Treating Anxiety | Natural Anxiety Cures

Have you ever just asked anyone who is suffering from anxiety panic attacks, just how horrible it may feel?

Many of us have probably had one and just didn't know what it was.

According to recent researches, one out of every seventy-five people worldwide will experience anxiety panic attacks once in their lives.

Anxiety is a normal reaction to stress, but when anxiety disorders become excessive, even routine situations become dreaded.

At this point, it has become debilitating, anxiety becomes now panic with sudden surges of overwhelming fear that occur without warning or reason. That's why treating anxiety is absolutely necessary.

Palpitations, headache, hyperventilation, chest pain, dizziness, tingling of the hands or arms, feeling sweaty or nauseous, and the immediate need to get the heck out of where ever you are and fast, are just a few of the most common symptoms of a panic attacks.

The most commonly used treatments for anxiety, panic attacks, and phobias is a combination of medication and psychotherapy, including cognitive therapy to change negative thought processes and behavioral therapy to change daily habits.

There are also drug-free therapies to induce relaxation, release tension, lower blood pressure, slow heart rate and breathing, in addition to meditation, hypnotherapy to overcome specific phobias, and other alternative therapies.

To find stories from people who were suffering of panic attacks and healed successfully with drug free therapies, click on the link below:

--THEY HAD THEIR PANIC ATTACKS CURED WITHOUT DRUGS--

If you feel like you have, or could be developing anxiety panic attacks, go online through the above link. You'll find plenty of examples showing you how to recognize panic attack symptoms and how to be cured without drugs.

There can be an elusive difference between anxiety and depression.

* With depression: you may feel anxious much of the time

* With anxiety: you are not necessarily depressed. But anxiety left untreated can lead to depression.

Depression is a black hole that traps your mind and body. Depression is essentially a form of withdrawal from life. One of its causes is suppressed feelings, which is true for anxiety also. Being stoic and refusing to let your feelings show can be very damaging in some cases. One of the treatments for both anxiety and depression is learning how to express yourself in a way that lets others know what you're feeling.

We live in a society that says you should get to work and not feel sorry for yourself. Though you don't want to wallow in self pity, you also don't want to withhold your true feelings from people.

For instance, If you're angry with someone, disappointed in a relationship, or feeling as if someone is using you for their purposes, it's important to learn how to productively let other people know.

If you hold all your emotions inside, they will bottleneck eventually and lead to anxiety and possibly some level of depression.

Causes of Panic Attacks

The short and obvious answer: panic attacks are caused by high anxiety. But, what exactly is anxiety? Understanding how anxiety crops up will help you defeat panic attacks.

One of the biggest myths surrounding anxiety is that it is harmful and can lead to a number of various life-threatening conditions.

Definition of Anxiety

Anxiety is defined as a state of apprehension or fear resulting from the anticipation of a real or imagined threat, event, or situation. It is one of the most common human emotions experienced by people at some point in their lives.

However, most people who have never experienced a panic attack, or extreme anxiety, fail to realize the terrifying nature of the experience. Extreme dizziness, blurred vision, tingling and feelings of breathlessness-and that's just the tip of the iceberg!

When these sensations occur and people do not understand why, they feel they have contracted an illness, or a serious mental condition. The threat of losing complete control seems very real and naturally very terrifying.

Fight/Flight Response: One of the root causes of panic attacks?

I am sure most of you have heard of the fight/flight response as an explanation for one of the root causes of panic attacks. Have you made the connection between this response and the unusual sensations you experience during and after a panic attack episode?

Anxiety is a response to a danger or threat. It is so named because all of its effects are aimed toward either fighting or fleeing from the danger. Thus, the sole purpose of anxiety is to protect the individual from harm. This may seem ironic given that you no doubt feel your anxiety is actually causing you great harm...perhaps the most significant of all the causes of panic attacks.

However, the anxiety that the fight/flight response created was vital in the daily survival of our ancient ancestors-when faced with some danger, an automatic response would take over that propelled them to take immediate action such as attack or run. Even in today's hectic world, this is still a necessary mechanism. It comes in useful when you must respond to a real threat within a split second.

