Anxiety Info

Anxiety Top 10 No No's

In no particular order:

1. Not receiving a Full Medical Check-up
2. Not Following Your Doctors Recommended Treatment
3. Inconsistent Sleeping Pattern (too much or too little, poor routine)
4. Illicit Drug Use (cocaine, meth, pot, etc)
5. Caffeine and other stimulants (coffee, weight loss pills etc.)
6. Stress
7. Inactivity
8. Avoiding activities or situations (isolating self from contact with others)
9. Alcohol
10.Smoking(nicotine)

Anxiety and How Important is a Good Laugh?

Most anxiety sufferers don't laugh much. Most anxiety sufferers are too wound up in their own thoughts to see all the good and funny things around them. If you focus on the negative then that's what you are going to get- negativity and more anxiety. Maybe you need to learn how to smile again. Is this a joke you say? Hardly, it's like riding a bike, once you learn you never forget. Maybe you just need some practice to bring joy back into your life. What can you do? Surround yourself with positive people who know how to laugh and have a good time. If you notice children are usually happy and find happiness in the smallest of things. You need to learn how to recapture that innocence and learn how to laugh to help your anxiety. Look at yourself in the mirror and smile, try it, practice it, you might just get a laugh out of yourself! Rent some funny movies you know you love. Read a humorous book like the old Archie comics or your favourite cartoon. Avoid negative anxiety provoking TV. People tend to spend too much time in front of the TV. It's easy to watch a couple of hours of TV without even realizing it. Take note to the type of programs you are watching also, this can impact your anxiety level. Keep the content light and enjoy your programs. Accept what you have and cherish it. Help others, volunteer your time. Use whatever positive means you need to get yourself laughing again. Your self esteem will improve and your overall mood.

4 Levels of Anxiety as defined by Peplau (1963)

Mild This type of anxiety motivates us on a day to day basis or in other words is the “normal anxiety” we all feel as we live our lives. External stimuli are taken in and processed without question, enhancing the ability to learn and problem solve.

Moderate The individual begins to hear, see, and grasp less due to narrowing of his/her perceptual field. This basically means that we become less aware of our environment and tend to become more focused on less. The individual will notice only those things that are brought to his/her attention.

Severe The individuals thoughts become scattered focusing on small details and is unable to problem solve or use the learning process to make decisions.

Panic disorder is an anxiety disorder characterized by unexpected and repeated episodes of intense fear accompanied by physical symptoms that may include chest pain, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness, or abdominal distress. These sensations often mimic symptoms of a heart attack or other life-threatening medical conditions. As a result, the diagnosis of panic disorder is frequently not made until extensive and costly medical procedures fail to provide a correct diagnosis or relief.

Many people with panic disorder develop intense anxiety between episodes. It is not unusual for a person with panic disorder to develop phobias about places or situations where panic attacks have occurred, such as in supermarkets or other everyday situations. As the frequency of panic attacks increases, the person often begins to avoid situations where they fear another attack may occur or where help would not be immediately available. This avoidance may eventually develop into agoraphobia, an inability to go beyond known and safe surroundings because of intense fear and anxiety.

Anxiety Strategy

Part One Insight into your anxiety is probably one of the most important keys to getting relief. There may be many reasons we suffer from anxiety so we will have to look at all aspects of our lives. Many things can be the cause of this condition such as stress, chronic pain, depression, medical issues, alcohol/drug abuse and traumatic events in our lives. Maybe you fit into one of these categories or maybe a combination of them. It is important to reflect on our current lifestyle and past life experiences to find the answers. So what happens when we find these answers. Well we can use a problem solving approach to deal with each of the issues. How is it done? The first phase is the assessment phase which involves what was just described earlier in this article. We need to look back at our current lifestyle and past experiences. It is very helpful to write down these thoughts for easy reference when moving to the next phase. Once we have completed the assessment phase what do we do with all of this information? The next step in exploring our causes of anxiety is to identify problem areas from this information. You should be able to see the problem areas quite easily. Some areas may be work related, medical, stress load, family, past traumatic experiences etc as discussed earlier. Make a list of these problem areas keeping them as simple as possible. Try to use only a couple of words to identify each problem if possible. So if you complete this exercise properly your list should look something like this: 1)chronic stress 2) Employment problems 3) current alcohol use 4) death of loved one 3 years ago. Of course this is an example and you will make your list out of the problems you have discovered in your assessment phase.

Part Two In the last article we were at the point where we completed out assessment and identified problem areas. The nest step we need to take is to prioritize what problems we need to look at first. In our example we can see 4 problem areas. At this point you will have to make your own decision on what problem should be given first priority. For this example we are going to prioritize in this order: 1)current alcohol use 2)chronic stress 3)death of loved one 3 years ago 4) Employment problems. Now we can clearly see some of the causes of our anxiety and can formulate a plan to address these issues. Our first problem we identified is the current alcohol use. For this example we will say that this person is currently consuming 3-6 drinks per day and more on the weekends. Their use has been gradually increasing and it is probable that they have an addiction. Now we have to look at ways to deal with this problem area. There are many options one can look at such as a) Detox b) 12 step program c) Self Help Group d) Medications e) Professional Counselling Service. The key is to tackle one problem at a time. Often dealing with one problem area will help us solve another related problem at the same time. In our example taking care of the addiction will impact the other identified problems and give us a good head start on the total picture. As time goes on we can re organize and re evaluate so that we can achieve optimum wellness. By completing this exercise it will impact us in a positive way and aid us in decreasing our anxiety. Anxiety Help Online

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