Farewell To Anxiety
THE GROUNDBREAKING RADICAL APPROACH TO ENDING ANXIETY!
by Steve Slimm
First publication: November 2024
© Steve Slimm
Contents
Prologue: Welcome to the End of Anxiety!
Prelude: You Are Not Singular—Meet Your Many Parts!
Chapter 1: The Great Pretender – What If Anxiety Isn’t Real?
Chapter 2: How Control Disguises Itself as Worry
Chapter 3: ‘The Future’ is the Fuel – Stop Feeding Anxiety
Chapter 4: “Abandon the Quest for Certainty”
Chapter 5: The Power of Staying Present
Chapter 6: Seeing Anxiety as a Well-Meaning, Misguided Part
Chapter 7: Let Go of ‘Fixing’ – The Antidote to Endless Effort
Chapter 8: Making Decisions Beyond Anxiety
Chapter 9: Conny’s precious Child
Chapter 10: The Nervous System - A Silent Guardian
Chapter 11: Learning to Let Go
Chapter 12: You Were Free All Along!
Chapter 13: Who is the Real You?
Prologue: Welcome to the End of Anxiety!
Imagine if, instead of managing anxiety, you could see it in such a new light that it lost its grip entirely. What if anxiety isn’t something you need to “overcome” or “fix” but something you could simply come to understand differently - and in doing so, let it dissolve on its own?
Welcome to the end of anxiety! Not because anxiety will magically disappear, but because this journey will help you see it in a way you never have before. We’re not offering you another set of strategies, techniques, or life hacks for “coping” with anxious thoughts. This isn’t about replacing one form of control with another, or piling on more “shoulds” and “best-not-tos” about how to handle worry. Instead, we invite you to drop your guard entirely and consider something radical, even revolutionary: what if anxiety is only powerful because we believe in it as a necessity?
This book isn’t a manual for self-improvement. You’ve no need to improve yourself; you're okay just as you are! It’s an invitation to observe anxiety in an entirely different light - a voice with a purpose, yes, but one that doesn’t have to dominate your world. It’s about learning to watch, to listen, and ultimately, to disentangle yourself from both the belief that anxiety is necessary and the counter-belief that it’s a condition you must conquer or a flaw you must hide.
Here, you’ll discover that anxiety is not the all-powerful force it seems but rather just a part of you—one that needs to be heard and understood - but without having to take over. And as you contemplate the ideas presented in this book, allowing yourself to be drawn into the narrative, you will find yourself naturally overturning some deeply held beliefs and assumptions. You might even find something surprising: a peace that was there all along, ready and waiting behind the scenes, biding its due time to wash over you in tears of relief and gratitude.
So, please let go of any expectations of more hard work, struggle or self-improvement! This book is not about making things even more difficult for you. Life has been difficult enough for long enough. Instead, I invite you to start an exploration, a journey that might just bring you face-to-face with a freedom you never in your wildest dreams imagined possible!
How does that sound? This is not a promise of relief from anxiety—rather, it’s an invitation to a fun party, a farewell party to celebrate the end of anxiety as you’ve known it! You could say it’s your coming out party - out from under the interminable spell of this ‘thing’ you’ve come to know, accept, learn to live with, and likely in some way hate: Anxiety!
So, as you read on, please open your mind and heart fully to all possibilities; especially to new ways of perceiving and engaging with what you’ve up to now been calling ‘my anxiety’. Prepare yourself to have your eyes of understanding opened wide, and your heart flooded with sublime appreciation; as you let in the light of truth, the truth of things you’ve not been aware of, a whole new way of perceiving - that is, until today.
Prelude: You Are Not Singular—Meet Your Many Parts!
Imagine if the anxious voice in your head—the one that frets, warns, and spirals—is not you at all. What if it’s just one voice among many, a single part of a much larger whole? And what if that part, the one you might have called “my anxiety” for so long, isn’t even the truest part of who you are?
For most of us who suffer with it, anxiety feels as if it’s woven deep into our very identity. It shows up like an uninvited guest, telling us it’s here for our own good, here to keep us safe, and here to remind us of every possible thing that could go wrong. But what if this anxious part of you is simply one voice—a well-meaning but misguided character who’s had the floor for far too long?
A Theatrical Introduction
Imagine you’ve been invited out to the theatre for the evening. You take your seat in the audience, waiting for the curtain to rise, surrounded by the hum of anticipation. Tonight’s play is a contemporary parody of everyday life—an exaggerated, over-the-top rendition of the daily worries and questions that usually linger in the background of any contemporary mind. You’ve been told it’s a performance unlike any other, one where you’ll meet the cast of characters who’ve been pulling the strings behind the scenes.
The lights dim, the main curtain rises, and a hush falls over the crowd. A single spotlight appears on the stage, illuminating the inner curtains as they slowly begin to part. From the shadows emerges a figure . . .