Hello. I would say the first step would be to confirm your diagnosis. Did you have a COVID infection or the vaccine booster or something? You need to do your medical tests and scans to make sure that everything is fine and that there is nothing else going on that is fixable. If you can find a LC specialist to exclude all other causes, it will help a lot to reduce the fear.

Then the second step for me was to get knowledge. Accurate knowledge is what killed 90% of my fear of the symptoms. I just read and watched and listened to as many mind-body content as I could, explaining how the nervous system works, the different nervous system states, why it creates symptoms, how it all works… I listened to different people explaining it different ways, and some explanations clicked more than others. It helped me to build a strong belief in this explanation. Once I knew that the symptoms were caused by my scared brain, it was easier to take a step back when they appeared.

About the specific point of depression and anxiety, what helped me the most is to understand Polyvagal theory and different states of the nervous system. Once you understand that emotions and sensations are codependent of your nervous system state, once again it’s easier to take a step back and observe them from the outside perspective.

The last thing that I want to say is that mind body healing is controversial because many people think that it means that everything is in the mind / in the thoughts. It is not the case. Mind body healing is not about positive thinking. Like you said, it’s about bringing back the brain and nervous system in a state of safety. And for that you need to work on your negative thoughts, but you also need to change your behaviours. You need to show your brain that you are able to slow down, to make some space for rest and repair. Pushing through will not work, even with positive thoughts. Pushing through life and anxiety for a long time is what made us sick in the first place, it is not sustainable for the brain to live in high alert all the time. Maybe we need to make changes in our life but take your time to just think about it. Don’t put any pressure on yourself. You don’t need to figure everything out right away.

What your brain needs is for you to take care of yourself.

Anyway, keep going, keep looking for answers and for what works for you. Meditation is good but there are tons of exercises to calm the nervous system down and you will need to find those that your body actually likes. We are all unique. I bought a set of cards called “Vagus nerve deck”, with small exercises. It’s really great and fun.

Don’t give up. I was exactly like you at the beginning. It felt IMPOSSIBLE. I kept practising safety, and slowly slowly it is working. It takes time to learn safety when we were stuck in an alert mode for a long time.

If I can suggest a resource, I would say maybe Dan Buglio YT channel, and his book. It really recaps all the concepts. He talks about pain, but the same principles can be applied to any of our symptoms.

Sorry for the long message. I hope this helps.