How to Tell if You Have Anxiety Disorder
February 19, 2011 by Dr Jeannette Kavanagh
Filed under Panic Attacks
If you’re someone who can never earn enough or have enough money to relax about it, and to enjoy spending it, you may have underlying anxiety problems that you haven’t had to face, or you haven’t wanted to face. If opportunities to travel become reasons for days or weeks of anxiety-induced upset tummy, while you worry about packing, not packing; getting to the airport on time; finding the right terminal; getting lost in a foreign airport, driving in a foreign country, then it might be a good idea to look at other areas of your life.
It’s Important To Confront Your Anxiety
Not so that you can find a label to put on your behaviour, but so that you can face your problems as the first step to managing them. Why? Because chances are that if you worry excessively about something as everyday as money or as unusual as travel, you may see that you spend a great deal of your day, every day, worrying in an unhelpful way about other things.
You probably also worry unduly about your job performance, and you’re far too concerned about running late for appointments and about your contribution to work meetings. Your anxiety switch is turned up way too high. Your anxietylevel is excessive to a point where your quiet enjoyment of life is being seriously impaired. Forget about whether or not you’re ill, your life is so filled with unhappy fear-filled feelings that you’ve forgotten how to feel joy and happiness. Joy is your birthright.
A person who has problem levels of anxiety, tends to worry far too much. Worry is their middle name.
They predict the worst about everything.
They worry, and sometimes feel intense levels of fear, about big and little issues. That anxietymanifests itself as uncomfortable physical symptoms throughout the day. Although that person may have days, even weeks, without feeling too much fear and anxiety about life, if they’re invited to address a meeting at work, or represent their political party at a debate, the roof of their world will cave in. Sometimes, the person with what I term background anxiety (anxiety that doesn’t manifest itself as debilitating attacks of panic, but stays in the background of your life), sometimes that person has had much more serious episodes of panic attacks and anxiety disorder in their adolescence or early twenties. Once they escaped from those attacks as many people do just by a process of maturation, they regard the less severe anxiety as perfectly normal. It’s not.
Generalized anxiety refers to a level of concern and worry that has become dysfunctional rather than helpful in your day-to-day life. As I mention throughout Calming Words, anxiety is a very important part of our lives. Without it, we would not get up in the morning in time for work, we wouldn’t study for exams, train hard for the Olympics, and nor would we make an effort to escape real and present danger.
In other words, if your plane leaves at 6pm and you have to be at the airport at 4pm, then you need to be there at 4pm. Making sure that you get there by 2pm or even 2.30pm can place a lot of extra strain on you, your family, and friends. Your normal, functional and helpful anxiety which works with you to get you there on time, has gone over the top. Given that you may not travel a lot, that sort of highly anxious approach may be understandable, and it’s not likely to affect your life too much.
However, it is likely that the same person who stresses out about being on time – to the point where he or she is obsessively early – that person will also always, or usually, think the worst when their relatives or friends are late, or ill.
Generalized anxiety is not just about being pessimistic, though that is a component of this type of anxiety. It is more that in every single sphere of life, the person worries, feels ill at ease, and yes, just plain anxious. The alternative – that of feeling positive and joy-filled is a state that s/he rarely feels.
Seeking Help With Your Anxiety Problem
Many people with generalized anxiety do not seek help for their anxiety because they put it down to “that’s just the way I am. I’m a worry wart”. That sort of generalized anxiety is perhaps more difficult to diagnose and treat than something like a panic attack. The panic attack is so intrusive into your life, and makes life so obviously unpleasant and difficult that people do reach out to seek help.
In the case of people who have generalized anxiety, they live a life of quiet desperation and profound unhappiness. Rarely do they just relax and enjoy, or even recognise, the blessings they have in their lives. A great deal of their time is spent criticising work colleagues and even family and friends – often seen as the cause of their anxieties. Because they rarely breathe in joy themselves, they are not as capable of transmitting sheer pleasure and joy in being alive to those around them.
Although it is always difficult to define what is a natural and normal level of concern about work, study, family, finances and the state of the world, it is such a waste of the great and finite gift of life, to spend so much of it in a negative, fear-filled, state. And usually, there is no good and rational reason for feeling that fear.
How often have you heard the expression: “Everything’s a drama to her”?
