Debbie went from having 4 panic attacks per day with daily emotional meltdowns to feeling energized, capable and having zero panic attacks in Just 2.5 Months.
Here is a step by step case study of how she achieved this.
It’s difficult to avoid sacrificing your life in order to keep well.
But the fact remains that if you are to have a meaningful life, you can’t give in to anxiety and depression forever.
Because if you do, you’ll never attain the freedom and happiness to do what you want in life.
That’s why I want to show you how Debbie, one of my former clients who struggled with anxiety and depression, used my NSDR technique to win over the pressures in her life.
She was able to achieve this win in Just 2.5 months and it enabled her avoid losing her Job to the emotional overload she was engulfed in.
Now, I will use Debbie’s experience to show you how to use the NSDR technique to create a reliable system that turbo charges your ability to cope successfully at work irrespective of your difficulties with anxiety or depression.
And practising this simple system diligently will transform you into a master over the table salt effect in your life.
When Debbie came to me for therapy, she reported that despite struggling with both anxiety and depression for years, she was previously confident that she could push herself and not let her illness get in the way of her life and her job.
Now for some strange reason, she couldn’t control the pressure like she before. She was experiencing 3 to 4 panic attacks daily, feeling overwhelmed, unmotivated and taking loads of tablets.
One tablet to stop the panic attacks. One tablet to stop the gruesome morning migraines. One tablet stop herself vomiting from stomach aches, and another to stop her soiling herself in public (A nasty side effect of her anxiety).
Have you ever woken up to realize that you’ve become a conveyor belt, just existing to meet the needs of others whilst you and your needs vaporise into nothingness?
Well, that’s what life had become for Debbie.
In her team leader role at work, Debbie’s boss expected her to perform miracles with low staffing. She informed her managers that she had a mental health condition and was not coping with the pressure.
And despite working her ass off for this company, not missing a single day even when she was sick,
No one took her seriously.
They piled more work on her until her job became agonising.
Debbie had to be the strong one for everybody.
Both her 17-year-old daughter and 19-year-old son had long term, painful, physical health problems.
Every day Debbie returned home from work, she was met with intense guilt. Crushed by the pleading look in her kids eyes which seemed to say…
“Mum please help!”
Powerless to do anything to ease their pain, Debbie’s guilt drove her to meet all their demands. And this left her exhausted all the time.
In therapy, I showed Debbie how to use the NSDR technique to manage all these difficult sources of pressures, and after 2.5 months of practicing the technique, she reported the following changes.
So, here were the positive changes Debbie experienced from using the NSDR technique.
Debbie was able to drop half her pills. She no longer needed diazepam to get out of the house or go to work.
She stopped waking up with panic attacks at night and was no longer having high levels of anxiety throughout the day.
She stopped feeling shaky all the time. She no longer felt freaked out about things and no longer experiencing that overwhelming wave of immobilizing fuzzy feeling like she was going to collapse.
This all meant that she could be less fearful and more focused at work, and actually put more of her efforts towards progressing herself in her career.
These were the impressive results Debbie achieved thanks to The NSDR Technique.
NSDR is an acronym for the steps within the strategy
N stands for Notice it.
S stands for Stop it.
D stands for Do something opposite or alternative,
R stands for repeat
So how does this relate to everything we have learnt in this series? And how did Debbie us the strategy to achieve the remarkable results she got?
Let’s proceed to the first step in the strategy.
What are we noticing here?
You want to start noticing three things.
Namely…
Relating this back to Debbie,
We recognized that the stress trap Debbie kept on falling for was the…
“I just have to keep on going trap.”
For Debbie, this trap was driven by two things.
1. Debbie needed to avoid others judging her as incapable because of her mental health issues.
2. And Debbie needed to keep on going because her kids were depending on her. Her kid’s welfare was all that mattered, she didn’t care about herself.
As a result, she never stopped to reassess her system for managing the different pressures in her life.
