Coping of Anxiety—Is There an Easy Way?

A lot of people think how we cope with anxiety is a leftover from our caveman days—the flight or fight response. It kept our ancestors safe from rival tribes and some very big animals. The heart increases per beat, our muscles get tense and we start to sweat—do we run or do we fight? Lucky for us these days we don’t have to worry about any large animals trying to eat us for dinner.

Our fight or flight is more likely to come from our supervisors or managers demanding an explanation why the bottom line dropped last month. As much as we would like to flight we stay but our heartbeat is up, the palms of your hands start to sweat and our blood pressure is on the rise. Leading not to the flight or fight but the toil it takes on our bodies for the anxiety we feel.

The emotional symptoms that are left over after the strips have been torn away can be mental as well as physical. Emotional symptoms will include emotional numbness and withdrawal from the world. A “I don’t care” attitude, an obsessive desire to dwell on the cause of our anxiety and sometimes we cope with anxiety by becoming dependent on drugs, alcohol and other addictions. Many people don’t realize how often we revert to caveman tactics when our anxiety gets more than we can handle.

We may not physically run away but we do mental run away and hide. Sometimes we cope with anxiety by playing endless video games, absorbing ourselves in several books, one after the other. Others develop rituals or play around with loveless sexual encounters as a coping method of dealing with our anxiety.

When anxiety becomes a problem you should seek help from a professional. What’s a problem you ask? That would depend on the individual. Mostly if your anxiety starts to interfere with day to day living or being unable to sleep at night. Being nervous about a meeting the next day isn’t an anxiety disorder. It’s just normal anxiety.

Getting to the point that you stop doing things because you need to play your video game or finish that book you started—then it becomes a problem.

Professional these days can do tests to identify the nature and severity of your anxiety disorder. Treatment may include medications, therapy or a combination of both.

We have not changed our survival instincts from the caveman days. These days its not big animals we have to get anxious about it’s our bosses, kids, technology, terrorists and our economy falling down around our ankles. But all that is nothing to be anxious about, is it?

Enjoy!

Help with Anxiety--What Types of Anxiety Do You Suffer From?

It’s time to seek help with anxiety if your anxiety is bad enough to limit your life’s activities. When you stop going to birthday parties, meetings, friends house or any number of other things because you’re too anxious and you’ve hidden yourself away from the world—it time to seek help with anxiety problem. Especial in today’s world with all we have to deal with. There’s several type of anxiety therapy to help you through your anxiety.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Anxiety

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a term that refers to different types of anxiety psychotherapy based on the principle that thoughts are the cause of anxiety rather than external factors. It gets results faster than any other type of therapy, because it runs for a fixed period of time, unlike, for example, psychotherapy which can last for ever.

CBT seeks to change problem behaviors and beliefs that can cause anxiety and other mood disorders. For example, arachnophobia (fear of spiders) might be caused by the misguided belief that spiders are deadly, so CBT works to encourage the patient that they are in no danger from a spider, without discouraging the patient from taking reasonable precautions against a genuinely dangerous spider, such as a black widow.

When used for anxiety therapy, CBT searches for ways to relieve persistent panic attacks by addressing fears linked to the causes that trigger the attacks, and to relax the patient. Some techniques used might be breathing exercises, rational statements about the triggers for panic attacks, and meditation.

The Role of Medications in Anxiety Therapy

When anxiety attacks are severe sometimes it takes medications to deal with the attacks. There’s several reason to use medication to help with anxiety.

It’s a known medical fact clinical depression and anxiety disorders are linked and it’s been found that antidepressants can help with anxiety in some cases. The medication helps with the depressions associated with the anxiety which in turn will lessen the anxiety.

Sometimes Beta blockers are used to treat the physical symptoms of anxiety attacks also known as hypertension. Normally Beta blockers are used to treat heart disorders and high blood pressure but anxiety attacks produce rapid heartbeat, sweating and trembling that can be treated with Beta blockers.

The medical community is working to develop medications to treat Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Generalized Anxiety Disorder is an anxiety disorder where suffers have chronic anxiety, exaggerated worry and tension when there’s nothing to provoke it. It is often accomplished by physical symptoms including fatigue, headaches, muscle tension, trembling, irritability, sweating and hot flashes.

Treatment normally takes two weeks to be affective but is only used in chronic cases. Benzodiazepines are used in specific cases of anxiety where the patient has occasional attacks. Normal everyday anxiety doesn’t need to be treated with medications; it can be treated with different types of therapy. As with all advice, consult your doctor before starting any medication.