Saturday, June 25, 2011

Anxiety....How to Manage it




Part of dealing with anxiety is to understand it, embrace it, and manage it.  Remember, anxiety can be use for good or bad.  It can be used to achieve great things, but it can also burn us out as well.

Try and explore......

1 Mindfulness or "self awareness".

2 Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).  Many people do find acceptance difficult as it goes against the core fibre of our society of trying to fix everything.  This form of therapy focuses on acceptance rather than just fixing.  Sometimes I refer to this as "Tai Chi Psychology".  Sometimes you cannot fight force with force.  You may need to embrace it, and channel it elsewhere useful.

3 Take time to understand yourself, your core values, and your "conditioned mind".

4 Knowledge is not enough.  You must apply it repetitively and consistently until it becomes habit.  Some people can do this by themselves, and some will need a health professional.  Just like some people can learn how to play a guitar by themselves whereas, some will need a tutor.  I would advise you to do this under a guidance of a Therapist/Doctor if possible.

5 Certain medications like Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) can be useful but unfortunately, is not the complete answer.  Please talk to you Doctor about this.

6 Certain short term medications like benzodiazepines can help you to relax, but may cause dependence issues.  Long term use should be avoided.

7 Eat well and exercise regularly.

8 Consider regular meditation or incidental mindful practice.

9 Maintain good sleep.

10 Open to receiving support from your friends and family.

11 Consider a support group.

12 See your Doctor to rule out any physical problems like thyroid disease, sleep apnea, anaemia, iron/b12/folate deficiencies.

1 comment:

  1. These are great options for coping with anxiety. We live in a quick fix society where people do often seek medication first when they experience mental health problems. More education is needed to promote therapy as a way to treat the core causes of anxiety.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.