I am not sure about some of the readers of this article,
but I know that many anxiety-sufferers have stumbled across advertisements claiming to be able to completely relieve anxiety in a very short period of time, and I know that I have seen “three weeks” cited by certain advertisers in the past.
At first, I thought to myself, “Oh man, I have been working on this anxiety thing for the past several years, and there are people out there recovering in periods of just a few weeks. I must be a total failure because obviously I can’t do this as fast as other people can.”
Then, after some personal experience in regard to this disorder, I started to question that belief. How could it be that people can recover from full-blow anxiety disorders in a period of a few weeks? At this time, I decided to move to the other extreme and began to think that advertisers were simply falsifying this data in order to increase sales of certain drugs or therapies (in some cases this probably was the truth).
But, after even further personal experience I have come to a much different and more believable conclusion. I was once watching the television show Scientific American on PBS, hosted by Alan Alda that was researching the placebo effect. In this particular study, the effects of placebos on clients affected with varying degrees of depression were studied. Study participants were exposed to a range of methods that really had no ability to treat depression; participants were informed, however, that the treatment they were receiving would help them to recover from depression. I cannot recall all the different placebos that were administered, but the two I do remember were a sugar pill and acupuncture. In the acupuncture, researchers devised a way to lead participants to believe they were being pricked by needles, when in fact they really were not. The goal of the study was to test how much healing an individual’s own belief could provide in regard to depression. The two results that caught my attention were that 1) a select few participants were able to fully recover from major depression with the use of the sugar pill placebo and other very benign forms of treatment, and 2) that the more elaborate the ritual (i.e. using acupuncture instead of a sugar pill), the more recovery from depression a person would experience, on average.
What this therefore means is that it is very possible for persons to recover from full-blown anxiety disorders in a matter of three weeks with the help of a certain drug or therapy. However, what advertisers fail to mention is the rate at which this actually occurs, and it would be reasonable to imagine that this rate is pretty low.
My personal experience has been that anxiety is an ongoing issue that will most likely affect me in some way all of my life. However, through different techniques, I have found that it is very possible to minimize anxiety’s impact on my life. So, my personal conclusion about recovering from anxiety in three weeks is that it is a very rare occurrence, and that this should be viewed as the exception rather than the rule. However, recovery is very possible, and while some may recover faster than others, it is important for those still in recovery to remember to not get down on themselves and instead keep it positive because that is the only way recovery is possible.
