.

DOCTOR: You tried to put up with it. You didn't really accept it.

PATIENT: Sometimes I didn't even put up with it. I withdrew in panic.

DOCTOR: Some people do put up with it better than that, and they think they are accepting, and up to a point they are. They accept 99 per cent, not 100 per cent. It's that extra 1 per cent that makes all the difference. With 100 per cent acceptance, you are prepared to accept totally whatever your body, your thoughts may bring, even at this moment of great suffering, above all at this moment. I call this moment the peak of experience, and it usually comes at the crest of a wave of panic.

PATIENT: I wasn't doing that. I didn't go along with the effects the tension produced. I ran away. When I mentioned being on guard some weeks ago, I know now that I was on guard to stop myself "listening in" and bringing on a spell. I should have been on guard, ready to relax and accept any spell that might come. It's not that way now. I've learned how to see the spell through without reaching for the pill bottle. I can walk and work even with the panic there. It really doesn't matter any more. It doesn't throw me the way it did. I don't mean that I don't mind having it. It's still horrible, but it just doesn't throw me anymore. I've learned what you mean.

Float past tension and fear.
Float past unwelcome suggestions.
Float, don't fight.
Go through the peak of experience with utter acceptance.
Let more time pass.