In all likelihood, that drama queen is a highly anxious person. Their anxiety and worry has led to the person experiencing at least three of the symptoms listed below.
If you regularly experience three or more of those symptoms, please check with your doctor: you may have physical reasons for those symptoms or you may have an anxiety disorder.
Author’s Note: Article published here.
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Dr Jeannette Kavanagh has a counseling and coaching Practice in Melbourne Australia, to help people find their unique solutions to anxiety and panic attacks. For over two decades, Jeannette has helped thousands of people overcome anxiety and panic attacks. Visit her website http://www.calmingwords.com/ to sign up here for a FREE MP3 Relax on Cue.
Read more articles written by Dr Jeannette Kavanagh
How to Recognize Anxiety in Children and Adolescents
February 10, 2011 by Dr Jeannette Kavanagh
Filed under Panic Attacks
Problems with a too-high level anxiety can start in childhood with children and adolescents worrying to a greater extent than their peers about all sorts of things. Some behaviors are an indication of a fussy and over tidy child. When we go just a little bit over fussiness and we have entered the realm of an anxiety disorder.
Anxiety in childhood is obvious when children and adolescents worry to a greater extent than their peers about school performance, sporting prowess, their appearance and their popularity. If the child has grown up with overly anxious parents, the tendency will be exacerbated. Even quite laid back, relaxed, children can become tense and anxious adolescents if their parents transmit their own fears and anxieties about their performance to their children on a regular basis.
Children who are growing up in a fairly relaxed family atmosphere can simply come across as ideal students, and parents may even be counting their blessings that their son or daughter does her/his home work without being nagged about it. The highly anxious child will be a perfectionist and s/he will require an excessive amount of reassurance about their performance. Although we all love our children to come home with an A grade, it is vital to watch for signs of anxiety accompanying their school work. A child who frets and even cries about an assignment in elementary (primary) school, cannot automatically be diagnosed as having generalised anxiety or indeed, any anxiety problems. However, it is good for parents to monitor those sorts of reactions. Children and adolescents with generalised anxiety may also worry about being punctual, their appearance, or impending catastrophes such as earthquakes, floods, meteors flying to Earth and nuclear war.
Obsessive Thoughts And Compulsive Behaviors
If you notice that your child is excessively neat – send her or him to my place. I jest of course because we accept our children even when they missed out on the tidy gene. However, excessive concern about the tidiness of one’s room, or how clothes are arranged in a drawer, these are signals that say two things. First, you just happen to have a tidy and neat child. Secondly, the degree to which they are concerned about tidiness will let you know whether or not that often sought-after trait is actually a sign of their underlying anxiety. This article is not about obsessive compulsive disorder as it’s known. But it is important to mention that all obsessive thoughts and compulsive or ritualistic behaviours have their base in anxiety. Keeping those socks exactly 2.5cms (1 inch) from each other, having all the white shirts together, making and re-making the bed; those behaviours are used to keep the underlying feeling of anxiety at bay.
Signs Of Anxiety In Children
In many ways, it’s easier to diagnose anxiety in children than in adults because they haven’t learned yet to censor themselves. If they feel anxious about giving a talk at school, or even about going to school, children will communicate that to their parents or carers. In fact, many anxiety prone children will communicate their fears in very clear and sometimes alarming ways. The important thing for those around the child or adolescent with anxiety is for us to be supportive without being enabling. By that I mean that as a parent or older sibling, or friend, we must treat with respect the very real fear that the child is expressing. The injunction to “snap out of it” or the advice that “there’s nothing to be afraid of, you goose” might make you feel alright, but it will only make the anxious person more fear-filled. They will be less likely to open up to you when and if their anxiety escalates. So please don’t trivialise the fears. As for enabling some parents when faced with an obviously anxious child begin to over-protect them. They keep the child away from school camps and sometimes even from school.
Keep A Diary For Three Months
On the one hand most of you can readily diagnose whether or not your child’s anxiety switch is on overload. It’s the subtlety of some behaviors that can allow anxiety to go undiagnosed and untreated for years. Most of my counseling clients talk about being anxious at school and about being more generally anxious in their childhood. Yet none of them was treated for anxiety. While I certainly don’t want to suggest that the child who expresses worry and apprehension about delivering a talk to the class has anxiety and needs treatment, it might be interesting for you to keep a little diary of how your child reacts in other situations. If it’s a one-off very common fear of public speaking, your diary will remain blank. If not, you’ll have good material to discuss with a therapist if you decide to make that intervention.