Anxiety is a built-in mechanism to protect us from danger. Interestingly, it is a mechanism that protects but does not harm-an important point that will be elaborated upon later.

The Physical Manifestations of a Panic Attack: Other pieces of the puzzle to understand the causes of panic attacks. Nervousness and Chemical Effects...

When confronted with danger, the brain sends signals to a section of the nervous system. It is this system that is responsible for gearing the body up for action and also calms the body down and restores equilibrium. To carry out these two vital functions, the autonomic nervous system has two subsections, the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.

Although I don't want to become too "scientific," having a basic understanding of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system will help you understand the causes of panic attacks.

The sympathetic nervous system is the one we tend to know all too much about because it primes our body for action, readies us for the "fight or flight" response, while the parasympathetic nervous system is the one we love dearly as it serves as our restoring system, which returns the body to its normal state.

When either of these systems is activated, they stimulate the whole body, which has an "all or nothing" effect. This explains why when a panic attack occurs, the individual often feels a number of different sensations throughout the body.

The sympathetic system is responsible for releasing the adrenaline from the adrenal glands on the kidneys. These are small glands located just above the kidneys. Less known, however, is that the adrenal glands also release adrenaline, which functions as the body's chemical messengers to keep the activity going. When a panic attack begins, it does not switch off as easily as it is turned on. There is always a period of what would seem increased or continued anxiety, as these messengers travel throughout the body. Think of them as one of the physiological causes of panic attacks, if you will.

After a period of time, the parasympathetic nervous system gets called into action. Its role is to return the body to normal functioning once the perceived danger is gone. The parasympathetic system is the system we all know and love, because it returns us to a calm relaxed state.

When we engage in a coping strategy that we have learned, for example, a relaxation technique, we are in fact willing the parasympathetic nervous system into action. A good thing to remember is that this system will be brought into action at some stage whether we will it or not. The body cannot continue in an ever-increasing spiral of anxiety. It reaches a point where it simply must kick in, relaxing the body. This is one of the many built-in protection systems our bodies have for survival.

You can do your best with worrying thoughts, keeping the sympathetic nervous system going, but eventually it stops.

In time, it becomes a little smarter than us, and realizes that there really is no danger. Our bodies are incredibly intelligent-modern science is always discovering amazing patterns of intelligence that run throughout the cells of our body. Our body seems to have infinite ways of dealing with the most complicated array of functions we take for granted. Rest assured that your body's primary goal is to keep you alive and well.

Not so convinced?

Try holding your breath for as long as you can. No matter how strong your mental will is, it can never override the will of the body. This is good news-no matter how hard you try to convince yourself that you are gong to die from a panic attack, you won't. Your body will override that fear and search for a state of balance. There has never been a reported incident of someone dying from a panic attack.

Remember this next time you have a panic attack; he causes of panic attacks cannot do you any physical harm. Your mind may make the sensations continue longer than the body intended, but eventually everything will return to a state of balance. In fact, balance (homeostasis) is what our body continually strives for.

The interference for your body is nothing more than the sensations of doing rigorous exercise. Our body is not alarmed by these symptoms. Why should it be? It knows its own capability. It's our thinking minds that panic, which overreact and scream in sheer terror! We tend to fear the worst and exaggerate our own sensations. A quickened heart beat becomes a heart attack. An overactive mind seems like a close shave with schizophrenia. Is it our fault? Not really-we are simply diagnosing from poor information.

Cardiovascular Effects Activity in the sympathetic nervous system increases our heartbeat rate, speeds up the blood flow throughout the body, ensures all areas are well supplied with oxygen and that waste products are removed. This happens in order to prime the body for action.

A fascinating feature of the "fight or flight" mechanism is that blood (which is channelled from areas where it is currently not needed by a tightening of the blood vessels) is brought to areas where it is urgently needed.

For example, should there be a physical attack, blood drains from the skin, fingers, and toes so that less blood is lost, and is moved to "active areas" such as the thighs and biceps to help the body prepare for action.

