Effective Anxiety Treatment

The first step of anxiety treatment is realizing you need help.  Many people put this step off for way too long.  If you really care about yourself (which you should), realize that they're no shame in reaching for help for serious problems like this.

The second step is getting an opinion from your physician.  Your physician can do diagnostic tests to determine if the anxiety is caused by a physical problem or being overstressed.  Feel free to tell your doctors anything you feel they need to know.  Don't worry about them judging you, because they chose their profession to help those who need it.

Your healthcare provider can give you the proper diagnosis and treatment to have you back in control.  If your anxiety isn't due to a medication you were taking or anything physical, he will refer you to a mental health professional for counseling.  Your physician may also prescribe medication for anxiety along with the counseling for a speeder recovery. 

Treatments Available

- Psychotherapy is one of the best choices of treatment for anxiety disorders.  Psychotherapy helps you deal with and learn to manage the thoughts and feelings that are the cause of anxiety.  The therapist will help you confront these emotions and thoughts so you can deal with them in a safe controlled environment. 

- Cognitive-behavioral therapy helps by changing a person's way of thinking and reaction to the anxiety and how to deal with it in a more effective way. 

- Daily exercise is very helpful for the symptoms of anxiety.  Go for a fast walk to get your heart rate up to the target range, do sports, yogi, tai chi, or dance.  Physical health and enough sunlight can do wonders for a wide range of health problems, including anxiety.

- Medications are given for short-term use, usually along with counseling.  Medications can be addictive, so it's used as-needed to help with the symptoms of anxiety until the counseling is showing a definite improvement.  Antidepressants are sometimes prescribed for managing long-term anxiety problems. Beta-Blockers are prescribed for mild cases of anxiety and performance anxiety.

- Anxiety sufferers tend to have shallow breathing so they would benefit from deep breathing exercises.  Yogi breathing can be done anywhere and helps with relaxation when you suddenly feel stressed.  Yogi breathing is taking a deep breath slowly thru the nose and filling the diaphragm full of air and continuing to inhale, raising the lower abdomen, hold a few seconds and then slowly exhaling the air out in reverse.

- Biofeedback is very useful to help the patient learn to control the brain-wave patterns.  The therapist uses an electrocephalograph to measure the brain-waves and the patient learns to control the brain-waves and by controlling the brain-waves, the patient is better able to relax.  This therapy is used for about 12 weeks. 

- Progressive relaxation is a technique used to tighten and then relax every muscle in the body until the whole body is relaxed.  Starting at the toes, tighten the toes, slowly relax them and move on up the body until you have reached your scalp.  This is an excellent exercise to help you relax and go to sleep.  This exercise frees the body of tension.

- Relaxation visualization (also known as self-hypnosis) is used to by trained therapists to suggest relaxing imagines for their patients to hold in their thoughts while developing a sense of peacefulness.  They can use calming sensation of sounds, pleasant scents, and the warmth of the sun to induce a place of calmness. This technique can be used anytime a person is in a stressful situation.  

You might have to try just one technique or all of these suggestions before finding the right one for you.  Ask your doctor about any of the treatments listed above if you think that it may help.  It’s your body and no one knows it like you.