Remedies for Depression

Posts Tagged ‘Self Improvement’

Statistics in the past year, indicated between 10 to 12 % people suffered some form of panic attack. Some the most common related terms are given in the list below.

- General Anxiety Disorder
- Panic Attack Disorder
- Anxiety Panic Disorder
- Peformance Anxiety
- Anxiety Disorder
- Social Anxiety Disorder

Panic attacks make up the number-one problem facing men and women and is second only to alcohol and drug-related problem. As a reponse to stressful situations, like examinations, public speaking, worry of layoffs, up goes anxiety. Such heightened disorder, has become a normal occurrence affecting one out of three persons in the past year.

Symtoms of Anxiety Panic Disorder
Panic attack disorder symptoms include shortness of breath, a choking feeling, heart palpitations, sweating, shaking and trembling, chest pains, dizziness, hot flashes or cold chills, feeling of unreality (such as being in a fog, on the moon, in mid air), and fear of dying, or losing control.

Panic attacks which can come unexpectedly, with at least six or seven of the symptoms you have just read, escalates quickly will subsides within minutes. On the other hand, anxiety panic disorder builds up gradually and is not sudden and unexpected, symptoms are fewer and milder.

Anxiety Panic Disorder is an emergency response

In general anxiety disorder is not that bad though. It keeps us primed, as if it trains us to be always on our toes. It also keeps us psychologically alert, an emergency response. Proper exercises can be good to ensure things may start to get nasty.

When we are engulfed in our ‘panic room’, we have one of two choices. We can either face it or get away from it. This is better known as the “fight” or “flight” response. Given a choice, would you face it and experience its full impact, or would you rather retreat or run away from it?

If we equate panic to fear (the two are similar in a lot of ways), the easy way out is to avoid it. But there is always a great chance (and you can be sure of it) that it will haunt you again and again. Whatever that fear is, literally speaking, this will keep you on the run and you will always be checking and looking behind you, cowering from it. The more you run away from it, the more it will chase you and make fun of you. It will be like a ghost running after you!

Given this kind of a situation, it is apparently more logical to face panic attacks. But do not “fight” the symptoms of any attack. Try to “flow” with the symptoms and allow yourself to become calm. Keep reminding yourself that what you are experiencing is a natural emergency response.

The more experiences you get out of it, the more confident you become. And when you are confident, what you used to fear will not make you fearful anymore. You will get immune to it. The more instances you are able to handle it, the more capable you will be each time it occurs, like practice. Practice makes perfect. In the end, you will perfect the art of handling your condition, from fearing it to handling it remarkably in a positive way. That’s an achievement.

Now, let’s go back to the point where you still dread panic attacks with a question you might raise that goes: “Just how am I supposed to face a anxiety panic disorder knowing all too well it might subdue and eat me out of my guts?” The answer: “You don’t do anything about it. Just let it be. Let it run its entire course and just experience it”. But then you may ask: “What if I don’t survive it?” The answer: “You will definitely survive it.

Keep this in mind. This experience is a state of mind, an apprehension. It is just imagined. There is no way a person will experience a brush on something like a heart attack, a coma, or even death because this condition is not life threatening. There is never a recorded case of a person who has died as a result of anxiety. Rest your mind to the fact that this condition is not a physical ailment, even with the physical manifestations like sweating, palpitations, stomach cramps, and all that. You will be able to face and experience its full impact without any life-threatening effects. Bring it on”. This is the attitude you must adopt the next time you have a bout with it.

Say silently inside your head “I am becoming calm….It’s a matter of minutes only. I can handle it as I have handled it before. . .I am calm and steady. ” Like we must always believe, “if you think you can - then you can”.

Thank you for reading.

Some women are more sensitive to hormonal fluctuations than others. For many women, anxiety issues appear for the first time during periods of hormonal change. For other women, hormonal changes intensify previously existing anxiety symptoms. 

Anxiety is one of the most common symptoms of Pre-Menstrual Syndrome (PMS), post-childbirth, and perimenopause (the period of time before the onset of menopause). It may take the form of panic attacks, nervousness, sweating, intense fear, anxiety combined with depression, or other overwhelming symptoms. 