This is why many feel numbness and tingling during a panic attack-often misinterpreted as some serious health risk-such as the precursor to a heart attack. Interestingly, most people who suffer from anxiety often feel they have heart problems. If you are really worried that such is the case with your situation, visit your doctor and have it checked out. At least then you can put your mind at rest.

Respiratory Effects

One of the scariest effects of a panic attack is the fear of suffocating or smothering. It is very common during a panic attack to feel tightness in the chest and throat. I'm sure everyone can relate to some fear of losing control of your breathing. From personal experience, anxiety grows from the fear that your breathing itself would cease and you would be unable to recover. Can a panic attack stop our breathing? No.

A panic attack is associated with an increase in the speed and depth of breathing. This has obvious importance for the defense of the body since the tissues need to get more oxygen to prepare for action. The feelings produced by this increase in breathing, however, can include breathlessness, hyperventilation, sensations of choking or smothering, and even pains or tightness in the chest. The real problem is that these sensations are alien to us, and they feel unnatural.

Having experienced extreme panic attacks myself, I remember that on many occasions, I would have this feeling that I couldn't trust my body to do the breathing for me, so I would have to manually take over and tell myself when to breathe in and when to breathe out. Of course, this didn't suit my body's requirement of oxygen and so the sensations would intensify-along with the anxiety. It was only when I employed the technique I will describe for you later, did I let the body continue doing what it does best-running the whole show.

Importantly, a side-effect of increased breathing, (especially if no actual activity occurs) is that the blood supply to the head is actually decreased. While such a decrease is only a small amount and is not at all dangerous, it produces a variety of unpleasant but harmless symptoms that include dizziness, blurred vision, confusion, sense of unreality, and hot flushes.

Other Physical Effects of Panic Attacks:

Now that we've discussed some of the primary physiological causes of panic attacks, there are a number of other effects that are produced by the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, none of which are in any way harmful.

For example, the pupils widen to let in more light, which may result in blurred vision, or "seeing" stars, etc. There is a decrease in salivation, resulting in dry mouth. There is decreased activity in the digestive system, which often produces nausea, a heavy feeling in the stomach, and even constipation. Finally, many of the muscle groups tense up in preparation for "fight or flight" and this results in subjective feelings of tension, sometimes extending to actual aches and pains, as well as trembling and shaking.

Overall, the fight/flight response results in a general activation of the whole bodily metabolism. Thus, one often feels hot and flushed and, because this process takes a lot of energy, the person generally feels tired and drained.

Mental Manifestations: Are the causes of panic attacks all in my head? is a question many people wonder to themselves.

The goal of the fight/flight response is making the individual aware of the potential danger that may be present. Therefore, when activated, the mental priority is placed upon searching the surroundings for potential threats. In this state one is highly-strung, so to speak. It is very difficult to concentrate on any one activity, as the mind has been trained to seek all potential threats and not to give up until the threat has been identified. As soon as the panic hits, many people look for the quick and easiest exit from their current surroundings, such as by simply leaving the bank queue and walking outside. Sometimes the anxiety can heighten, if we perceive that leaving will cause some sort of social embarrassment.

If you have a panic attack while at the workplace but feel you must press on with whatever task it is you are doing, it is quite understandable that you would find it very hard to concentrate. It is quite common to become agitated and generally restless in such a situation. Many individuals I have worked with who have suffered from panic attacks over the years indicated that artificial light-such as that which comes from computer monitors and televisions screens-can can be one of the causes of panic attacks by triggering them or worsen a panic attack, particularly if the person is feeling tired or run down.

This is worth bearing in mind if you work for long periods of time on a computer. Regular break reminders should be set up on your computer to remind you to get up from the desk and get some fresh air when possible.

In other situations, when during a panic attack an outside threat cannot normally be found, the mind turns inwards and begins to contemplate the possible illness the body or mind could be suffering from. This ranges from thinking it might have been something you ate at lunch, to the possibility of an oncoming cardiac arrest.

