Press Releases

The Chronicle, Thursday, Oct. 19th 2006

Mind Reading

Having fought his own battle with mental demons, Charles now helps others tackle anxiety attacks

After years of being tortured by self-doubt and anxiety, Charles Linden's self-treatment method has already helped almost 70,000 fellow sufferers to conquer their fears and regain control of their lives.
MARK WALSH meets the man whose Internet empire is a by-product of his own battle with mental demons.

If the subject were less serious, Charles Linden's stories of how people can be debilitated by anxiety attacks would be almost comical.
They include the schoolteacher whose condition made her spend up to an hour turning a light switch on and off and the student who could not sit down for fear his coins would slip out of his pocket and give him an electric shock.
Another woman was cursed with the compulsion to obsessively re-tile her bathroom to ensure none of her family had been sealed behind the wall by mistake.
"That level of anxiety is quite common - it might seem like psychotic behavior to people who don't understand the condition but it's not psychotic at all, it's just just a simple worry driven by obsession to extreme lengths," he explains.
Charles Linden has a unique window on the minds of people tormented by anxiety conditions such as obsessive compulsive disorder and post traumatic distress disorder.
Tortured by school anxiety attacks throughout his childhood, when he was aged 13 his mother took him to a doctor after the youngster declared he wanted to die.
"My parents only sat up and listened because one day on the way to school I said I didn't want to live any more. My mom drove me straight to the doctors, " he said.

Belongings

"There was no assistance at all, it was purely medicinal treatment. He gave me some old-school anti-depressants and sent me away.
The attitude was dismissive, they didn't have the knowledge required to fully help someone with an anxiety disorder and they still don't.
People just get on the drugs bandwagon. There's no follow-up procedures to check what is happening.
People with anxiety attacks need support when they need it, not once a week with a regular appointment."
At 19, Charles sought refuge from his demons by moving to Germany, but his condition soon caught up with him and he fled back to England with just a bag of belongings, leaving his car, apartment and girlfriend behind.
Overweight, unfit and taking a cocktail of prescribed drugs like Valium to control his anxiety, Charles struggled through a university course but finally became so debilitated he could not work.
"It was just astounding. The chest pains, the indigestion all the time and the physical effects were terrible - I just went to pieces, " he said.
"The drugs made me worse, but the worse I got the more drugs they gave me. I felt so ill I just couldn't function."
In desperation, Charles turned to researching his condition on the Internet and spent months questioning and researching to compile case studies of hundreds of fellow sufferers.
The work resulted in a downloadable template with recovery patterns and helpful mental techniques Charles tried on himself and offered to others on a trial basis.
"I put together a list of things I could apply in my own life and started to see definite results. Within six months I was off the drugs and was almost back to normal," he says.
Conventional treatments recognize five different anxiety conditions - obsessive compulsive disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder and phobias - but Charles insists there is a common factor uniting the conditions.
"Most people have a default level of anxiety that returns to normal after they experience a shock, but with anxiety disorders, this default level is jacked up each time until it consumes every waking minute," he explains.
"Anxiety is the fuel that drives these conditions. Once you explain and understand that, you can see a light bulb go off in the head of people and they start to be able to deal with their problems."

Thousands

As more and more sufferers used his drug-free method to regain control of their lives, Charles realized he needed to devote more time to the venture and decided to set up a commercial site with a staff of councilors.
In just five years, The Linden Method has expanded to boast centers in Spain, the USA, Germany and Denmark, helping tens of thousands of people.
For a license fee of £117, sufferers get the Linden Method pack, CDs and a DVD delivered to their door, plus access to a team of councilors on hand whenever they are needed - and if the method does not help, Charles pledges to refund every penny.
"I've been there, I know how crippling and disabling it is. I feel very passionately about helping people - particularly young people - at the start of the condition before it gets as bad as I was," he says.
"I'm not interested in taking money from people I can't help. That's not what we are about.
"People should realize that they are not physically or mentally ill - they are suffering from a behavioral condition and because of that they can undo all of the changes in their subconscious. Our primary aim is to make people well.

