Did you know....

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-13-2004
Did you know....
2
Wed, 04-12-2006 - 4:38pm

Did you know that anxiety is not an illness? Anxiety is a learned behaviour. It is a bad habit than can be unlearned. Did you know that medication is not necessary for the treatment of anxiety? In fact, most antidepressant medications increase levels of anxiety. Tranquilizers are effective initially, but eventually your body builds a tolerance and you will require more and more of it to achieve the desired effect. Eventually, you are coping with an addiction problem that will complicate your anxiety condition not cure it. Besides, medications are merely a band-aid. Once you stop using them, if you do not know how to employ proper coping techniques, your anxiety condition will eventually return.

The secret to moving past anxiety is losing your fear of it. When you stop placing so much importance on your symptoms, they will go away. How do you remove the fear? A good start is to understand that you are not ill!!! What a huge relief!!!! This is what is happening in anxiety reactions:

When we are under a lot of stress, our bodies start to show physical symptoms of stress as a result of stress hormones that are relased in our bodies (cortisol and adrenaline). At the first sign of these physical symptoms, we experience a fearful reaction to them - a scarey "what if" thought. "Oh my god, my heart is racing, what if I have a heart attack?" or "Oh my god, I'm sweating, what does that mean? That's not normal. I'm frightened". Your body will naturally react to these fearful thoughts by releasing more stress hormones which in turn causes more fearful thinking which in turn causes more stress hormones to be released. It's the fear-adrenaline-fear cycle. This cycle can be broken by changing your reaction! Once you interrupt this cycle, you stop the chemicals cold. Lose your fear (MOST IMPORTANT), remove stimulants from your diet (caffeine, nicotine and simple sugars), add some moderate exercise to your routine as an outlet for everyday stress and you'll see a huge difference. There is life after anxiety. I'm living proof.

Any doctor that tells you that you are sick, have a chemical imbalance, or only offers medication as an approach needs to be dropped asap. Listening to my shrink and following his advice kept me trapped in this condition for a very very long time.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-22-2003
Wed, 04-12-2006 - 5:09pm

Thank-you for sharing your opinions on medications.

Sheri Ann

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-13-2004
Thu, 04-13-2006 - 9:21am
Did the tone of my post imply that people who take medications should be ashamed? That certainly wasn't my intention - I took them for many years myself. My experiences with Effexor, Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft were horrifying. The side effects I experienced only compounded my fear tenfold. Getting off Paxil was the worse experience of my life. Once heavily dependant on Klonipin just to move outside my house, I have now been off medications for over three years. I have since learned that I was very very misguided by my doctors for many years. They told me I had a chemical imbalance in my brain and that I would have to take medications for the rest of my life. THIS IS COMPLETELY UNTRUE! I now just want so badly to help others do the same. Once you learn the proper way to move through an attack of anxiety, by letting it run its course without the fight and resistance, by welcoming it in and letting it move through you without adding secondary fear with scarey "what if" thinking, you will see that you have the power to stop the attack dead in its tracks on your own, without the use of medications. Once you perfect this skill it becomes second nature. It is so empowering! You will lose your fear of this awful anxiety and once you do, it will diminish and go away! As far as I'm concerned, anybody who is still on medication for anxiety, is not getting the help that they need to move past this "condition". It was my intention to inform anxiety suffers here that there are choices and alternate approaches to dealing with anxiety and panic - permanent recovery approaches - techniques and coping skills that will last a lifetime - not just a few hours. I literally owe my life to the doctor who showed me the way back.