MENTAL HEALTH | Top Mindful Notes

Natural Ways To Calm Everyday Anxiety

by Giselle Oliveira | MENTAL HEALTH | 0 comments

Anxiety is something many of us deal with on a daily basis. However, there are individuals who are incapacitated with constant thoughts of anxiety; so much that the daily activities of life are impacted. These people cannot find peace of mind and need to actively try and get their anxiety controlled.

Are there any ways to calm anxiety?

There are a number of treatments for anxiety disorders, including different kinds of therapies and medications. Depending on the patient’s condition and on their personal preferences, they may receive one of these treatments, both of these treatments, or neither of them.

Some people who suffer from anxiety disorders avoid seeking treatment or avoid seeking medication because they are afraid of what kind of impact the medications will have on them.

While starting a new medication can be scary, knowing more about common medications for anxiety disorders may help those suffering from anxiety disorders to make more informed decisions about their treatment or about whether or not to pursue treatment.

Speak with your health care professional if you think you might have anxiety. While medication is available to help with anxiety, it should not be the only line of treatment you seek out.

Let’s explore a few other options to more natural ways to calm the anxiety;

Meditate

Meditation should be the core of a natural strategy to manage anxiety since it helps to ground your irrational fears. While we all have an apprehension of the future, meditation helps us to take each moment at a time.

The goal of meditation is not to block out negative emotions, but help us learn to not linger on them. Get started first thing tomorrow morning – just sit peacefully for 5 minutes at the beginning of your day, let thoughts enter your mind freely, but do not let them linger.

The end goal is to have control over your thoughts and not letting them negatively ruin your day.

Get Enough Sleep At Night

Lack of sleep causes your brain to go haywire, playing all sorts of tricks on you and decreasing your emotional tolerance as a whole. You may find that following even just one night of sleep loss your performance will decrease, and you will be prone to anger and agitation.

Strive for a minimum of 7 hours nightly to keep your brain chemistry on point. Meditation just before bedtime is a great idea. It gets your mind ready for peaceful sleep and even helps you feel better the next morning.

Exercise

Exercise is one of the best medicines we have at our disposal, as there are few things that are comparable to the range of health benefits it offers. Exercise, similar to sleep, helps to naturally manage anxiety and depression, by increasing levels of feel good and stress-busting chemicals known as endorphins.

Anxiety if partially worsened by high levels of adrenalin, and even though exercise does temporarily increase these levels, the endorphins temper its effects and leave your mood on a high for hours afterwards.

If you are not a big fan of the gym, try a 15 to 20 min walk, do a Yoga class in your living room, go for a bike ride to explore the neighbourhood. The point is to get the body moving.

Eat Dark Chocolate

Dark chocolate has numerous benefits on health and is not your typical sugar-laden variety. Dark chocolate is particularly effective in reducing the impact that the stress hormone cortisol has on our body, including precipitating anxiety.

Its mode of action of unique, as it relays relaxation from the stomach to the brain. Similar to the way that you feel the nervousness in your stomach, a never named the vagus can be exploited for soothing anxiety too.

Try To Get Sunlight Daily

People in colder climates have been observed to develop a condition known as SAD (seasonal affective disorder), which comes on during the winter months when sun exposure is limited.

Symptoms of SAD include depression, irritability and increased anxiety, all of which resolve upon exposure to sunlight. If you do live in such a climate and are unable to get exposure to the sun when winter comes, artificial light therapy also helps improve symptoms.

Consume More Omega-3 Fats

Omega-3 fatty acids are strong anti-oxidants and may help to stem the cause of your anxiety. Typically, the two hormones that are elevated are cortisol and adrenalin, both of which respond negatively to the influence of oxidation.

Omega-3 fats combat excessive oxidation and are anti-inflammatory, helping boost production of serotonin and dopamine, and helping keep your anxiety response normal.

Don’t forget the Vitamin D3

Deficiency in vitamin D3 has been linked with anxiety, depression, and seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

The body makes its own vitamin D as a response to sunlight exposure, and it is also found in eggs and fatty fish. It is also important for immune function, bone health, and heart health, along with protecting against cancer.

Start Journaling

Journaling is a very therapeutic exercise and the consistent practice of it has been shown to help calm the mind, get rid of negative thoughts, decompress from the daily stresses and work through my anxious feelings to start focusing on what’s important: Live a better, calmer life.