Having said that many of my counseling clients were anxious children, it is also important to say that anxious children do grow out of their anxiety in the vast number of cases.
Editor’s Note: Previously published here.
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Dr Jeannette Kavanagh has a counseling and coaching Practice in Melbourne Australia, to help people find their unique solutions to anxiety and panic attacks. For over two decades, Jeannette has helped thousands of people overcome anxiety and panic attacks. Visit her website http://www.calmingwords.com/ to sign up here for a FREE MP3 Relax on Cue.
Read more articles written by Dr Jeannette Kavanagh
Anxiety Disorder and Panic Attacks: How Cognitive Behavior Therapy Can Help You
February 7, 2011 by Dr Jeannette Kavanagh
Filed under Uncategorized
In your journey to conquer anxiety and to eliminate panic attacks from your day-to-day life, no one approach will be totally right, but Cognitive Behavior Therapy can be a very powerful part of your recovery. In this short article, I want to explore what’s involved in Cognitive Behavior Therapy, so that you can make a decision whether or not you’d like to explore it with your therapist.
De-Constructing Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT)
When we de-construct the term, we look at each of the three words separately to increase our understanding of the whole.
Cognitive
The first part of CBT is from the Latin cogito I think. Some of you might recall those Philosophy lectures about Rene Descartes and his famous ‘cogito, ergo sum’ – I think, therefore I am. In general conversation, we link ‘cognitive’ with an intellectual engagement. We hear about cognitive deficits caused by brain damage, so let’s say that the cognitive component of this therapy involves our brains, our thoughts. It explores how you think and react to things, and how those thoughts elicit an anxiety response or start your panic attacks. If you want to eliminate panic attacks, you have to recognize your role in creating and maintaining them via what I call unhelpful thinking, unhelpful habits of mind.
Behavioral Or Even Behavioural
In this treatment model, the behavior component isn’t just about how you behave in the sense of what you do. It’s also about how you react before you do things, and it’s also about how many of those behaviours become a habit and almost automatic. The behavioural component is also about the range of responses your therapists make available to you. Your therapist will work with you to find alternative ways to react, to break down your automatic responses. Through CBT, when you see that lift (elevator) door opening, you’ll be able to react in a calm way instead of automatically panicking about using the elevator. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy is an extremely interactive approach.
Therapy
The third part of CBT, therapy, is from the Greek therape?a healing. The healing or therapeutic component is about what you and your therapist do. It might involve you learning relaxation exercises, but it’s also part of an ongoing conversation and series of observations about your thoughts, reactions and actions. My counselling Practice and my e-kit Calming Words involves helping people to learn to meditate and I encourage daily meditation as part of building up our reservoir of calm which is depleted daily by our hectic lives.
Eliminating Panic Attacks using Cognitive Behavior Therapy
Each anxiety or panic attack follows a well-documented cycle. R Reid Wilson in his book Facing Panic calls it the Panic Cycle.
First step is where you have contact with stimuli which makes you feel anything from slightly nervous to downright terrified. For instance, if you have had panic attacks in the shopping Mall, you’ll feel terrified just entering those automatic doors.
In a Cognitive Behavior Therapy approach your therapist would have you look closely at that initial trigger. You may be asked to do something that seems paradoxical: you may be asked to increase the number of times you experience that initial fear. That’s called an exposure-based intervention, and it can happen in your therapist’s office or in the Mall. It’s a way of allowing you to see what you already know at a rational level. Namely, that there is nothing to fear. Cognitive Behavior Therapy allows you to think (cognitive) about your fear response (behavior) so that you can construct a more appropriate response (heal).
At the end of most panic attacks the anxiety reducing behaviour of choice is avoidance. You stay home, or you only go to the Mall with a friend who knows about your problem, or you only go to the movies if you can sit on the aisle seat – ready for a quick escape.
You’re in charge. However, at both ends of the panic attacks cycle your reactions (cognitive responses) and behaviour (panic or escaping) are the cause of your continuing discomfort. Both sets of behaviour are inappropriate. Both can be discussed as a way of re-writing the script. What script? The one that says ‘enter Mall, feel terrified’. It’s your thoughts that evoke your adrenaline (fear) response. Through Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, we can help you work with those thoughts and responses to re-align them so that you change your response to entering the automatic doors at the Mall – or whatever triggers your fear.
