Take Care Of Yourself
Actually you may hear this a lot, listen to your body. What does it mean? It literally means that your body will complain to you with its own signs when you over use it. For example, having trouble sleeping and eating can be a message your body is unable to relax and unwind. By listening to your body, you may want to figure out what you have worried about and how to handle those worries.
After you get the message, the next step is to take care of yourself, that is, your body. Specifically, eat healthy, exercise, get plenty of sleep, and Practice hobbies or do things you enjoy by yourself or with others. Regular exercise, for example, helps to keep you physically active and improve your mood.
Meanwhile, it is important to avoid drugs and alcohol. Substance use may seem to help, but it can create additional problems in the long run. In addition to addiction, it eventually adds more stress to you. Overall, dealing with anxiety without medications is possible, that is, starting from staying away from drugs and alcohol.
When To Seek Anxiety Treatment
There is no one size fits all method for anxiety relief and how to treat anxiety. If youre seeking alternative, natural remedies for anxiety that can help reduce your symptoms, know that there are options out there for you. Yes, its true that sometimes you might need the help of a therapist, doctor, or even anti-anxiety medication. That said, there are several things you can do to help complement your online therapy or manage your anxiety on your own.
At the end of the day, living a healthier, productive, rewarding life is everyones goal. Knowing some of these holistic remedies for anxiety can only serve to help you get to that peaceful place you long to live in.*You should talk to your doctor before adding any supplement to your diet.
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In my opinion, depression or anxiety starts with baby steps, but if it is not addressed in time, then it can get bad. The first step for anyone suffering from this state is to realize that yes, there is a problem. Until and unless that realization not there, no-one can help the person.
Second is the readiness to make a change. If they go into their shell, it gets tough to take them out, and for that, they have to talk. Thats the third point. Talk, share they fear, feeling with anyone they feel comfortable with.
And if, after taking every possible step, there is no change, seeking professional help in must. Because there is always a difference between dealing and treating.
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When To Seek Professional Help
If youre experiencing heightened anxiety, racing thoughts, irritability, or excessive fear and worries that prevent you from participating in normal daily activities, it might be time to seek professional help or find a therapist. Therapy for anxiety can help you identify your triggers and come up with an individualized treatment plan.17 Consider starting your search in an online therapist directory.
Antidepressant Medications Alter Brain Chemistry
Although its unclear exactly how they help with depression, antidepressants are drugs that moderate neurotransmitters, chemicals in the brain such as serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine. These chemicals play many roles and are thought to impact things like mood and motivation.
About 13 percent of Americans age 18 and older report taking antidepressants, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, with women about twice as likely as men to take antidepressants .
Many types of depression medications are available today. Most fall into the following drug classes, grouped by their effect on brain chemistry:
- Tricyclic and tetracyclic antidepressants
Some widely used antidepressants, such as Wellbutrin , dont fall into the above categories.
All of these medications require a prescription from a physician and usually take several weeks to begin working. They also have possible side effects, such as weight gain, fatigue, and restlessness, that your doctor should discuss with you.
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Ways To Relieve Anxiety Without Drugs
Do you need anxiety relief? If so, youre not alone.
The number of people suffering from mild, moderate, and severe anxiety has sky-rocketed in recent years.
Per the Anxiety and Depression Association of America: Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older, or 18.1% of the population every year.
Whats worse, anxiety is also affecting teens and children, the tune of 25.1% of children between the ages of 13-18thats 1 in 4 teenagers.
I know I am not alone in my concern over this disturbing trendboth as a medical doctor and as a parent.
Although we all experience anxiety at some point in our lives, this level of chronic anxiety is anything but normalespecially for growing children and teens.
But there is great hope. Despite what we have been led to believe, the majority of anxiety disorders can be remedied without resorting to side-effect-laden drugs.
I know, because I was able to resolve my own anxiety and panic attacks by making specific lifestyle changes, and I have helped countless patients do the same.
Read on to learn how to address the root causes of anxiety with my top 12 ways to treat anxiety without drugs.
Check Your Vitamin D Levels For Potential Deficiencies
Vitamin D is linked to levels of serotonin, the mood-boosting hormone that aids in focus and helps you feel calm. Some research has found a link between anxiety disorders, depression, and vitamin D deficiency.
Its important that you speak with a therapist and primary doctor about getting lab tests done on your vitamin D levels. This can help determine if a deficiency is contributing to your anxiety symptoms. From there, you can determine next steps with a doctor to increase your vitamin D levels.
You can up your vitamin D levels by spending time outdoors in the sun, eating fatty fish, ensuring you get enough fortified foods, or taking a supplement.
*You should talk to your doctor before adding any supplement to your diet.