Journaling is a process, it gets better the more you do it. It’s for anyone that can write, and it offers many benefits to your mental health.

Takeaway

Anxiety is exhausting, and coping with it is a never-ending learning process. Don’t get discouraged!

Finding the root of anxiety is the first step in overcoming it. How else can you truly recover from something if you don’t know what is truly causing it? These exercises are something you can repeat as often as you want and the more you do it, the better you get at it and you will soon realize we can train ourselves to feel better and live better, one day at a time.

How about you? What techniques do you use to calm your everyday anxiety?

Let me know in the comments, I would love to hear about it!

Most Common Anxiety Misconceptions

by Giselle Oliveira | MENTAL HEALTH | 0 comments

Whether you have an anxiety disorder, know someone who has an anxiety disorder, or just want to be able to offer an informed opinion, knowing about anxiety disorders is important. That means knowing the misconceptions about them as well.

PNG Most Common Anxiety Misconceptions

Some common anxiety misconceptions occur because of changing beliefs or practices in the medical community, while others come from people not understanding anxiety disorders well enough.

In either case, knowing the truth can help to make the world a better place for people suffering from these conditions.

1. Anxiety Disorders Aren’t Real

The myth that anxiety disorders aren’t real largely comes from the fact that they haven’t been in the medical vocabulary for very long and the fact that more and more people are seeking help for anxiety disorders.

Of course, these two things are related in that few seek help for problems that nobody recognizes. As anxiety disorders become better understood and more recognizable, more people are able to get help for them.

That doesn’t mean that people are making up their symptoms or that anxiety disorders aren’t real. They aren’t growing in popularity, they’re growing in terms of awareness.

When the healthcare community told us that epilepsy wasn’t because of demons and polio wasn’t the wrath of God, we believed them. So, why should anxiety disorders be any different?

2. Feeling Anxiety Means That You Have A Disorder

On that note, there’s something a misconception that each of us can address in order to make the previous misconception rarer.

We need to start talking about anxiety disorders like the serious conditions that they are.

Everyone experiences feelings of stress and even feelings of anxiety, but these common feelings and even experiencing a panic attack don’t necessarily mean that you have an anxiety disorder.

Too many of us talk about our feelings of stress as “anxiety” and every time a healthy person claims to have an anxiety disorder it removes credibility from someone who really does.

People with anxiety disorders may have feelings of severe stress virtually all the time. Alternatively, they may have feelings of anxiety when anyone else would, but their feelings are so severe that they become debilitating.

They may also have sudden feelings of overwhelming when nothing is apparently happening to cause it.

In short, there is a very real and significant difference between experiencing anxiety and living with an anxiety disorder.

If you think you have an anxiety disorder, don’t self-diagnose and don’t use it as an excuse to self-medicate. Talk to your healthcare provider and trust their diagnosis and prescription.

3. Anxiety Disorders Are Just Chemical Imbalances

On the topic of prescription, another common misconception about anxiety disorders is that they are entirely because of chemical imbalances in the brain and that this is why medication helps.

Anxiety disorders are primarily caused by the mental processes of the person who experiences it. This means that anxiety disorders are not just chemical imbalances, but it does not mean that anxiety disorders aren’t real.

Medications can make people with anxiety disorders feel better but more importantly, they make people with anxiety disorders more receptive to therapy, which is the only real way to permanently solve their problems.

Many people with anxiety disorders opt to see a therapist but not to take medication.

If you are on medication for anxiety but are not attending therapy, talk to your healthcare provider and ask for a referral. This referral will make it easier for you to find a therapist that is right for you, and it may help your insurance to cover the cost of your therapist, depending on your insurance provider.

4. Medication Changes Who You Are As A Person

A similar misconception about anxiety is one that is experienced by people with anxiety disorders. This is the misconception that medications will change who you are as a person or otherwise alter your personality.

The medications prescribed for anxiety do work on the brain, but they work in very specific pathways, usually to help to control the stress response while doing little else.

People who are on most anxiety medications do not notice other emotions being altered and they are still able to experience healthy stress in normally stressful situations, though medication does keep them from experiencing anxiety all the time or in non-stressful situations.

Takeaway

For people without anxiety disorders, avoiding these misconceptions can help to be more supportive of the members of the community that do have anxiety disorders.

For those who are suffering from anxiety disorders, understanding these misconceptions can help to foster healthy communication with the larger community and to get the best possible care.

Let me know what you think about these misconceptions, I would love to hear your opinion.

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