Editor’s Note: This article published here.
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Dr Jeannette Kavanagh has a counseling and coaching Practice in Melbourne Australia, to help people find their unique solutions to anxiety and panic attacks. For over two decades, Jeannette has helped thousands of people overcome anxiety and panic attacks. Visit her website http://www.calmingwords.com/ to sign up here for a FREE MP3 Relax on Cue.
Read more articles written by Dr Jeannette Kavanagh
How to Tell the Difference Between Anxiety and Normal Worry
February 4, 2011 by Dr Jeannette Kavanagh
Filed under Panic Attacks
Anxiety is a normal feeling people experience when faced with threat, danger or stress. Feeling anxious can sometimes be a good thing. Occasional anxiety is part of normal life. However, for some people anxiety is a constant factor in their lives. When a person has anxiety problems, it interferes with their ability to function normally on a daily basis. Anxiety disorder can cause people to feel intense, long-lasting fear or worry, in addition to other symptoms.
Anxiety can actually help you by motivating you to prepare for a big test or by keeping you on your toes in potentially dangerous situations. It’s very important to realise that one should never be seeking a cure for anxiety, as in the total elimination of anxiety from your life. You need anxiety to equip you to get out of the way of real and present danger, to motivate you to do your best in school, work and sporting events.
Understanding Anxiety
Problems with too-high a level of anxiety involving unrealistic fear and worry are very common. It is estimated that that they affect about 16% to 20% of the U.S. population including people of all ages, races and backgrounds with one exception. Women tend to be more likely to have problems with anxiety than men. Either that, or as with all areas of health, they report their issues more than men.
Anxiety is a set of responses which everyone has when they perceive a threat to their safety, that is, when they feel danger. The human body is hardwired to automatically pump adrenaline into our system when danger confronts us. That awareness of a danger signals the involuntary nervous system to send immediate messages throughout the body, to either ‘fight’ (take the situation head on) or ‘flight’ (escape from the situation) or ‘freeze’ (as in a kangaroo caught in the headlights of hunters). This ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response is characterised by:
The anxiety response is essential to deal with dangerous or stressful situations.
However, if this reaction of fear does not subside when the real and present danger is over, it can become an anxiety disorder.
Anxiety disorder has a significant impact on a person’s life. The person will feel edgey all the time. They react to situations in a fear-filled way, even when the situation is not a threat or a danger. They know at an intellectual level, that their reactions to situations are inappropriate. They know that they are not really in danger. That awareness often means that people with high levels of anxiety criticise themselves for feeling those fears. If you feel fear sometimes amounting to terror, in a crowded restaurant, or at the Mall, or in a lecture theatre at College, it makes sense at one level to avoid those situations. After all, who wants to suffer through mounting feelings of fear? That’s why it’s so important to seek help.
While the first couple of episodes of fear can be tolerated, the way anxiety disorder and panic attacks develop is an ever-repeating cycle of (1) eg fear and panic felt at a concert;(2) next time you’re going to a concert, you anticipate that you might feel that panic again (3) just thinking you might feel it, almost always guarantees that you will. (4) Not surprisingly, you want to escape from the situation and eventually, you (5) start avoiding going to concerts. With the proper therapy, you can learn very quickly and easily how to react in a different way to situations that now make you have panic attacks.
Are You An Overly Anxious Parent?
Being a parent can provide everyone with legitimate moments of worry and even high anxiety. If your child has a high fever, you’d have to be made of concrete not to be anxious, fearful and a bit worried. Many first time parents err on the side of caution with their very young children whose temperature is often due to something as unthreatening as teething. It’s a balancing act. If you’ve raced your two year old to the Emergency Room at the local hospital with a high fever,which immediately dissipates after one dose of paracetamol or aspirin, no one would immediately diagnose you as overly anxious.
If from other symptoms you know that that child is cutting her or his two year old molars and likely to run a fever, then taking that child to the ER with every fever spike ( before administering an aspirin and waiting half an hour, to see if the fever eases) that’s perhaps an indicator that you’re overly anxious. So what? With young children, it’s better to be sure than sorry. Right? Yes. And no. Many of you reading this article will know that the panicky reactions you had to your two year old’s temperature spikes have never really left you.
