Anxiety

Everyone feels anxiety from time to time, sometimes caused by specific environments (like speaking in public) and other times coming upon us seemingly for no reason whatever. For some people, however, anxiety is a frequent visitor and can cause physical symptoms such as heart palpitations (racing heart), excessive sweating, nausea, and dizziness. Other symptoms include nervous shaking, paleness of the skin, and disorientation. A full­blown anxiety attack, or panic attack, can be a major disruption, causing mood, sleep, and nervous system disorders. If anxiety becomes chronic enough that it interferes with normal life functions, then it may be diagnosed as anxiety disorder. This can express itself as an inability to concentrate, inability to sit still, paranoia, depression, and even suicidal tendencies.

What Causes Anxiety?

Although anxiety is always associated with some kind of fear or foreboding, quite often there is no external cause for the fear. Anxiety and panic attacks are almost always motivated internally, by stored emotions. Anxiety can also be triggered by stress, psychological or emotional depletion, or even physical depletion.

Treatments to Reduce or Eliminate Anxiety

The key to treating anxiety is to uncover the underlying emotional patterns causing it. This may be difficult, depending on two major factors: your willingness to delve into emotional issues and the tools you use to do so. Besides treating the causes of the anxiety, you may also require some assistance during an “attack.” Here are some helpful keys:

• Avoid caffeine and stress. Implement a regular stress­reduction program.
• Reduce sugar and carbohydrate intake while increasing proteins and amino acids. Add one or more super foods to help maintain good nutrition.
• Use calming herbs and foods, such as passionflower and passion fruit, chamomile, and valerian root.
• Keep calming and grounding essential oils with you to help during attacks: lavender oil, myrrh, cedarwood, and spruce oils are helpful.
• Take regular John’s wort supplements for their calming and depression­fighting qualities. Pure cocoa is also a great anti­depressant.
• Consider emotional clearing techniques, such as psychotherapy, Neuro­emotional Technique (NET), and Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). Many other techniques are also available.
• Alternative therapies like laughter, breath work, meditation, and yoga (for stress reduction) may also help.
• Exercise can help raise serotonin and dopamine (your brain’s “feel­good” chemicals), which may help alleviate attacks.
• People who have not had luck with other treatments have gotten results using past life therapy.