Now noticing that this way of dealing with things made everything worse, all Debbie had to do was to notice whenever she slept back into her “keeping on going” mode.
Moving on to the positive habits that overloaded Debbie with pressure at work and at home.
Debbie was initially convinced that work problems was solely due to the ignorance and selfishness of her managers.
Debbie valued her work, she had to show professionalism. She was never satisfied until she had completed her work and would stay overtime to accomplish this.
Now Debbie realized that these positive habits of professionalism and high standards were actually her real problem.
Why?
Unknowingly, Debbie was training her managers to take advantage of her. Whilst Debbie told them she was not coping, she was still meeting all their deadlines. Even though it was killing her.
This did not tally with her complaints of needing more staff.
So for the NOTICE IT section of the NSDR technique, all Debbie had to do was notice when she slipped into going over and beyond her daily duties.
Moving on to Debbie’s home life, sadly, something similar was happening.
On a daily basis, Debbie got home to find her family members in their rooms. The kitchen upside down and no food to eat.
She had to clean up after everybody and cook for the whole family. She had to do this every day despite her husband being retired and home all day.
This led to mixed feelings of bitterness and guilt which compounded her stress even further.
Now Debbie began to notice that her empathetic spirit had led her to train her family to take advantage of her unintentionally. As such Debbie began to put more effort into noticing these self sacrificing actions.
Next, Debbie noticed her negative thinking patterns.
If allowed for a long time, there is a point at which negative thinking becomes so automated that you can’t stop thinking even when you want to.
At this stage, Debbie realized that she was spending every moment of her waking time worrying.
At work, worried about how people were judging her performance.
And at home, Debbie worried about her Children’s health.
Debbie worried about how her children would survive if she died from all her pressure.
Realizing that her attempts to make sense of all her worries was like nailing jelly to a wall, Debbie began to notice whenever she fell into these worry patterns.
And this is what you need to start doing too.
1: Start by becoming aware of your stress traps, positive habits and negative thinking patterns.
2: Begin to notice when they creep up on you. Keep a diary to help you become conversant with the patterns
3: Then apply the next step in the technique.
And the next step of the NSDR technique is…
Yes, I know… Stop it sounds like me telling my 3 year old son off.
S T O P I T ! ! ! ! ! !
No pun intended. ;)
Here, stopping literally means… Whenever you notice strss traps, positive habits or negative thoughts creep in, you…
Stop
Take a step back
And think about what you are doing or about to do.
Try to stop yourself from going into auto pilot.
Yes this is easier said than done.
But, believe me, if you keep at it for a while, you will notice that it will get easier and easier to stop.
Debbie struggled heavily with the stop section as well. However, she refused to give up and was rewarded by an increase in her ability to stop herself plunging into these problematic habits.
This prepared her for the next step in the technique.
Which is…
Step 3 of the NSDR technique can feel intimidating when you first start out.
At this point, it’s helpful to keep your main goal for doing all of this in mind.
Your main reason: You want to build the emotional stamina to maintain a fulfilling career and attain a life where you are free to do the things you want.
So, to start step 3, ask yourself…
Should you go for an opposite or alternative action as way to deal with your stress traps, positive habits and negative thinking patterns?
Some situations call for an opposite action.
But, if an opposite action feels wrong, you should go for an alternative action.
Here’s how Debbie applied step 3 successfully in her situation.
Debbie decided that there was no point in killing herself to please her boss.
She agreed to start saying no to her boss on occasions.
Now, since Debbie hated disappointing people, doing this felt like she was damaging her professional reputation.
However, she made the changes following the baby steps highlighted below. And this made the changes ten times easier to apply.
1. Debbie started by saying no once per week. And then increase her numbers of no’s per week to an amount she felt comfortable with over time.
2. Debbie ensured she took her allotted breaks and also finish at work at her contracted time.
As time went by, Debbie felt increasingly bolder to make more changes as she realized that they led to none of the fears she predicted.
In fact, she was surprised that her performance at work actually started to improve.