You worry excessively if your nineteen year old daughter is even half an hour late. You constantly nag (or try to motivate) your adult children about their University assignments. Your adult children keep many things secret from you because they know your reaction will be an over-the-top show of concern. You spend far too many hours worrying and fear-filled about your children’s latest partner: none of whom is ever good enough.
It is normal for parents to worry about their children when they first learn to drive, and it’s even more normal to worry when children don’t come home at an expected time. What I’m referring to here is once again, a matter of degree. When a parent is actually becoming so distressed about an adult child being late that s/he is almost vomiting or getting diarrhea, then we are looking at anxiety which has become dysfunctional. As with all anxiety, it can be conquered.
Author’s Note: This article previously published here.
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Dr Jeannette Kavanagh has a counseling and coaching Practice in Melbourne Australia, to help people find their unique solutions to anxiety and panic attacks. For over two decades, Jeannette has helped thousands of people overcome anxiety and panic attacks. Visit her website http://www.calmingwords.com/ to sign up here for a FREE MP3 Relax on Cue.
Read more articles written by Dr Jeannette Kavanagh
How to Treat Your Anxiety and Panic Attacks
January 1, 2011 by Dr Jeannette Kavanagh
Filed under Panic Attacks
Next to Depression, one of the most common disorders which affects an estimated 2.4 million people in America alone, is anxiety disorder. Anxiety can manifest as a generalized anxiety, panic attacks, social anxiety and agoraphobia. Anxiety disorder can be mild or so totally disabling that the person is confined to her or his home. All forms of anxiety can be extremely frightening to those who experience it frequently, but many individuals have found comfort in the fact that anxiety disorders can be treated.
What are Panic Attacks?
Panic attacks are a sudden flow of overwhelming anxiety and fear, sometimes amounting to terror, which takes over the individual’s body. During a panic attack, the individual will experience a pounding heart rate, difficulty to breathing and may also experience dizziness and a feeling of nausea. In some cases, the person having an attack may also experience a feeling that they are going crazy or even dying. If left untreated, these episodes of panic can result in panic disorder and other conditions which can make it extremely difficult for the individual to enjoy everyday life. However, effective treatment is available, and as with other conditions, the sooner you seek treatment, the better.
In most cases, an episode of panic will strike out of the blue, without any warning. Often, there seems to be no reason for the panic attacks. They can occur at times where you’re feeling relaxed or even asleep. For many people who experience anxiety, an attack will commonly occur when you are away from home as this is when you will feel less safe and secure. Symptoms can present abruptly and can last for up to thirty minutes. A typical attack of panic fuelled by adrenaline will usually see the symptoms reach their full potential within ten minutes.
Symptoms Of A Panic Episode
The main symptoms are:
Someone who has experienced one or two panic attacks will continue to live their life without any further attacks. However, in other cases, people find that through their panic attacks they have entered what we call the panic attack cycle. That cycle includes:
Agoraphobia
When someone allows that fear of the next attack of fear to take hold, they can develop agoraphobia which means fear of the marketplace, or intense fear about being away from home. People with agoraphobia fear having a panic attack in places where they’ve had them in the past and where they feel it’s difficult to escape the situation. Places such as concert halls, Malls, sports stadiums, going to school meetings, attending lectures at College – these can all trigger fear. It is for this reason that people with agoraphobia choose to remain at home as much as possible. Home is where they feel most safe.
However frightening it may be for someone to experience any of these conditions, there is security in knowing that they can be treated. The most effective treatment is called Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT). It works by focusing on the thinking patterns which trigger an anxiety and panic attacks. This helps the individual to look at their fears more closely, and changing their reaction to those thoughts.
If you currently suffer from anxiety or panic attacks, you are not alone. Nor are panic attacks something you have to endure for the rest of your life. There are many proven ways to treat all forms of anxiety disorder. By learning about the condition itself and the reasons why you experience the panic attacks, you’ll be on the journey out of anxiety and panic attacks back to a normal life once again.
Article also published here.
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Dr Jeannette Kavanagh has a counseling and coaching Practice in Melbourne Australia, to help people find their unique solutions to anxiety and panic attacks. For over two decades, Jeannette has helped thousands of people overcome anxiety and panic attacks. Visit her website http://www.calmingwords.com/ to sign up here for a FREE MP3 Relax on Cue.