Here are several periods of hormonal change that can intensify or trigger anxiety in women. 

Puberty — Developing girls experience hormonal changes as they prepare to begin their reproductive years. 

Monthly menstrual cycle — Often girls and women experience PMS the week before their period. 

Following childbirth — The severe drop in certain hormones following childbirth can cause dramatic physical symptoms and a temporary feeling of depression or anxiety; in some women, it is prolonged.

Perimenopause — Perimenopause is the period of time when the body is approaching menopause. It may last from two to ten years. During this time the menstrual cycle becomes irregular as the hormone levels keep fluctuating, causing some women to experience PMS-like symptoms.

Although many of us may use the term “going through menopause” to describe this period of time, it is actually called perimenopause. Many women experience panic attacks for the first time during perimenopause. Other symptoms such as insomnia, hot flashes, rapid heartbeat, and sweating are also common. 

With surgical menopause (hysterectomy), you’ll likely experience perimenopausal symptoms after the surgery, even if you did not experience symptoms prior to surgery. Symptoms can be prolonged and are due to the dramatic and sudden decrease of certain hormones as a result of the hysterectomy.  

In non-surgical circumstances, menopause occurs after a woman has no periods for twelve consecutive months. It lasts only one day. Many women report feeling better than ever mentally and physically after menopause, due to the fact that hormone levels stabilize.

Hormonal Change Triggers the Fight Or Flight Response

Due to the fact that hormonal change causes physical and psychological stress, it triggers our “fight or flight” response. The fight or flight response is the body’s inborn, self-protective response to perceived danger. 

When we perceive that we are under stress, our bodies send out a rush of cortisol, adrenaline, and other brain chemicals to prepare us to “fight” or “flee” the danger. 

The fight or flight response triggers the physiological changes that we associate with anxiety, such as rapid heartbeat, increased blood pressure, sweating, muscle tension, narrowed mental focus, heightened emotion, and many other symptoms. 

These are the same physical sensations that many women experience when their hormone levels fluctuate. In other words, most of the symptoms women experience during times of hormonal change are really fight or flight reactions. While these physical sensations are not dangerous, they can be very intense and overwhelming.

Our fight or flight response mechanism can become “hypersensitive” with the various hormonal changes in our bodies that take place from puberty to menopause. Many of us are in a constant state of stress due to our lifestyle and thought patterns, which also causes hypersensitivity.

In other words, our bodies may be stuck in the “on” switch of fight or flight. What normally wouldn’t trigger symptoms, now initiates symptoms and perpetuates an ongoing cycle. 

Fight or flight reactions in and of themselves are harmless. However, when our thoughts convince our rational minds that these symptoms are scary and dangerous, we create an anxiety cycle.

Anxiety consists of more than fight or flight reactions acting by themselves. Unproductive thoughts play a critical role in creating and perpetuating the anxiety we experience.

Our thoughts convert fight or flight reactions into anxiety, and a self-perpetuating cycle begins. Soon we find ourselves limiting our behaviors because of anxiety as well, which further entrenches the vicious cycle.

When a person is under stress, unresolved emotions and issues commonly come to the forefront. Because hormonal change is a major stressor, it can bring up internal conflicts and self-doubt in many areas of our lives. All of a sudden, we may find that the negative self-talk that we successfully pushed to the background of our lives during less stressful times is now playing center stage. 

During periods of hormonal change, we may also feel uncertain about our changing roles (e.g. maturing from girl to woman, becoming a mother, becoming a mature woman past childbearing years), which can add to our internal conflict. 

When we fail to successfully resolve internal conflicts and the unhelpful thought patterns that contribute to them, we create a breeding ground for anxiety. Combined with fight or flight symptoms, it’s no wonder that these unproductive thoughts create and perpetuate the anxiety cycle! 

What can you do if hormone-related anxiety affects you?

Here’s some great news! The same tools that you can use to overcome anxiety due to other reasons can help you to conquer anxiety related to hormonal changes too.