The burning question is: Why is the fight/flight response activated during a panic attack even when there is apparently nothing to be frightened of?

Upon closer examination of the causes of panic attacks, it would appear that what we are afraid of are the sensations themselves-we are afraid of the body losing control. These unexpected physical symptoms create the fear or panic that something is terribly wrong. Why do you experience the physical symptoms of the fight/flight response if you are not frightened to begin with? There are many ways these symptoms can manifest themselves, not just through fear.

For example, it may be that you have become generally stressed for some reason in your life, and this stress results in an increase in the production of adrenaline and other chemicals, which from time to time, would produce symptoms....and which you perceive as the causes of panic attacks.

This increased adrenaline can be maintained chemically in the body, even after the stress has long gone. Another possibility is diet, which directly affects our level of stress. Excess caffeine, alcohol, or sugar is known for causing stress in the body, and is believed to be one of the contributing factors of the causes of panic attacks (Chapter 5 gives a full discussion on diet and its importance).

Unresolved emotions are often pointed to as possible trigger of panic attacks, but it is important to point out that eliminating panic attacks from your life does not necessarily mean analyzing your psyche and digging into your subconscious. The "One Move" technique will teach you to deal with the present moment and defuse the attack along with removing the underlying anxiety that sparks the initial anxiety.

Learn more

http://www.panicportal.com

Joe Barry is an international panic disorder coach. His informative site on all issues related to panic and anxiety attacks can be found here: http://www.panicportal.com

Panic attacks can interrupt your life in so many ways. This can lead to losing your job, your friends and sometimes your family. Tips for panic attacks come from both medication and therapy.

There are many ways to help you through panic attacks and keep occurrences of attacks under control.

Panic attacks are mainly behavioral, that cause physical reactions. Because of this, medications can help with the attacks but of course, will not cure them! Medication can stabilize you but you will need to learn effective coping skills and understand your triggers for anxiety or panic attacks.You will have to see a psychiatrist or other healthcare professional to be evaluated before you are prescribed any medication.

Many times, those who experience panic attacks will be prescribed anti-depressants or anti-anxiety medication. Beta blockers are mostly used to treat the physical symptoms that are associated with anxiety attacks. By helping physically, you are able to concentrate on the psychological portion of the cause of your anxiety. Antidepressants like:

-Tricyclic,
-Benzodiazepines,
-Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors,
-Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), -and mild tranquilizers.

All of them may help for depression symptoms that are common with anxiety.

Many times, if you feel anxious you may begin to feel depressed from the constant worry and anxiety you experience. These medications will help lift the depression and anxiety so you can feel some relief.Certain medications will help with the amount of panic attacks you experience; Benxodiazepines are believed to reduce panic attacks up to 80%.

If you begin taking medication and feel that it is not working, you might need to give it more time. It can take up to a week to feel any difference and it will be a month before you feel the full effects of the medication. If you have waited a month and you don't feel enough of a difference, you will need to discuss this with your doctor.

Prescribing medication for this type of disorder is often trial and error. Some medications will not work with everyone, so your doctor will have to find the best medication for you and this may take a few different dosages or medications.

After starting on medication, it is important to seek therapy to come up with more tips for panic attacks. A therapist can help you understand what is causing your anxiety and help you think of good ways to handle these situations. One tip for panic attacks that therapy uses is role playing.

Role playing is an effective tool in therapy that can help you work through different problems without actually being in the situation. You can talk about an anxiety provoking situation and then discuss what you may do in that situation to make it less fearful or worrisome.

Acting this out will help you put your words into action. These skills will come in handy when you encounter a similar situation in your everyday activities.

Other tips for panic attacks that you may use when you come in contact with something that you know will cause a panic attack, is to try self calming techniques. Deep breathing is a common and effective coping skill: take 10 deep breathes and make sure to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. This will help you take a break from the situation and also calm your physical reaction to the stressor.

Imagery is also another tool that can help prevent panic. Close your eyes and picture yourself either handling the situation well without fear or anxiety. Another example of imagery would be to picture yourself in a different place which is peaceful and do this until you are able to regain control. These tips for panic attacks can be used in many situations.