Read more articles written by Dr Jeannette Kavanagh
Our Children Face Anxiety Disorder Everyday
Does your child tense up when the subject of going to school or day care is raised? Does he throw temper tantrums or start to cry as you try to get him to leave for school in morning? Or maybe he pretends he’s sick to avoid going to school. If he does any of these, he may be suffering from anxiety disorder.
Anxiety disorder is a condition characterized by feelings of apprehension or extreme anxiety. It can manifest itself physically by sweating, accelerate heart rate or palpitations, hyper-ventilation, and a host of other symptoms.
Many parents think that this is just a phase and that their child will eventually grow out of it. If, however, this is a true case of anxiety disorder, ignoring it will probably only make the problem worse.
It’s estimated that some sort of childhood anxiety disorder affects up to 10% of school age kids.
Probably the most common type of childhood anxiety is separation anxiety. Separation anxiety occurs when the child experiences severe anxiety when their primary caregiver, usually their mom or dad, leaves them with another person. Separation anxiety usually occurs between the ages of 12 to 28 months – but it can occur or re-occur later. If you’ve just moved to a new neighborhood or town or if you have recently been through a divorce, separation anxiety can be triggered in the child even if he’s never experienced it before. Even though not all children experience separation anxiety, it is a normal part of growing up. If your kid is over five years old and still having episodes of separation anxiety, you may need to take him to see a counselor or psychologist.
Social anxiety is another type of anxiety that many children face, especially kids that are shy, awkward, or have some sort of speech impediment. Children can be very cruel to other kids – often unintentionally. And no kid likes to be embarrassed or made fun of. If a kid is the constant target of bullying or teasing, he may become anxious at the mere thought of interacting with other kids. Social anxiety usually begins in the teen years, but it can start in early childhood as well. About 10% of adults in the U.S. have some form of social anxiety – which includes stage fright and public speaking. There is no one size fits all cure for social phobia. Most adults that have it never get over it.
Many children suffer from generalized panic attacks. In other words, there is no explicit event or action that triggers the attack, it just happens. This kind of anxiety disorder can be the most paralyzing of all for a kid because they don’t know what’s causing it and have no idea how to stop it. Childhood panic attacks can have lifetime consequences if not treated. They can interfere with a child’s ability to make friendships and try new experiences. If your child is experiencing panic attacks, you should take him to see a child psychiatrist. Panic attacks may be so severe that the only course of action may be prescription medicine.
When someone mentions anxiety disorder, it’s rare that a picture of a child enters their mind. But many kids experience some form of anxiety every day and desperately need for some adult somewhere to acknowledge it and help them deal with it.
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Anxiety Cures – How You Can Regain Control of Your Life
November 1, 2009 by admin
Filed under Panic Attacks
Anxiety attacks occur differently for each individual. Some people may experience an anxiety attack once in their lives, while other individuals experience anxiety attacks on an ongoing basis. When anxiety attacks are experienced on a recurring basis, they are often the result of anxiety disorders. An anxiety attack is not life-threatening and to date, no person has died from suffering an attack. They can, however, affect the normal functioning of a person’s life and therefore need to be cured.
Anxiety cures are found in many different forms; one of the most popular forms of curing anxiety is through the use of natural herbs. Many individuals may fear that they suffer from anxiety attacks whereas the symptoms may be related to other health problems. For example, shortness of breath and palpitations may relate to heart problems. Consulting a health physician is important in properly diagnosing anxiety attacks and ruling out other possibilities.
Severe anxiety disorder can cause problems at work, home and in relationships. Many people do not know the cause of their anxiety and therefore consult a counselor to help them determine and recognize the reason for their anxiety attacks. Anxiety cures provided by a counselor involves recognition of the source of the anxiety and various techniques and methods to assist the client to move past and resolve the inner conflict that he or she may be experiencing.
Many counselors assist their clients with various forms of relaxation techniques and encourage their clients to partake in relaxing forms of exercise to reduce unnecessary tension and stress and thereby assisting with the recovery process. Other forms of anxiety cures include prescribed medication such as anti-anxiety drugs. These are usually only used as a last resort when other treatments or methods have been unsuccessful. A more common approach is to try herbal remedies first.
