Natural Remedies For Anxiety And Stress
Natural remedies are generally safe to use alongside more conventional medical therapies.
However, alterations to the diet and some natural supplements can change the way antianxiety medications work, so it is essential to consult a doctor before trying these solutions. The doctor may also be able to recommend other natural remedies.
How Does Psychotherapy Treat Anxiety Disorders
Psychotherapy, or counseling, helps you deal with your emotional response to the illness. A mental health provider talks through strategies to help you better understand and manage the disorder. Approaches include:
- Cognitive behavioral therapy is the most common type of psychotherapy used with anxiety disorders. CBT for anxiety teaches you to recognize thought patterns and behaviors that lead to troublesome feelings. You then work on changing them.
- Exposure therapy focuses on dealing with the fears behind the anxiety disorder. It helps you engage with activities or situations you may have been avoiding. Your provider may also use relaxation exercises and imagery with exposure therapy.
Learn How To Manage Your Anxious Thoughts
Anxiety doesn’t come out of the blue. When you have anxiety attacks, it’s often because your mind tends to spiral into negative thoughts – often without your control. Sometimes you can control this anxiety by keeping these thoughts at bay and learning to dismiss triggers that cause you anxiety.
For many, this is easier said than done. But there are many different strategies you can try that may be effective. These include:
A Question Checklist
When you feel anxious, have a checklist on hand of questions to ask yourself about that anxiety experience. The longer the checklist, the more you’ll find that your thoughts become more realistic. Questions that you can use include:
- Is there a reason to believe something is wrong?
- What evidence is there that something is wrong?
- Is there a chance I’m blowing this out of proportion?
Affirmations
Affirmations not for everyone, but those that do use them find them to be very beneficial. Affirmations are things that you say to yourself to make yourself feel better. These include:
- I’m okay. This is just anxiety and I will get passed this .
- I have a great life and I’m looking forward to tomorrow.
- My anxiety won’t control me.
Getting Used to Physical Symptoms
The latter is known as “exposure therapy” and there are countless ways to create exercises that will habituate you to your panic attack triggers.
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Reduce Your Reframe Time
Being mindful is a practice.
If you have never tried it before, which was the case for me, you will find yourself defaulting to your habits over and over again.
At first, I found it empowering just to realize I had thought-habits. Prior to this, I lived within the habits, the negative thought patterns. Now I could step outside them and see them for what they were.
As I began to proactively work to change my thought-response, it became clear like all skills, practice was required.
Initially, Id spend hours lost in bad thoughts, reacting negatively to events, then finally Id stop myself and reframe my perceptions to create new, more empowering meaning.
Day-by-day, week-by-week, and month-by-month, I improved my thought-change response time. What previously took me hours, would require only an hour, then thirty minutes, then ten minutes, to stop my thoughts and reframe them.
Then one day something magical happened.
I had a negative thought and instantly stopped and changed it.
It all happened in a split second. I interpreted something that just happened to me, for example, a customer asking for a refund from my business, and instead of using that as fuel for a negative thought train, I instantly reframed.
Customer refunds are rare, Ill get more customers in the future, everything is going great. Lets get back to work! is what I told myself.
I had to literally practice this for months, every day reminding myself that thinking right was the pathway to feeling right.
What Is Separation Anxiety Disorder
This condition mostly happens to children or teens, who may worry about being away from their parents. Children with separation anxiety disorder may fear that their parents will be hurt in some way or not come back as promised. It happens a lot in preschoolers. But older children and adults who experience a stressful event may have separation anxiety disorder as well.
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How Can I Treat Anxiety
Anxiety can be treated in a variety of ways. One common treatment option is cognitive behavioral therapy , which helps provide people with tools to cope with anxiety when it occurs.
There are also certain medications, like antidepressants and sedatives, that work to balance brain chemistry and prevent episodes of anxiety. They may even ward off the most severe symptoms.If youre looking to go a more natural route, though, there are little and big ways you can help combat anxiety.
You can make adjustments to habits, like exercise, sleep, and diet. You can also try something totally new, like aromatherapy or meditation. No matter what your lifestyle demands, theres a natural way to help reduce anxiety for everyone.
Giving Myself Permission To Play Was The Cure For My Anxiety
It was a subtle but powerful shift in how I viewed the world.
For two years, I had unknowingly prevented myself from playing. I am a workaholic, which can be pretty horrible when you work alone. No one tells you to stop or take a break, or that youre burning yourself out. Id find myself tethered to the internet all day, sitting in a chair for 10 hours and staring at a bright screen.
Even when I was finished, Id impulsively check email several times between midnight and 2 a.m. I know its dumb and unnecessary and What could be so important? and You need your sleep, but I did it anyways.
I was oblivious to the fact that my nerves were being frayed for hours on end, and that I desperately needed fun face-to-face time with real human beings.
What made matters worse were the idiotic rituals Id fallen into
Drinking coffee all day, then drinking alcohol with friends on the weekend.
I didnt get outside, I didnt move enough, I didnt sleep enough.
My weeks were a cycle of over-stimulation and numbing.
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The Short Answer No But
Anxiety is not curable, but there are ways to keep it from being a big problem.
Getting the right treatment for your anxiety will help you dial back your out-of-control worries so that you can get on with life. There are many ways to do this. Scientific studies have helped healthcare providers sort out which ones work best for most people.
The reason that anxiety cant be cured is that a persons tendency towards anxiety is part of their genetic makeup something no treatment can change. Thats why we say anxiety cant be completely cured.
How I Cured My Anxiety
Fast forward almost 10 years. I like to say I cured my anxiety, but really I just acquired what I like to call an anxiety toolbox filled with weapons to keep it under control.