Debbie realized that whilst she loved her kid, she was making them too dependent on her. This was handicapping them drastically diminished their ability to survive on their own.
So, Debbie decided to make the following changes.
1. Instead of giving them lifts everywhere, Debbie decided to give them transport fare 50% of the time.
2. Instead of cooking every meal for them, Debbie allowed them to make their own meals occasionally.
Yes, this where just two small changes, however, since they were both daily activities, the amount of pressure dropped was immense.
Moving on…
How Debbie applied step 3 to her negative thinking patterns…
Using the techniques suggested in the previous article, Debbie chose to squeeze her negative thinking time to 1 hour each day.
This meant she could still face her issues and plan for her necessities without becoming overwhelmed by the negative thoughts.
The result was that she began to feel in control of her mind again, and her panic attacks dropped from 4 attacks per day to 2 per week. Within a month of doing these thought-based exercises.
3 months later the panic attacks had literally disappeared and she was now sleeping through the night.
How Debbie applied step 3 successfully to her Stress Traps.
Instead of keeping on going all the time, Debbie decided to spend 10 to 15 minutes each night thinking through how she had applied the NSDR technique throughout the day.
If a change resulted in a reduction in pressure, she noted this, and marked it for re-use.
Doing this allowed her to make positive tweaks which ensured that she was making daily progress in her attempts to reduce the unessential pressures in her life.
This brings us nicely to the final step of the NSDR technique…
Why Repeat?
You see, when you try something new for the first time and achieve a win, you’d most likely conclude that the win’s a fluke.
But when you try the same thing out 10, 20 or 100 times and still achieve a win 80 to 95 of those times, you become confident that the strategy works and you are more inclined to use it for making your life better.
At first, Debbie viewed the NSDR Process as an experiment.
It was new to her.
She was not sure it would make any beneficial changes for her.
However, after a few weeks of repeating the technique, she no longer needed convincing.
The results she got spoke for itself.
Yes, she still had an indignant boss who continued trying to take advantage of her, but Debbie was still able to maintain less pressure at work by focusing on the changes that were within her control.
Yes, life at home was still hard because her kid’s physical health issues were never going to go away.
However, Debbie was still able to remove the pockets of unnecessary pressure by pulling back on her empathetic tendencies.
Overall, the pressure felt 60% less and Debbie felt much more in control of her life now.
Here the deal…
Life will always present you with pressure whether you like it or not.
The more you step out of your comfort zone in order to participate threatening world and achieve your goals, the more you'll have to come across pressure.
And your approach to managing your pressure will determine whether you keel over or remain balanced and capable.
Everything I have highlighted throughout this series has been to open your eyes to hidden pressure points that steal your energy and joy.
And the NSDR technique is a simple yet effective structure to help you tie everything we have covered together, making all the concepts easier to apply.
The positive habits concept helps you pinpoint the correct negative pressure spots that you won’t recognize easily. These positive habits are fatal in their impact on you.
The negative
thinking concept highlights that there will always be negative things to deal
with that naturally bring pressure into your life. But you can prevent overload
by learning simple tricks that restrict your time spent thinking.
You win by becoming a SUPPORTIVE THINKER!
The Stress traps concept trains you to avoid becoming complacent.
Your life pressures are constantly morphing, so it’s wise to adjust your coping skills to match the changes in your life.
Choice 1: You can take everything you have learnt and do nothing with. Which might just mean that you are still struggling ten years from now.
Choice 2: You can take what you have learnt and do it all on your own. This works tremendously well, you just need to persevere through a lot of trial and error as you work to pinpoint the correct positive habits to focus on.
Choice 3: You can take what you’ve learnt and then follow my step by step plan created just for you. This practical plan will help you take all the guess work out of the equation.
If you want me to create this personalized plan for you. Just click the button below and read the next article to find out more. And I’ll tell you all about it.
That’s all for now folks.
Take care and I'll talk with you soon.
Adewale
