Did you know....
Find a Conversation
| 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.

Thank-you for sharing your opinions on medications.
Sheri Ann