When To See A Doctor
Constant anxiety that makes it difficult to sleep at night can affect your daily quality of life. Your work or school performance may worsen, and you may find it hard to complete your normal daily tasks.
If anxiety and lack of sleep are affecting your life in this way, its important to reach out to a doctor or mental health specialist for help.
For some people, nighttime anxiety can lead to insomnia. Insomnia is defined as persistent trouble falling or staying asleep. Chronic insomnia can have negative health effects, including an increased risk of:
- health conditions, such as high blood pressure and a weakened immune system
- mental health conditions, such as depression
- accidents
Whether your doctor makes a diagnosis of anxiety, insomnia, or both, reaching out is the first step in the treatment process.
You Can Get A Lump In The Throat Even When You Dont Think Youre Anxious
When you suffer from anxiety, your body sometimes reacts in unusual ways. Some people experience some of the physical symptoms of anxiety even when theyre not feeling anxious. That means that you can suffer from a lump in your throat even if your thoughts are completely relaxed, and it may still be anxiety-related.
Thats why its so important to take long-term steps towards reducing your anxiety once and for all.
Learn To Avoid Procrastination
Another way to take control of your stress is to stay on top of your priorities and stop procrastinating.
Procrastination can lead you to act reactively, leaving you scrambling to catch up. This can cause stress, which negatively affects your health and sleep quality .
Get in the habit of making a to-do list organized by priority. Give yourself realistic deadlines and work your way down the list.
Work on the things that need to get done today and give yourself chunks of uninterrupted time, as switching between tasks or multitasking can be stressful itself.
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Prioritize what needs to get done and make time for it. Staying on top of your to-do list can help ward off procrastination-related stress.
Yoga has become a popular method of stress relief and exercise among all age groups.
While yoga styles differ, most share a common goal to join your body and mind.
Yoga primarily does this by increasing body and breath awareness.
Some studies have examined yogas effect on mental health. Overall, research has found that yoga can enhance mood and may even be as effective as antidepressant drugs at treating depression and anxiety .
However, many of these studies are limited, and there are still questions about how yoga works to achieve stress reduction.
In general, the benefit of yoga for stress and anxiety seems to be related to its effect on your nervous system and stress response.
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Take Care Of Yourself Physically
Studies have shown that nutrition and exercise can impact your experience with panic disorder symptoms. To better manage the physical symptoms of panic and anxiety, consider making some healthy lifestyle changes.
- Avoid certain foods or drinks that may trigger or worsen anxiety. For instance, an overabundance of certain foods and substances, including caffeine and sugar, can aggravate feelings of anxiety.
- Physical exercise can help relieve stress and tension felt throughout the body, increase energy levels, and improve mood.
- Stress-reducing relaxation exercises, such as yoga and meditation can help you learn how to control your body sensations and remain calm in the face of anxiety.
Reduce Your Alcohol Consumption>
Whilst alcohol doesn’t cause anxiety, it is often – wrongly – used to mask the symptoms. This is particularly the cause in people with social anxiety, where people may drink to feel more confident in social situations. This can lead to a vicious cycle, with your anxiety triggers feeling even more daunting when you’re unable to consume alcohol.
If this sounds familiar, try to cut back on alcohol and use some of the other methods we’ve discussed in this blog to help you manage your symptoms.
Recommended Reading: How To Overcome Crowd Anxiety
The Types Of Anxiety You Should Get Rid Of/reduce
Once anxiety becomes intense to the point of making you suffer and inhibiting the fullness of your life, its no longer useful. Here are some examples of what this type of anxiety can do to you:
- Constantly feeling restless or on edge despite there being no apparent cause
- Becoming lost in a rabbit hole of worry
- Sleep problems
- Panic attacks
- Social isolation
Rather than focusing on rational issues such as childcare and deadlines, these types of anxieties often cause people to ruminate on a series of irrational fears, including:
- Fear of imminent death or bodily harm
- Sudden fear of embarrassment or illness
- Worries about everything in your life being wrong
- Constantly imagining worst-case scenario situations, asking a chain of What if ? questions
Aromatherapy And Essential Oils
Essential oils, the extract from plants, have been used for thousands of years to treat a number of conditions, including anxiety. Essential oils activate certain areas of your brain and release feel-good chemicals such as serotonin. They have been found to ease symptoms of anxiety, stress, and depression, improve mood, and improve sleep.
Recommended use includes diffusing, inhalation, or topical treatment which can aid with anxiety symptoms. When diffusing an essential oil or essential oil blend you will need an essential oil diffuser to fill your space with the desired scent. Inhalation is used by deeply smelling the essential oil straight from the bottle or by applying a drop or two of the oil on something such as a diffuser pad or lava bead that is connected to a bracelet, necklace, or even keychain. You can also place a drop or two of essential oil into your hands, rub them together, then cup your hands and take a few deep inhalations to get the desired effect.
You should be sure that the essential oils you use are pure oils and not mixed with chemicals. Some good brands to use include: Mountain Rose Herbs, Plant Therapy, Young Living, Doterra. You can do your own research to find a brand that will best work for you and your budget. Remember that a bottle of essential oil will last a long time since you typically use only a few drops at a time.
Essential oils that are great for treating anxiety include:
- Lavender
- Vetiver
Read Also: How To Treat Overthinking And Anxiety
What To Do When You Cant Sleep: 9 Tips
Prioritizing a good nights sleep isnt just important for your general health, it can also help with feelings of anxiety, as your body is less likely to feel overwhelmed or on edge when youve slept well.