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Daily Express, Tuesday, July 25th 2006

Amazing Power Of Positive Thinking

Your mind has a remarkable connection with your body, which you can use to boost your health, says Anastasia Stephens.

CHARLES LINDEN, 38, had panic attacks for 16 years until he discovered how to overcome his irrational fears. He and his wife Beth, 39, live with their children, Charlie, four, and Florence, 30 months.

MY ANXIETY and panic attacks began when I was 12 and lasted until I was 28. I started to worry about how fragile life was and I developed obsessive compulsive disorder and agoraphobia, so I was put on anti-depressants at the age of 12.

At 21, I experienced acute anxiety disorder and would only leave the house when visiting the hospital or doctor. At 24, I was put on Valium and became dependant on it. By this stage I was experiencing eight to ten panic-attacks a day. Nothing worked. I was constantly told there was no solution.

I then started asking questions of the people I saw at hospital who were seemingly being cured. I set up an online questionnaire and found patterns in the answers. I found it came down to a combination of factors - physiological ones such as diet, smoking, alcohol and posture; psychological ones such as diversion techniques and the daily schedule; and lifestyle factors such as harmful everyday activities.

I tried to understand why the body has panic attacks and developed a program based on why I shouldn't fear life, looking particularly at triggers and what exactly was wrong. Then I used various cognitive behavioral therapies, positive thinking and neuro-linguistic programming techniques. By understanding what was happening and why, it helped my brain to start to fight the problem. After changing my perspective, my life was transformed within two days. Within two weeks, I was out and about again and the panic attacks had stopped.

Beth persuaded me to write up my story and start to help people, so I set up The Linden Method. I now have qualified counsellors and psychologists working with me in the UK, Germany, Spain and the US and I've helped thousands finally defeat this condition.

Express and Star, Saturday, May 27, 2006

Stress expert plans Wyre Forest retreat

by Sue Smith

A Kidderminster stress-buster who suffered from anxieties as a child is setting up a retreat to help thousands of people across the world overcome similar problems.

Charles Linden, aged 38, suffered anxiety from when he was youngster until he was 26 years old and has drawn up a program designed to help others. He claims to deal with more patients suffering from anxiety than anyone in the country and is now seeking to set up a retreat in the Wyre Forest where people can learn his life-changing methods and have holistic therapy.

Mr Linden has set up offices in Kidderminster, Idaho in America, Majorca in Spain and Heidelberg in Germany, and has now had his series of books and DVDs, available through local bookshops, translated into Danish and is working on a French edition.

He concentrates on trying to help people get over all types of anxiety disorders.
These include general panic attacks, obsessive compulsive disorders, post traumatic stress such as Gulf War Syndrome and phobias.

Prescribed

Mr Linden feels that having been to the point of becoming agoraphobic and being prescribed a cocktail of drugs he can advise people facing similar problems.

"There are 19 million people in this country suffering from anxiety and it is one of the most expensive things for the government because of days lost and everything else.
As a child I worried about being poisoned in the laboratory, killed on the rugby field and electrocuted during Physics.

Although a leader in his field worldwide, Mr Linden is determined to remain in his hometown of Kidderminster and last year moved his offices from Church Street to the Ashlane Center in Worcester Road. He said: "My dream is to have a residential center where people can go for extended weekends where they feel safe and completely understood."

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Birmingham Post, Tuesday, June 29th 2004

How do you cope if stress is a way of life?

A center providing what it claims is a unique approach to treatment for anxiety and panic-sufferers has opened in the Midlands. Health Correspondent Sophie Blakemore reports.