Research shows that cognitive-behavioral techniques that help you change unhelpful thoughts and behaviors, lifestyle changes, relaxation techniques, and nutritional strategies (all found in our Conquer Anxiety Success Program) can help women dealing with hormonal changes.

These types of strategies not only help women regain a sense of control over their lives, but actually achieve improved physical and emotional well being! Here are a few tips to get you started:

– Focus on reducing preventable stress in your life that triggers the fight or flight response — stop the yo-yo dieting; increase sleep to eight or nine hours a night; exercise regularly; don’t skip meals; cut back on your frantic schedule; and decrease stimulants, such as caffeine. 

The body isn’t designed for constant stress. When we are bombarded with stress, our ability to cope can become overwhelmed because the elevation in stress hormones makes the fight or flight switch remain “on.”

– Learn how to train your body to respond differently to stress so that you can automatically turn the false alarm “off” when the fight or flight response is triggered. Relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, yoga, meditation, and progressive muscle relaxation can help you achieve this goal.  

– Most importantly, learn how to change how you think. Our thoughts are what convert the harmless fight or flight response into a vicious cycle of anxiety. Remember, just as our thoughts hold the key to creating anxiety, they also hold the key to eliminating it!

Many students over the summer enjoyed a relatively leisurely few months. Soon they will again begin their schooling season and many already have. Unfortunately, instead of experiencing a purely focused learning environment, many students’ stress levels will ramp up quickly. It’s that time of year again when students begin to prepare all semester long only to once again be enveloped in the stressful ritual of cramming for exams. Too many students can’t take the pressure and drop out. According to one study, the percentage of college students experiencing anxiety over their academic performance has grown significantly over the last two decades. The Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) found that over 30 percent of college freshmen feel “frequently overwhelmed by all I have to do,” compared with 16 percent in 1985. When students see their education as a challenge, stress can bring them an increased capacity to learn. But when it becomes a threat, stress creates feelings of helplessness and a foreboding sense of loss. Stress is very subjective. What is too much for one is just right for another. Recurrent physical and psychological stress can diminish self-esteem, decrease interpersonal and academic effectiveness, create a cycle of self-blame and self-doubt and may cause physical illness. In the New York Times best-selling book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, author L. Ron Hubbard explains how these stressful situations affect our drive towards happiness, achievement and survival. And how these stressful mental states can even affect our physical health. Dianetics describes just how the reactive or subconscious part of the mind can overwhelm the analytical mind–and why this causes stress. This mechanism in the mind managed to bury itself from view so thoroughly that only many years of exact research and careful testing uncovered it. “This is the mind which makes a man suppress his hopes, which holds his apathies, which gives him irresolution when he should act and kills him before he has begun to live,” writes Hubbard in Dianetics. It is also the part of the mind that causes illnesses which have been described as psychosomatic–like headaches, allergies, asthma, high blood pressure and a host of other stress-induced ‘syndromes’ and ailments. Before stressful education further attacks the future leaders of our nation, it is vital that we truly educate them on how to overcome such anxiety and stress. Visit www.dianetics.org for more information.

Whether based on our job, our relationship with others or on world events that threaten our lives, stress is a fact of life in the modern world. Stress can result from exposure to shocking events or painful emotions. As a result, stress may also be accompanied by illogical fears and irrational behavior.One well-known self-help author says that the foundations of stress can be found in what he has called the reactive mind. According to author L. Ron Hubbard, the reactive mind is the portion of a person’s mind which works on a totally stimulus-response basis.  It is not under his control and can exert power over his awareness, purposes, thoughts, body and actions.In his popular book, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, Hubbard explains that there is something effective available to help people deal with stress. Dianetics describes just how the reactive or subconscious part of the mind can overwhelm the analytical mind–and why this causes stress. This mechanism in the mind managed to bury itself from view so thoroughly that only many years of exact research and careful testing uncovered it.

