SELF-HELP FOR YOUR NERVES: Learn to relax and enjoy life again by overcoming stress and fear

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You may find relaxation and breathing exercises helpful, or you may prefer activities such as yoga or pilates to help you unwind. You might be skeptical of a self-help book dating from the 80s and ask yourself if the guidance is still relevant. I can testify that it is, and that the slightly old fashioned tone of the book made me feel like a wise and educated woman was imparting advice to me.

Avoiding drinks containing caffeine, such as coffee, tea, fizzy drinks and energy drinks, may help reduce your anxiety levels. Healthy livingI am definitely not a stranger to anxiety and depression and so for a long time I have been actively searching for ways in which these 'illnesses' can be 'cured' or made less intense. This book has definitely helped me in the sense that it has given me a completely different perspective compared to what I had before reading this book. Stress and depression can cause you to be a lot less open minded than you perhaps used to be and being accepting of new ideas and view points may seem very daunting, however, when ideas are presented in this book Dr Weekes gives examples about how the sufferer may be feeling once presented with an idea (personally I found her to be pretty spot on) and so you are given a sense of relief that someone out there knows what you are going through and that she has helped many people in similar situations. Claire B named her inner critic Frank and tells him to F**k off all the time, too - each to their own. If you are reading this book because you are having a nervous breakdown or because your nerves are ‘in a bad way’, you are the very person for whom it has been written and I shall therefore talk directly to you as if you were sitting beside me.”

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) only recommends trying treatments based on cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). CBT is a type of psychological treatment that can help you manage your anxiety by changing negative or unhelpful thoughts and behaviour. When I read At Last A Life, it totally changed my life with its unorthodox (or so I thought) approach to anxiety that actually worked. It didn’t contain the usual exhortations that I just needed to eat right, meditate and be mindful and then my anxiety would be ‘managed’. Instead it just had some very simple advice: stop trying to get better, let the suffering wash over you, stop fearing your own fear, and let your body heal itself.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. 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. 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.