How to Overcome Anxiety, Depression and Stress

You’re finally going to get your answer about how to overcome anxiety.

Anxiety is your reaction to the world, and you can change it. I’ll show you how, but first a word about depression.

Depression confuses your thinking and makes everything you see appear completely negative. Therefore, your world is no longer colourful, but shades of grey and black, and nothing seems enjoyable any more. Your joy has gone and so has your smile. Your thoughts have changed what you see and feel. In the same way, your negative thoughts often create anxiety about situations you didn’t fear before.

Severe long term anxiety can lead to depression

If fear cripples you, you cannot be happy or positive in your mind. The answer how to overcome anxiety and depression lies in the mind. This is because recovery from anxiety or depression, and any necessary treatment, lies there. Beat fear and anxiety now!

• Most common forms of anxiety are not serious and can even be helpful. Also, stress and anxiety can improve your physical abilities and make you more focused on facing the challenges.

• It can be good to have some small amount of stress and concern about a challenging situation you have to face because this will mean you are likely to prepare for the challenges ahead.

• Severe anxiety is something which can affect your life in many negative ways and cause you and your loved ones a lot of pain.

• Extreme anxiety can cause all sorts of problems such as panic attacks, phobias and can even cause you to avoid important tasks in daily life.

Is your anxiety a problem?

If you find yourself avoiding things on a regular basis because of anxiety or stress then you need to do something about it. Don’t put up with fear and anxiety making you avoid situations that occur regularly. If you do this you are limiting what you can achieve in your life, and you are stopping yourself from living fully to your potential.

Remove anxiety, fear and stress and open up new challenges for growth and happiness in your life. The sky will be the limit!

You deserve a life where you feel free and where your fear and worry do not imprison you.

Severe anxiety disorders include general anxiety disorder (persistent worry and fear about bad things happening, this fear can actually stop you from doing things you need to do on a daily basis). Removing anxiety will mean that you have a chance of becoming positive and more relaxed, and your drop in stress will affect your health positively too.

Panic and phobia

Panic is a sudden feeling of terror, and the fear about the next panic attack is actually the greatest part of the problem. Anxiety is a major cause of panic attacks. Getting in control of your emotions including your anxiety is one way to solve this problem. But how can you do this? Learn how to escape the trap of anxiety here.

Phobia is a fear of a particular situation or object. One of the most common of these is a fear of flying. There are many more phobias of course and some can seem really petty however the anxiety these phobias can cause you is anything but petty.

Phobias can control your life if you let your anxiety get out of hand. I once had a fear of flying and passed it to my young son so one day we both decided to take an online course from an experienced pilot. Learning all the facts and statistics was comforting and put our minds at ease. I still don’t really like flying but am no longer anxious as I used to be. This has opened up more opportunities to travel and my life has improved as a result.

Other disorders

Obsessive-compulsive disorder

(uncontrollable thoughts and feelings – obsessions – and the reaction to this is exaggerated behaviour to deal with these thoughts – compulsion). An example of this would be excessive washing of hands to remove germs. It goes without saying that a major part of these obsessive compulsive disorders is anxiety.

Post-traumatic stress disorder

This describes the problem a person faces after a serious traumatic event such as a natural disaster, accident or crime which causes fear and changes the behaviour of the person for some time after the event. Everything seems to remind the person affected of that terrible event.

In very bad cases panic attacks can occur. In many cases there is a trigger situation and the thought goes like this: x happened before in this situation and if I am in that situation again it will happen again. The anxiety this causes makes you avoid certain situations or actions which you believe to be dangerous.

These and other anxiety disorders require treatment and often therapy. Anxiety disorders can lead to alcohol abuse and withdrawal from society and depression is quite likely to result. In addition to this, if someone tries to solve his or her drinking problem bouts of depression can result from the alcohol withdrawal symptoms. This means that quitting alocohol can actually also cause depression.

How to overcome anxiety and depression?

There are three options:

• Therapy
• Medication
• Self Help

Depression and anxiety are connected, so I advise you to find out more about the treatment for depression if you also suffer from this.

Therapy

Therapy can guide you how to overcome anxiety.

Anxiety and depression, there is a clear link as I described above. Different kinds of anxiety therapy include:

• Cognitive therapy – this therapy involves the patient thinking about the thoughts and feelings which cause his or her anxiety and changing these thoughts and feelings so that they are more realistic and helpful allowing the person to manage his own reaction to anxiety causing situations.

• Behavioural therapy – this therapy is highly successful and involves the patient confronting the fear that provokes the anxiety and this desensitizes the patient with a reduction in anxiety in situations which before caused a big problem.

• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) – the two above therapies can be combined into one technique which has been proved really effective in treating anxiety, panic disorders, phobias and so on.

• Relaxation techniques – deep breathing, muscle relaxation and symptoms of stress and anxiety can be controlled and managed using relaxation techniques. A form of self help and when learned it is extremely beneficial.

Counselling

There are many highly qualified professionals waiting to help you with advice – I recommend some form of counseling or therapy if you feel you would benefit from talking to someone about your problems whatever they are. A professional will be able to help you through your problem. Take action now!

Medication

Antidepressants and other kinds of medication such as Beta blockers, SSRI’s are used to treat anxiety and depression. There are many different medications used for the treatment of anxiety and these include those used for panic disorders, OCD and social disorder such as Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil. Effexor is commonly used for general anxiety disorder. There are many other drugs which can be prescribed too both for anxiety and depression.

Check this page for more about depression medication

Not only do anxiety drugs help with the symptoms, they also enable you to take steps to deal with the causes and to understand how to overcome anxiety and depression.

Self Help

If your anxiety is really affecting you then you must first seek a professional to help you. After you are diagnosed you can begin to help yourself as well as following what your doctor suggests. Self help is a very effective tool which anyone can use. Here are some of my suggestions (some of which I have used to solve some of my own problems with shyness, self esteem, depression and so on). Please be careful though to be sure to seek support for your anxiety from a professional and do not just rely on self help if your anxiety is affecting you seriously.

Relaxation techniques are extremely helpful and I advise you to practise these exercises and use them on a daily basis.

Self Hypnosis Downloads – these downloads can help you deal with many problems related to anxiety and are very popular on my sister site about self esteem. Check this page for more information about how self hypnosis can help you and this page for self hypnosis downloads to help you overcome fears and phobias

So, there you have it anxiety can be beaten. I hope you try some of the suggestions on this page and that the information has been helpful and inspiring. Now, please go ahead and share this page so that others can benefit too…

Books About Anxiety and Depression I recommend :

1.How to Heal Anxiety and Depression by Joseph Luciani

For those who are uncomfortable with the thought of entering therapy or using medication, the self-coaching work here may be just what you need to discover how to overcome anxiety. (There are a few useful self-tests.) As an alternative to traditional psychiatric options, the self-coaching and “self-talk” prescribed in the book may work to talk oneself out of temporary mild or moderate depression.

2.Coping; 10 simple ways to relieve anxiety, fear and worry

Ten simple steps how to overcome anxiety and become less anxious. The tips range from “Thinking realistically” to “Taking constructive coping actions” and include friendly exercises for combating a particular aspect of anxiety. I recommend you to read this one!

3.Anxiety and depression workbook for Dummies

From the well-known dummies series. Struggling to cope with anxiety and/or depression? Have no fear this hands-on guide focuses on helping you pinpoint the root of your problems and find relief from your symptoms in a detailed, step-by-step manner. A highly recommended book.