Valerian extract is a natural herb that is utilized to relieve anxiety and its related symptoms. This herb is beneficial in that it enables a person to feel calm and relaxed within a short period after having taken the medication. The advantage of using this herb is that it is not addictive, so even after having taken it for a long period, there are no harmful or unpleasant withdrawal effects.
Anxiety cures that are also proven to naturally relieve the symptoms of anxiety include Passion Flower and L-thianine. Both these forms of natural herbs are found to work as effectively as anti-anxiety drugs without the side-effects. Natural herbs used for anxiety cures relax the individual while still allowing for full concentration, and allow the individual to feel calmer in anxiety-provoking situations and prevent unnecessary stress-related symptoms caused by the anxiety disorder.
There is such a wide variety of natural anxiety cures that selecting the one that is best for you can be a confusing and time-consuming process. The best way to select a natural cure is to take note of the ingredients found in various natural supplements (for example; green tea) and base your selection on proven anti-anxiety ingredients, and the results you experience in using them.
Living with Anxiety disorders and how to beat it with self help books
October 27, 2009 by admin
Filed under Mental Health
From Panic to Power is a powerful account of how Lucinda Bassett overcome her anxiety disorder to gain back her life. A proven bestseller with over 72,000 copies sold, citing steps and validated techniques for people severely hit by these depressive periods. This is the ideal book on anxiety that really inspires many.
Bassett’s very effective system as written in this anxiety self help book that educates people how to view life differently and dwell on the lighter side of things is now opening the doors to people from different parts of the world to experience being able to bring out their doubts, fears and anxieties into positive energy and personal freedom. The methods introduced in the published work on anxiety by Bassett lets those who suffer from this dilemma achieve a new understanding of their own being and the challenges they individually face when dealing with anxiety. The book on anxiety aims to teach effective tactics that would transform negative self-talk and worry habits into recently discovered compassion and confidence.
Lucinda Bassett is well known to be a motivational genius and dynamic speaker. Appearing in various infomercials, Lucinda Bassett offers proven techniques to do away with anxiety disorder and to, once again, regain control over on oneself.
From Panic to Power is guaranteed to spark the interest of the readers as Lucinda dissects the origin on how anxiety is handled from the time of discovery. Readers are given choices with the possible things that can be encountered and should be expected. Discussion further proceeds to allow the readers get a grip of the malady they’re dealing with and ways to confirm if you are positive with such a problem. Accepting the fact that one suffers from such a disorder is usually something that is very hard to acknowledge. Bassett guides the concerned individual to manage and control his condition
The following chapters tackles acceptance of the dilemma and identification of oneself with the issues involved during attacks. It also gives a thorough discussion interrelating anxiety with various personality patterns.
In gist, Lucinda Bassett carefully detailed in this anxiety help book the definition of the disorder, how and why some people get to have it. This book on anxiety is not just for people with anxiety disorder although it is mainly intended for people who has anxiety. It is also a very useful tool for people who would like to understand anxiety more so that they could apply the knowledge they will gain, to basic situations where they encounter people with anxiety disorder.
From Panic to Power is Lucinda Bassett’s testimony of showing the world the anxiety is not like cancer or AIDS. It is something that is highly curable and with the right kind of knowledge together with a compassionate and understanding environment, any person can easily combat this disorder.
It all takes one step at a time. From Panic to Power is an anxiety support book which is truly another addition to the library of literary and medical books worthy of acclaim due to its passionate detail and the warm touch it extends to readers.
Completely Cure Yourself Of Anxiety Disorder With These Simple Treatment Methods.
As the world knows anxiety is a normal response to danger. Everyone has felt anxious for something at some point in their lives. There is however times when anxiety turns into something else, this being a mental condition known as anxiety disorders. People who have anxiety disorders are some times afraid to get treatment for their anxiety as they seem to feel ashamed of having a mental condition. However anxiety treatments are valid medical remedies for a complaint that can affect your life. There is therefore nothing to be ashamed of having anxiety disorders or being treated for them.
There are a variety of different treatment options available for those suffering with anxiety and panic disorders ranging from prescriptive medication to complimentary and alternative medicines. While these choices largely depend on individuals preference and specific needs, it is important to recognize that a treatment course which works well for a particular individual does not necessarily mean that it is the right course of treatment for another individual. Therefore, you should seek assistance from your doctor or psychiatric consultant in diagnosing the specific concerns or complaints so that you can embark on the right course of treatment for the anxiety and panic disorders.