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Meditation Mindfulness And Yoga
For thousands of years, people throughout Asia have been practising and perfecting meditation, mindfulness and yoga to achieve balance, mental clarity, and physical health. Over the last 50 years, these practices have gained massive popularity and consequently attracted the attention of researchers who wanted to understand the neurobiological mechanisms of meditation practices.
In essence, meditation and mindfulness mean transforming your mind so that you can live a balanced and fulfilled life. The purpose of these practices isnt to transform you into a new person, but help you see things from a new perspective, thus allowing you to understand yourself and those around you better.
Furthermore, meditation and mindfulness grounds you in the present moment and keeps your mind from wandering when you need to focus on a task for an extensive period.
All and all, current evidence suggests that mindfulness meditation practices such as deep breathing and body scanning. can be an effective alternative treatment for anxiety and stress.
As for yoga, this practice combines body postures with meditation practices to strengthen the mind-body connection, cultivate a state of calm, and keep a balanced mind.
Contrary to popular beliefs, yoga is not just for improving flexibility, posture, and body strength. This practice can have a direct impact on your mind, generating a sense of relief and relaxation.
Meditation And Mindfulness To Manage Anxiety
Meditation is becoming an increasingly popular approach to managing stress, and more and more scientific studies are backing up its effectiveness. Brain imaging has allowed neuroscientists to determine that meditation can actually change your brain for the better. In a study performed by Dr. Sara Lazar, neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, after just eight weeks of meditation , subjects had physically altered their brains: they had grown areas of their brain associated with empathy, compassion, learning, memory and emotional regulation , and shrunken the part of the brain associated with anxiety, fear, and stress .
Buddhist monks have actually been training their brains in this way for centuries. At the recommendation of the Dalai Lama, neuroscientist Richard Davidson from the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at University of Wisconsin, Madison studied the brains of eight practitioners who had spent over 34,000 hours meditating. What they found was that meditation had allowed the monks brains to become more plastic, more adaptable and accepting of change and stressors.
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Sleep With A Weighted Blanket
Studies have shown that using weighted blankets may help reduce experiences of anxiety. Research in this area has been limited, and further study is needed before weighted blankets become a clinically accepted remedy for anxiety. But for most people, there is little to no risk of trying weighted blankets to aid in anxiety. The sensation of lying under these blankets can be similar to receiving a hug.
Heres Why We Need Natural Treatments For Anxiety
Fundamentally, anxiety plays a vital role in our survival and wellbeing, as it triggers the fight-or-flight response that helps us navigate potentially threatening situations.
In moderate doses, anxiety allows us to evaluate risks, identify problems that may occur in the future, and take preventive actions. When you are driving through a residential area, anxiety is what prompts you to take your foot off the accelerator.
Over the years, experts have discovered that a certain level of anxiety increases your ability to perform, while too much of it results in procrastination, avoidance, and poor performance.
Anxiety disorders are characterised by an almost permanent state of rumination, a spiral of worry-filled thoughts that goes on and on without ever reaching a solution. In other words, you get so caught up in details and catastrophic scenarios that you lose sight of the big picture.
According to the World Health Organisation, anxiety is one of the most common mental health disorders, affecting nearly 264 million individuals from all around the world.
If left untreated, anxiety disorders can have a profoundly negative impact on the quality of your life and can transition to depression, not to mention the contribution that this condition can have to the economic burden of mental illness.
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About The Editor Dr Malcolm Winstanley
I am a Registered Psychologist with AHPRAs Psychology Board of Australia and a Chartered Counselling Psychologist with the British Psychological Society, UK. My formal training began with a B.A. in Psychology and Welfare at Charles Sturt University, and B.A. Psychology from the University of Wollongong. I then progressed to the M.A. Clinical Psychology at the same university before moving to the UK to undertake a PhD in Psychology from City, University of London.
Therapy For More Extreme Cases
These are all good tips for managing anxiety and can be practiced at home or wherever you are. Sometimes, though, anxiety becomes extreme and requires some professional intervention. If you experience any of these symptoms, you should talk with a therapist about getting your anxiety under control:⢠You make drastic changes to your life to accommodate your anxiety. You stop driving, have to get a different job, refuse to visit certain places or cannot leave your house.
⢠You experience physical symptoms like heart palpitations or others that cause you to visit the emergency room out of fear of some terrible medical outcome.
⢠You have an overwhelming fear of some common activity required in your life, like flying in an airplane or spending the night in a hotel room.
⢠You try every âhome remedyâ for anxiety, and nothing works.
⢠You cannot stop worrying about something once you get started. You obsess about it.
⢠You avoid unpleasant situations by refusing to voice your needs or concerns. Your fear of an altercation keeps you from telling people when they are taking advantage of you.