Sweaty palms, palpitations, hot flushes and heightened senses. Unpleasant but common reactions anybody who has had a sudden fright or been in a threatening situation will have experienced.
The adrenaline kicks in and the body's natural fight or flight mechanism takes over.
But how do you cope when these sensations begin to crop up in normal, everyday life?
Anxiety and panic disorders are among the most common psychological complaints in the UK, with about one in four people going through this roller coaster of emotions.
Kidderminster-born Charles Linden knows all too well how it feels when anxiety rules your life.

His first experience of a panic attack was at the age of 14 while he was still at school. The condition re-emerged when he was 18 and working for Nato in Germany.
Over a four-year period his anxiety grew, he became agoraphobic and unable to go out unless he was accompanied.
He returned to the UK in 1991 and after years of unsuccessful treatment with anti-depressants, anti-psychotic drugs, counselling, hypnotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy and alternative therapies -house-bound and at the end of his tether - he set about researching his condition.
Mr Linden began to believe his anxiety was not a mental illness, but a habit his mind and body had fallen into, which could be broken with the right actions, lifestyle and mindset.

He weaned himself off medication and began to live by nine 'pillars' or rules which now make up the core of his approach to curing anxiety, dubbed The Linden Method . A decade on, he is panic attack-free and has just opened a center in his home town dedicated to helping sufferers of panic, anxiety, phobias, obsessive compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. His method is drug-free and does not rely on conventional psychology counselling. Instead it uses simple techniques to change a sufferer's mindset and 'disempower' anxiety.

"I firmly believe anxiety and panic are not mental illnesses, they are behavioral conditions built on habits and instincts that can be overcome with the right approach,' said Mr Linden, now a 36-year-old married father-of-one.
I am not a psychologist but someone who has been at the sharp end of anxiety and I know what it feels like.
When I started researching the condition I was desperate for a way out. I began comparing information about the way memory and the brain works in terms of building habit and things suddenly started to make sense.
It is all about changing your behavior and thought processes, but without raking up all the things that have happened to you in the past bringing them to the front of your mind."

The list of people who have signed up to The Linden Method include students, successful businessmen, health professionals and the head of psychology at a leading UK university. Dr Allan Norris, a consultant clinical psychologist and member of the British Psychological Society, who works at Birmingham's Nuffield Hospital, said the method appeared to be a sensible approach to dealing with anxiety.

"It is not unusual for panic and anxiety sufferers to come up with their own way of dealing with it," he said. "Anxiety is really an exaggeration of normal behavior and feelings. This approach is good advice for anybody to help them control panic and anxiety."

Linden Method helped end Sarah's years of misery

Sarah Coates can remember suffering feelings of anxiety at the tender age of just seven.

The 25-year-old from Bewdley, Worcestershire, continued to suffer bouts of panic throughout her life and despite studying a degree in psychology and training as an NHS psychologist, could not overcome her fears.

"My first memory of anxiety was when I was seven years old," she said.
"I remember being afraid of going to school because we moved around a lot and I suffered social problems as a result.
Throughout university I was fine and got a degree in psychology without any problems but then I began to experience anxiety and panic attacks again about two years ago when I was working in Bath as an assistant psychologist."

Sessions with psychologists, faith healers and periods on anti-depressants did not help and only seemed to make the problem worse. She took time off to go to France with her parents for two months but with nothing to focus her mind on, her thoughts were clouded with anxiety.

When she returned to England she quit her job and returned to Worcestershire.
"I tried everything but nothing helped other than in the short term," she said.
"Then I found out about the Linden Method on the Internet and realized Charles lived near my parents.
I went to see him and tried his theories and for the first time something made so much sense to me, even though it was totally different to what I had learned as a psychologist myself.
My whole training was geared towards analyzing everything but this just seemed to feed my anxiety.
Here was a way of changing my attitude and making me stop fighting my anxieties and now I have got the tools to deal with it."
Sarah now works as a painter and decorator and helps Mr Linden part-time with the new practice.

"I honestly believe nothing I learned as a trainee or from psychologists helped me overcome my anxiety. I have lost my faith in conventional psychology - there is a place for it in society but not for treating anxiety."

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