You might want to ask your doctor what the normal anxiety treatments are and their side effects and you should also find out what their effect will be on your lifestyle as well. The alternative remedies may not be completely proven by medical science as anxiety treatments, but a number of people state that these alternative treatments do work at providing relief from anxiety symptoms.
Most conventional anxiety treatments involve either therapy or drug-based. Drug-based anxiety treatments, being the most common treatment for immediate relief, aim to eliminate the anxiety symptoms by changing body chemistry to lower the stress or anxiety levels. Even though Anti-depressants and tranquillizers such as Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), Beta-blockers, Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) and Buspirones can be fast-acting for providing relief for anxiety, they are not a viable treatment for the long run for reason that anxiety is a behavioural condition that is difficult, if not impossible, to be eliminated by using drugs.
Alternate anxiety treatments include the age old methods of Acupuncture and Ayurveda. Both of these eastern anxiety treatments bring the symptoms of anxiety back into control by rebalancing your bodys internal energies. These treatments use a number of essential oils, poultices, herbal remedies and sterilized acupuncture needles to achieve that effect. These alternative anxiety treatments not only control the effects of anxiety in your body they also have the ability to completely cure your anxiety disorder symptoms.
It is not uncommon that Gemstone therapy has been increasingly used for healing purposes for a number of complaints or even relaxation from stress. This therapy has also been adopted as an alternative treatment for controlling anxiety disorder. It focuses on rebalancing the body emotions and relieving the negative energies by absorbing the healing power of the gemstone which is placed on the specific area of the body. The healing effect is unique to different gemstones, each of which can be identified by its unique colour.
The choices of alternative therapies and anxiety management techniques are not only numerous, they can be very diverse in nature which extends from exposure therapy, relaxation techniques and supplements, self esteem therapy, cognitive therapy to anxiety education, attention training, nutrition, exercise, assertion and so forth. As long as the core anxiety can be addressed in a structured and supportive anxiety treatment course, full recovery is a certainty.
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Anxiety Cures – 4 Ways Out Of Certain Situations!
September 8, 2009 by admin
Filed under Mental Health
Anxiety attack can be extremely frightening, be it the first one or an eleventh one, as anyone who has undergone it can vouch for. Firstly, the person thinks he is suffering a heart attack. But when it is diagnosed as anxiety attack, his first thoughts are to look for anxiety cures. Of course, numerous varied anxiety cures or treatments that can help are available. But the cure or the treatment depends mainly on the circumstances which are the primary cause of the anxiety.
Anxiety can stem from various root causes. So finding the right anxiety cure from among the vast variety is a bit tricky. Some people are lucky in that they only suffer a solitary anxiety attack which is never repeated in their life but most others are not so fortunate. They face repeated regular attacks of one of the different anxiety disorders. But once they become determined to seek anxiety cures, these cures are made available for the specific situation at hand. Most important is the root cause of the anxiety. This anxiety disorder may have its root in genetics, trauma or brain chemistry.
It cannot be said that all anxiety cures do not technically fall into the ‘cures’ category, but they definitely help the patients tackle the attacks more easily. The most popular methods of combating anxiety disorders are:
*Medications: There are many medications available at the doctor’s disposal that can relieve the anxiety symptoms. These cures are technically temporary, but they do help to relieve the symptoms to free the patient to tackle the issue basic to the cause of the problem.
*Therapy: This is a very beneficial branch of anxiety cures where the source of anxiety lies in some outside circumstances. Therapy also plays an important role in the treatment of many types of anxiety disorders since it enables the patients to handle the situation themselves and teach them methods of overcoming the attacks.
*Meditation: People with anxiety disorders who follow relaxation techniques of meditation, and learn exercises like deep breathing etc. are often able to curtail the attacks before they worsen. This definitely helps the person to better control his life in spite of attacks, though it cannot be deemed a complete cure.
*Herbal Remedies: Some wonderful herbs are there which lessen the severity of an anxiety attack and what is more important, they are not addictive. Hence many people find them extremely useful but due care needs to be exercised when using these in combination with other cures of anxiety. Herbal remedies may not go along well with other drugs.
Anxiety cures offer a ray of hope for sufferers of anxiety disorders. While the same cures may not be useful for everyone, they are tools which will enable the persons to deal with this particular illness better and help them to lead a normal life without attacks.
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