However, falling asleep can be difficult, so its important to build a strategy for a better nights sleep. Below are some tips to try in order to improve your chances of falling asleep naturally.
How To Tell The Difference Between Anxiety Throat Lumps And A Health Problem
If youre concerned that your knot may be the result of a physical health problem, rather than a mental health problem, you should consider seeing a doctor. In very rare cases, a lump in the throat may be something more serious, such as a type of cancer. Or it may be something less serious but still health-related, like gastrointestinal reflux disease , tonsillitis, pharyngitis, or postnasal drip. Interestingly, some believe that anxiety may contribute to GERD.
Yet in many cases, the cause is nothing more than anxiety, and whats worse is that the anxiety often makes people focus on worst-case scenariospossibly even more than those that dont have anxiety throat lumps!
Only a doctor can tell you if its something like globus pharyngis from anxiety and not something more serious. But some signs that it may be anxiety include:
- There is no clicking sound or severe pain when swallowing.
- The experience comes and goes, and is more common when youre feeling high anxiety.
- You have suffered from a panic attack or recent very stressful situation.
In these cases, its still possible for the cause to be health-related. Its also possible for stress and anxiety to cause a constant lump in the throat that doesnt go away and may even cause a tiny bit of pain.
Still, the most common cause of throat lumps is stress and anxiety, and many of those who suffer from anxiety symptoms or severe stress experience such lumps.
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Simple Ways To Relieve Stress And Anxiety
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Stress and anxiety are common experiences for most people. In fact, 70% of adults in the United States say they feel stress or anxiety daily.
Here are 16 simple ways to relieve stress and anxiety.
Exercise is one of the most important things you can do to combat stress.
It might seem contradictory, but putting physical stress on your body through exercise can relieve mental stress.
The benefits are strongest when you exercise regularly. People who exercise regularly are less likely to experience anxiety than those who dont exercise .
There are a few reasons behind this:
- Stress hormones: Exercise lowers your bodys stress hormones such as cortisol in the long run. It also helps release endorphins, which are chemicals that improve your mood and act as natural painkillers.
- Sleep: Exercise can also improve your sleep quality, which can be negatively affected by stress and anxiety.
- Confidence: When you exercise regularly, you may feel more competent and confident in your body, which in turn promotes mental wellbeing.
- Try to find an exercise routine or activity you enjoy, such as walking, dancing, rock climbing or yoga.
Activities such as walking or jogging that involve repetitive movements of large muscle groups can be particularly stress relieving.
Listen To Soothing Music
Listening to music can have a very relaxing effect on the body.
Slow-paced instrumental music can induce the relaxation response by helping lower blood pressure and heart rate as well as stress hormones.
Some types of classical, Celtic, Native American and Indian music can be particularly soothing, but simply listening to the music you enjoy is effective too .
Nature sounds can also be very calming. This is why theyre often incorporated into relaxation and meditation music.
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How Does Anxiety Build Up
Anxious thoughts chase each other like a dog chasing its tail.
Imagine a guy who thinks, What if my hair is thinning?’ suggests Dr. Bea. That creates anxious energy. He feels his head, checks in the mirror and asks his wife, who says, Youve got a nice head of hair.
That feels good for about 20 seconds, until he thinks, She wasnt really listening to me. Next thing you know, hes online, searching for baldness cures. One of them looks good until he sees its side effects include ED and thinks, Thats no good! Now hes back to square one.
This is one small example of how trying to quell anxiety with reassuring thoughts, or to fix anxious thoughts with other thoughts, just doesnt work.
Its also exhausting. Reassuring thoughts are like a short-acting drug they wear off quickly, says Dr. Bea.
How To Get Rid Of Anxiety And What Is It Actually
I wonder why do people consider anxiety as a disorder? I would instead classify it as a normal and healthy condition. According to my research, people who dont get to experience anxiety are not at all normal. In fact, they are in a state of low-level abnormality.
Must have always heard of the phrase, Excess of everything is bad. The same goes for anxiety too. Too much anxiety can lead to a level of mental disorder in real. And its routine occurring can cause severe depression-related problems to the person experiencing it. Such a patient can adopt DIY steps too to get rid of anxiety, but concerning the psychiatrist in the extreme cases would be better.
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Making Lifestyle Changes To Reduce Future Anxiety
How You Get Tricked
* If you have Panic Disorder or Agoraphobia, you keep getting tricked into believing that you’re about to die, go crazy, or lose control of yourself.
* If you have Social Phobia,you keep getting tricked into into believing that you’re about to look so unreasonably nervous in front of people that you will be completely humiliated and be cast aside by your community.
* If you have a Specific Phobia, you keep getting tricked into believing that you’re likely to be overcome by some external object or animal, or by your fear of it.
* If you have OCD, you keep getting tricked into believing that you’ve set in motion a terrible calamity. You might fear that your neighborhood will burn because you left the stove on, or that your family will get poisoned because you mishandled the insecticide.
* If you have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, you keep getting tricked into believing that you’re about to be driven mad by constant worrying.
In each case, the episode of fear passes without the expected catastrophe. You’re none the worse for wear, except that you’re more worried about the next episode. The details seem different, but it’s the same anxiety trick.
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