Ive had a handful of anxious periods in my life since, but I no longer panic. I find peace in knowing I am now equipped with the knowledge and skills to get back to normal each time. Or at least my normal.
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What Games Can We Play Together
Life is funny.
Back in college, I used to read Tucker Maxs website and think, What a fun guy. Id go out with my friends and drink, and wed try to create our own crazy stories.
Now, Tucker is a close friend. We play home run derby together on the weekends. We come up with fun pranks we can pull. We make inappropriate jokes until were doubled-over laughing.
I just finished six weeks of improv classes three hours every Monday.
Every session, I was thrust into situations where I was essentially guaranteed to fail and look foolish.
At first, I was nervous and slightly mortified. My heart beat rapidly and I would sweat when I had to perform in front of 15 other people.
But by the end of the six weeks, improv became a tremendous source of strength.
All of us were there to play, to go with the flow and say YES to every possible situation we were thrown into, to cheer each other on and have fun together. We all looked foolish, but we all trusted each other.
And thats how it should be all the time saying YES to every moment, knowing its another opportunity for you to embrace life and have fun.
Improv, by the way, was the most effective remedy for panic attacks that I ever found.
Im signing up for more improv classes. Im scheduling travel. Im having fun because Im making play a priority. And you know what? I feel 100 times better than I ever thought I would.
Im back to my normal self.
I love life again.
And life loves me right back.
How A Vitamin Cured My Anxiety
Anxiety affects over 40 million Americans over the age of 18 and can make life devastating for those that lie in its wake. Anxiety sufferer Elisa Black, also a journalist, mother, and wife explains her vitamin treatment for anxiety that helps correct a genetic defect affecting approximately 1 in 5 people. Enjoy this informative post on the MTHFR genetic defect and what you can do to help support recovery from related anxiety and depression naturally.
MY anxiety is a wild beast. It has destroyed relationships, clawed at my insides until I was sick, left me cowering under blankets, plagued me with panic attacks and tipped me into post-natal depression following the birth of my first son.
I was nervous from the beginning.
As a toddler I saw a neighbour fall into a puddle and was for years plagued by thoughts of the drowning hole. I would dream of it, obsess about it, when I closed my eyes at night I would see it appearing suddenly and unexpectedly outside my house, engulfing my baby brother or unsuspecting parents.
I could not be convinced that I was safe.
In primary school I was obsessed with leprosy. As ridiculous as it now sounds I would lie awake, night after night after night, wondering if tomorrow would be my last day on Earth as I disintegrated due to rapid-onset rotting.Keep reading
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Diy Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
CBT is the most common thing therapists do when you have anxious thoughts. It lets you analyze recurring thoughts you have that bother you, check if theyre realistic and if not change them in your mind to a more realistic perspective. You can pay a therapist a lot of money to explain this to you, but Id say do-it-yourself.
For example, youre super scared to lose your job and it keeps you up all night. CBT would ask is there any evidence you will lose your job?, if there is none it means thats an unrealistic thought and everytime you think it, think the realistic thought there is no evidence I will lose my job at this moment.
If there is evidence you DO might lose your job then you should think is losing your job really that bad to be anxious about?, cant you get another job? If you can then its not really something to lay awake at night over! This is typical doom scenario thinking and its quite fixable by repeatedly doing this.
You can also keep a journal, whenever a repetitive thought comes in to your mind, write it down in your notes on your phone, then in the next paragraph write a more realistic perspective on it, for example if youre a freelancer you could write this:
How Did I Know Something Was Wrong
When I got to college, I started regularly going to get an iced coffee before class. I will never forget my very first anxiety attack, because it came about right after I had a large double-shot iced coffee.
I remember walking into my math class, sitting down, and immediately feeling like my heart was beating out of my chest.
It was to the point I could no longer sit down. I had to physically get up and pace around outside of the classroom. At that point I started to feel like I wasnt taking in any oxygen .
There was no way I could go back in that classroom so I ended up leaving and driving straight home. I called one of my parents and had them stay on the phone with me the whole drive home, because I was convinced I was dying.
That one specific incident triggered me so much so that I spiraled into a several month long episode of crippling anxiety.
Almost immediately following this incident, I started feeling like my arms were going numb daily. I ended up having a ton of diagnostics tests ran to rule out an actual physical illness.
Everything came back completely normal but by this point I had stopped eating and sleeping.
I remember feeling so scared after weeks of hardly sleeping and completely losing my appetite. I started to forget what normal even felt like.
It took a lot of trial and error on several different medications but I finally stabilized after being put on an antidepressant and a strong sleep medication .
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What It Takes To Cure Anxiety
How do you cure anxiety whether generalized anxiety, panic attacks, or obsessive worry? By getting to the roots of your early experiences and reconnecting the specifics of what happened long ago to the situations that make you anxious now. That is truly the best answer for a cure. But you cant do that on your own.
You need a place to safely bring those past situations and relationships out into the open. To remember. And to finally express the feelings you now carry within your anxiety. When anxiety is severe and paralyzing, its well worth finding a psychotherapist who specializes in anxiety. Especially, one who knows how to get to the unconscious roots.
What kind of therapy, though? Behavioral or skill-based therapies have their place. But, they give you tools to override your anxiety not to work out its roots. A psychoanalytic approach is the most effective cure.
Does that mean 3-5 times a week on the Freudian couch? Not necessarily at all. Frequency is an individual thing. What a psychoanalytic or psychodynamic approach means is having a therapist that takes into account early childhood experiences.
Each of the situations that stir up your anxiety needs to be understood at the deepest level. Especially, the unconscious early childhood sources of your fears. Anxiety, generalized anxiety, panic attacks, and obsessive worry must be traced back to the fantasies and fears behind them.