“This is the mind which makes a man suppress his hopes, which holds his apathies, which gives him irresolution when he should act and kills him before he has begun to live,” writes Hubbard in Dianetics.The book Dianetics provides techniques one can apply to get to this source of stress and anxiety and eliminate it. Whether a person is experiencing stress in the workplace and just cannot stop himself from making the same mistakes on the job again and again; or there is something that a person’s loved one is doing out of no ill-will that the person cannot help but “blow-up” about–and thus perpetrating the stress in the relationship–the carefully research techniques in Dianetics have been found to be able to get to the bottom of it.Stress is often mentally “brushed off” as a normal part of life, something to grit one’s teeth through and hope for a better day. Yet just as one would not let a machine continue to operate under extreme pressure, neither should one do that with the mind.  There is a way to gain control and operate without the hindrances of stress, anxiety and depression. To learn more, visit www.dianetics.org.

Are you lonely?

Did you know that being lonely is a normal part of our everyday lives.

Lets face it, we’ve all been there.

We get depressed when we fail in our exams, when we’re rejected by the person we love, or when someone very close to us passes away.

That’s just part of life.

But, depression, however, can be more fatal than just plain loneliness. It could render Life-Long consequences that could ruin your Self-Esteem, Health, and Well-Being in the process.

Well today is your lucky day because I’m going to share with you some great tips to help you conquer the ‘Melancholy Mood’ so you can get the MOST bliss out of your daily activities.

So, with that said, lets go to Tip #1.

Tip #1. Do you get enough Light and Sunshine?

Did you know that lack of exposure to sunlight is responsible for the secretion of the hormone called Melatonin, which could trigger a dispirited mood and/or a lethargic condition.

Melatonin is only produced in the dark. What it does is it lowers the body temperature and makes you feel sluggish.

So, if you are always cooped up in your room (with the curtains closed), it would be difficult to restrain yourself from staying in bed.

This is the reason why many people suffer from depression much more often in winter than in the other seasons.

It’s simply because the nights are longer.

If you can’t afford to get some sunshine, you can always lighten up your room with brighter lights to help offset the darkness.

Or…

You could go have lunch outside the office for a change and take frequent walks in the early afternoon instead of driving your car over short distances.

The choices are endless. It’s really up to you.

Tip #2. Keep Busy and Get Inspired.

You’ll be more likely to overcome any feeling of depression if you keep your mind busy doing the activities you like doing the most.

Do the things you love.

If you’re a little short on cash, you could engage in simple stuff like taking a leisurely stroll in the park, playing sports, reading books, or engaging in any activity that you have passion for and would love to pursue.

Also, set a Goal.

No matter how difficult or discouraging life can be, remain firm and have an unshakable belief that you are capable of doing anything you desire.

With this kind of positive attitude, you will attain a cheerful disposition to beat the blues.

Tip #3. Take a Break. Sit back and Relax.

I mean it.

Listen to some soothing music you like. Soak in a nice warm bath. Simply take a break from your stressful workload and spend the day just goofing around doing the things you love.

In other words, go have fun. Life’s to short as it is.

Tip #4. Maintain a healthy diet and Stay Fit.

Avoid foods with lots of Sugar, Caffeine or Alcohol.

Sugar and caffeine may give you a brief moment of energy; but they will later bring about Anxiety, Tension and Internal problems.

Alcohol on the other hand is a depressant. Many people would drink alcohol to simply “forget their problems.”

All they’re doing is aggravating their conditions in the process.

Also, did you know that exercising regularly is a vital depression buster.

Why you ask?

Simply because it allows your body to produce more Endorphins than usual.

Endorphins are sometimes called “the happy chemicals” because of their Stress-Reducing and Happiness-Inducing properties.

Tip #5. Get a Social Life outside of work.

No man is an island. Your inner circle of friends are there to give you moral support.

Spending time and engaging in worthwhile activities with them could give you a very satisfying feeling.

And we all now… nothing feels better than having group support.

And… never underestimate the power of Touch.

What I mean is… doesn’t it feel so good when someone pats you on the back and gives you words of encouragement during your most challenging times?

Hug or embrace someone today.

Get intimate.

Establish close ties with your family and friends.

The love and care expressed by others could tremendously boost your immune system and fend off illnesses.

Best of all, you’ll live a more secured and happy life.

Now go give those 5 Tips a try and see how they pan out for you.