At 12 Keys, weâre here to help. Our compassionate, knowledgeable staff understands the issues you encounter in trying to rebuild your life with healthy habits. We know it can be difficult to face the emotions that come up along the way without drugs when they were your means of coping before. It is possible to overcome anxiety without medication, however, and you can do it.
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Break Up With Caffeine
A cup of coffee, chocolate, or an ice-cold Coke might help you feel better. But if caffeine is your go-to drug of choice, your anxiety could worsen.
Caffeine gives the nervous system a jolt, which can boost energy levels. But when under pressure, this nervous energy can induce an anxiety attack. Now, the idea of giving up your favorite caffeinated beverage might raise your heart rate and induce anxiety as you read this, but you dont have to stop cold turkey or give up caffeine completely. Its all about moderation.
Rather than four cups of coffee a day, scale back to one or two normal-sized cups a day normal as in 8 ounces, not 16 or 32 ounces. Give it a test run and see how you feel. As you wean yourself, slowly introduce other beverages into your diet such as decaffeinated herbal tea, which can calm your mind and nerves.
Challenge Your Thoughts & Your Comfort Zone
Apparently thoughts, feelings, and behaviors affect each other. Allow yourself to challenge your anxious thoughts could help to reduce your anxious feelings. For instance, when you get nervous about driving in a car, try to disprove some of your concerns. When you start to think, Im a terrible driver, or, Im going to definitely crash, remind yourself of the rational reasons why this probably wont happen. You can think:
- Ive never crashed my car before why would I do so now?
- I am following the speed limit and ensuring safety while driving what could really happen?
- Driving can be scary, but I am still doing it, and I should be proud!
Allow yourself to dare to leave your comfort zone and push yourself to try new things. Even if you fail or only stay somewhere new for a bit of time, you still make progress that you should be proud of! All the steps you take, even if they are small, add up to a big reward at the end of your journey. Obviously reframing your thoughts, without medication, you can deal with anxiety.
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Learning To Be Assertive
Being assertive means communicating your needs, wants, feelings, beliefs and opinions to others in a direct and honest manner without intentionally hurting anyones feelings. A person with an anxiety disorder may have trouble being assertive because they are afraid of conflict or believe they have no right to speak up. However, relating passively to others lowers self-confidence and reinforces anxiety. Learning to behave assertively is central to developing a stronger self-esteem.
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Anxiety disorders are mental healthy related red flags, that should be taken seriously. An anxious mind is always in the battle with itself, over-reacting to a regular stressful situation, feeling depressed, low on energy, socially disconnected, and feeling suicidal are some of the common symptoms of anxiety and depression. Though experts treat mental disorders medically, but there are some natural ways to keep anxiety at bay.
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Consider Therapy To Deal With Anxiety Naturally
If you want to learn how to deal with anxiety without medication, Mind Connections wants to help you! Therapy can help people cope with stressors healthily and get back to living their life normally. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, can help you rewire your negative and anxious thoughts and reframe them in a more positive outlook.
Exposure therapy can also help people with social anxiety or phobias too. Exposure is a psychological intervention that is part of behavior therapy. It is considered one of the most effective techniques to treat fear and anxiety, including social anxiety.
You may be familiar with the concept of habituation. For example, you may be initially aware of the sound of an air conditioner when it is on however, in a few minutes, you could tune out the noise and become unaware of it. The goal of exposure therapy is to use fear habituation to help you.
In other words, the more you are exposed to a feared situation, the less fear you will have eventually. We use the Fear Ladder to help people to expose themselves to a feared situation gradually till they reach the level of their most feared in social settings.
To learn more about therapy options for dealing with anxiety without medications, call Mind Connections now!
Other Strategies To Overcome Anxiety
This is just a small sample of the many strategies for reducing anxiety. Some people find relaxation exercises like visualization and progressive muscle relaxation to be helpful. Others find goal setting, staying socially active, and spending time with fun distractions to be all they need. Others need to consider herbal supplements like kava and passionflower that can help control anxiety.
But the most important thing to realize is committing to changing your anxiety is the most important step.
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Give Yourself An Exit Strategy
Sometimes, anxiety is due to feeling out of control. You cant always be in the driver seat of your life, but you can take steps to identify your triggers and cope with circumstances that cause anxiety.
Does the thought of going into a social situation or meeting new people make you want to jump off a bridge? As everyone at a party engages in exciting conversations, maybe you see yourself holding up the wall and counting down the seconds until youre put out of your misery. You drove with friends and cant leave, so you spend the entire night looking like the punchbowl attendant. Its this fear that makes you decline invitations and sleep through the weekends.
But what if you had an exit strategy in place before leaving the house? For example, instead of carpooling with your party animal friends, you could drive yourself. This way, you can leave if your anxiety starts to build and you cant handle another minute of awkward interactions. The more in control you feel, the less anxiety youll have.