There are many tools that therapy can teach you to control your panic attacks. A therapist can also help you work through problems, fear and worry that you have every day. With hard work and medication you can effectively deal with panic attacks.

I learned recently that you can actually create your own panic attack.

You can do this in several ways. One of the most frequent ways is by anticipating something too much. The old expression "all worked up" probably described someone creating their own panic attack.

There are plenty of reasons why someone gets anxious. A lot of times it goes right back to the what-if syndrome. What if something bad happens? What if I lose control? What if no one likes me? The what-ifs can be endless.

The problem gets worse when your body starts to react to all this negative thinking. During a panic attack, blood pressure can rise, you may start sweating and then everything gets confusing. Panic attacks can cause excessive adrenaline to be produced too. That makes everything escalate.

So when you realize you're worrying about something that might never happen, then you should try to break the process before it becomes a full fledged attack.

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It's nice to be able to choose the perfect therapy for anxiety, but not everyone can afford to pay for counseling sessions and doctors.

In many cases of anxiety, you can help yourself which can be very effective. But this only works if you are determined to accept responsibility for your healing.

Too often people are disappointed in the results of their formal therapy sessions and blame everyone except themselves. They blame their physician or the therapist or the people in group sessions or heredity or anything else they can find. It's the blame game.

The reality is that when you recognize you have anxiety, it means you can recognize that the quickest route to improvement is accepting responsibility.

Of course, that doesn't mean you have to undergo therapy all alone. Even if you choose to see a licensed professional, you still have to be willing to work towards improvement. You also need to let your family and friends help you however possible. Anxiety can be very isolating which means you have a tendency to push people away.

Having a good support system is important when you're trying to overcome anxiety.

A great website to visit about treating anxiety.

Today's fast-paced life makes it no wonder that anxiety is a common condition. We rush from one activity to another all day long and day-to-day worries just compound that hurried feeling.

Anxiety can result from many causes, some as simple as a daily dose of a hectic pace.

Exercise, good nutrition, herbal teas and meditation can all play a supportive role in easing this distress.

Although there are a variety of ways to deal with chronic anxiety, the focus of this article is on the anxiety support group as an auxiliary therapy.

There are several advantages to joining an anxiety support group. The social interaction alone is beneficial. The people attending have experienced the same general physical and emotional stress, so you're among friends. It's likely you'll learn ways to deal with anxiety that never occurred to you.

One person may have taken up jogging and found it highly successful. Another may use yoga techniques while yet another finds kneading bread a great relief. It's fun to share ideas and you soon see that it's relaxing to realize there are people who understand and support you.

People who don't suffer from anxiety find it difficult to empathize simply because they don't know what it feels like.

As with any support group, the anxiety support group has a facilitator who is trained to steer group members along a fruitful path of discussion. The facilitator knows how to bring everyone into the conversation by asking questions, canvassing for opinions and making suggestions. Facilitators are often a great resource for medical information as well.

When you consider joining an anxiety support group, it's a good idea to "shop around" to find the group that's right for you.

Your church, doctor or community hospital are sure to have recommendations. Your local County Health and Human Resources departments may have still more options. Look online on medical sites as well. Attend several on a visitor basis until you find a group that feels right to you.

Once you make your choice, be sure to attend regularly. A peculiar characteristic that seems to often afflict the anxious person is that of finding reasons not to go to their anxiety support group meeting. Don't fall into this trap. Keep your commitment to yourself and your group. When you arrive, you'll feel glad you came. After all, you've taken a step to combat anxiety by simply going out when you'd rather stay home alone.

Over time, you'll realize the many benefits of the anxiety support group setting. You'll probably make several new friends while gradually reducing the degree and number of anxiety attacks you experience. You'll learn new techniques of relaxing, activities and hobbies you might like, as well as nutritional and medical information you can use.

Anxiety support groups can be a terrific, rejuvenating experience. Find the one that suits your personality and get on the road to a new you!