A few years ago, at the worst point of my anxiety, I found refuge in an online forum dedicated to benzodiazepine withdrawal (benzobuddies). I was not much of a poster, but I read everything. At 2am, unable to sleep, convinced my brain was broken beyond repair, those messages from strangers were sometimes the only thing that kept me going.
I never went back after I recovered. The forum was too tied to that period, and I needed distance.
But recently I felt it was time. Not to revisit the pain, but to give something back. So I wrote a long message to the people still there, still in the thick of it.
I’m sharing it here too, because I know some of you are living through something similar, with or without benzos. The mechanics of anxiety are the same. And the way out is the same.
Here is what I wrote.
Hi everyone,
A few years ago, I went through the worst period of my life. Several months of intense anxiety, sometimes pure terror. I came here often to read posts, and reached out a few times asking for help (see my first post here)
I have been benzo-free for 3 years. I have been anxiety-free for over 2 years.
I stayed away for a long time, because this forum, as helpful as it is, is associated for me with painful memories. But today, with hindsight, I wanted to leave a message of hope for those who are still suffering, especially those going through withdrawal.
What I came to understand
When I was in crisis, I thought I would never get out. I thought my brain was permanently damaged, and that my only hope was for some new treatment to come along one day.
What I’ve learned since: when you’re anxious, you’re no longer yourself. You no longer think normally. Your entire personality is temporarily rewired to stay in a permanent state of alert, a survival mode that distorts everything.
There is no miracle solution. No quick fix. You don’t become anxious or depressed overnight, and the road back is just as long. But it exists.
What helped me
1. Stopping benzos
I don’t hold benzos responsible for my generalized anxiety, but they acted as an amplifier, and also as a roadblock. Withdrawal got in the way of my recovery. Tapering off benzos helped reduce the baseline anxiety level, lengthen the windows and reduce the waves, until waves eventually stopped. But that alone wasn’t enough.
2. Therapy, with the right therapist
My therapist was essential. Being able to talk every week about how I was feeling, having someone help me reframe what was happening, that’s invaluable.
One thing to keep in mind: it’s not enough to have a therapist, you need the right one. The right match is 50% of the battle. Don’t hesitate to try several.
3. Understanding how the brain works
This is probably what changed things the most for me.
I learned that my thoughts are not my personality. They are not truths. They are mental processes, products of my brain. When the amygdala (the primitive brain, responsible for the alarm system) is in charge, thoughts become messages of danger and fear. That’s its job: to protect us. The problem is that it doesn’t distinguish between real danger and imaginary danger.
When the cortex, the rational brain, regains control, thoughts become more useful, more balanced.
So I learned to observe my thoughts, to see them from the outside, like a witness. To realize that my brain thought it was protecting me by triggering the maximum alarm, but was destroying me in the process.
Two approaches helped me a great deal with this:
The DARE method and ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), to stop fusing with my anxious thoughts, and let them pass without feeding them.
IFS (Internal Family Systems), to understand that our psyche is made up of several parts: an adult part (the rational cortex), a protective part (the amygdala), and often a child part, sometimes wounded, that reacts to present-day triggers. This model helped me stop seeing myself as a failure or a weakling because I was experiencing extreme anxiety when my life was “going fine.” During crises, I recognized that it was my child part showing up, and I tried to reassure it rather than fight it. It’s another way of looking at Acceptance (from ACT), and one that I found more intuitive. Many of these approaches overlap more than they differ.
4. Taking action anyway
Anxiety, in its survival logic, pushes us to stop doing things. Stay home. In bed. On the couch. Stay safe.
I understood that you have to do exactly the opposite: force yourself to do what anxiety is preventing you from doing, and stop doing what anxiety is pushing you to do.
I started going out again, exercising, picking up activities, even when it was torture, even when I had no energy. And I stopped giving in to the urge to stay in bed, skip meals, isolate myself.
It’s hard. But it works. Rumination and negative thoughts leave traces in the brain, reinforcing neural pathways that make us see life negatively. Conversely, taking action and paying attention to good moments, even small ones, gradually rewires the brain.
To close
I still have anxious thoughts. But I’m able to see them for what they are, and not spiral into rumination. Anxiety feeds on itself. It’s a vicious circle that is very hard to stop. When you learn to observe your thoughts without merging with them, you can catch the loop early, before it takes over.
Things will not get better on their own. The anxious brain operates on a pattern that has built up over time and it needs to be retrained. That takes long, difficult work: changing automatic reactions, learning to step back and analyze what’s happening in your head, gradually shifting your thought patterns.
Medication, antidepressants in particular, can be useful to take the pressure down and create the space needed to do this work. But they don’t cure, in the sense that they don’t fix the thought patterns that led to the anxiety in the first place. They are a crutch, sometimes a necessary one, but the retraining work still has to be done. Alone, through books, or with a therapist.
I know that what I’m writing might be hard to hear for some. If I had read this when I was in crisis, I wouldn’t have believed it and would have thought: he wasn’t as sick as me. I’m beyond help.
But that’s exactly what your anxious brain wants you to think. It wants to keep you in that state, because for it, that state feels safe.
What will help you is precisely what frightens you, and right now, your brain wants nothing to do with it. You have to start living again, even if it’s hard, counterintuitive, and scary. That’s the only way to show your brain that everything is okay, and that it can turn off the alarm. There will be setbacks, discouragement, but little by little, things will get better.
If you’re still in the thick of it: hold on. This is not permanent. Your brain is not broken. It’s exhausted and in overdrive. With time, support, and the right tools, it can recalibrate.
Wishing you all a full recovery ❤️
If you are reading this from a relatively calm place, maybe this gave you some language for what you went through, or are still going through.
If you are reading this in the middle of a crisis, I want you to know that I wrote every word of it from memory. I was there. It was real. And it ended. That is the only thing I can promise you: this is not permanent. Your brain can heal. The way out exists, even when you cannot see it yet.