If you have ever experienced anxiety or a panic attack, you know how unpleasant it can be. While a panic attack can and will go away on its own, it does not stop them from coming back again. Chances are if you have experienced one or more panic attacks, then you are likely to experience them again at some point in your life.
Anxiety itself does not exactly go away on its own, but the severity of it will both increase and reduce over time and is often situation dependent. It is quite common for people who suffer from panic attacks to have high levels of general anxiety.
Fortunately for anxiety sufferers, although anxiety typically won’t go away on its own, there are many treatment options available to help reduce the severity of your anxiety and allow you to live life a lot easier.
I suffered with anxiety for over 10 years and went on multiple different medications for it with little to no success. I came across a product called Panic Away that I successfully used to significantly reduce my anxiety and allow me to live life a whole lot easier. It doesn’t require medication or lengthy therapy sessions, it is something that can be done immediately for fast results. I have written a full review of Panic Away which is worth reading if you suffer from anxiety and panic attacks.
Treatment Options To Reduce Anxiety
Other than using Panic Away as mentioned above, there are other treatment options that can greatly help to reduce your anxiety.
CBT is a method that has been proven to be very effective at treating anxiety. With time and practice, you will learn to challenge your negative way of thinking and instead replace it with healthier thoughts that will reduce depression and anxiety. A good resource for CBT is Destroy Depression. It goes into detail and offers a step by step strategy for dealing with anxiety and depression through the use of CBT. I have used it myself with great results.
Psychotherapy is also another useful treatment for anxiety. It is also known as talk therapy. This is usually undertaken with a psychologist, however a general practitioner or a psychiatrist may be used as well. A lot of therapists are strong supporters of CBT and other behavioral therapies, so there is a good chance you will be doing some form of CBT or related therapy if you are undergoing psychotherapy. This should also be your first point of call to treat your anxiety, as talking about the problems you have been facing gives your therapist the knowledge they need to best treat both your symptoms of anxiety and the underlying causes.
Medication may also be prescribed to treat anxiety. Benzodiazepines such as valium are often used to help calm the nerves and stay in a calmer state for longer. I used to use valium quite often for my anxiety, but the problem I found is it did nothing to stop the anxiety returning when the drugs wore off. On top of this, the more I resorted to taking valium for my anxiety the less effective it became, so I would need a higher dose to get the same effect. This is a dangerous path to be on with valium, and if you find yourself in that situation then I suggest speaking to your doctor or therapist to look for alternative solutions before you become too dependent on valium.
Exposure therapy is something I have used in the past to treat my anxiety. It involves actually putting yourself in the situation that makes you anxious with the hope that the situation will become less triggering to you the more you are exposed to it. I used to be scared of going into a shopping mall. Too many people, all walking in different directions and at different paces and the craziness of it all was usually too much for me to cope with. In order to reduce the severity of my anxiety around this situation, I would actually go to the mall and immerse myself in the experience. I would do this on a weekly basis. Usually I would go when it was a bit quieter and then work my way up to going when it was a bit busier. It was quite hard to do at first, but the more I went and the more I survived it, the easier I found it became. I can happily say that by doing this weekly over the course of several months I no longer fear going to the mall and it rarely triggers any anxiety for me. I’m still working on my anxiety around driving around the busy car park, but for now I am happy to stick to parking as far away as possible to avoid the mayhem. I know this is avoidance, but I’m happy to walk a little bit further to where I parked my car.
Learning mindfulness is also useful to assist you to fight anxiety. Practicing mindful meditation on a regular basis will make managing your anxiety levels so much easier. It basically involves learning to be in the present and exist peacefully with everything that is going on around you. Once you have had a bit of practice at this, you will find yourself able to sit with your anxiety much easier and although it won’t get rid of it, it will be at a manageable level where it doesn’t take over all of your thoughts.
If you need more tips for calming anxiety you can read my previous post.
Why Does Anxiety Keep Coming Back?
The main reason anxiety keeps coming back is because the root of the problem is not often being treated. Usually we just treat the symptoms or wait for them to pass. The problem with that is that it can actually lead to greater anxiety levels as we are now more anxious about the anxiety coming back. In Panic Away, this is referred to as the panic loop. It is essentially the fear of an anxiety or panic attack actually causing us to have higher anxiety and more instances of panic attacks.
Quite often anxiety is caused by life issues, financial stress, family situations and various phobias or fears. We can either treat each of these situations individually, which would be a large and difficult task, or we can change the way we process the anxiety. Any good anxiety treatment, like psychotherapy, will aim to do this. If you no longer live in fear of your anxiety, and you no longer process life’s situations in a negative way, then anxiety can no longer control your life. It will probably still be there from time to time, but with patience and effort you will learn to not let the anxiety overcome you and dominate your life.
I have personally learned to manage my anxiety with a combination of CBT, ACT (acceptance commitment therapy), mindfulness and breathing exercises. The resources I used were Panic Away, which helped with the panic attacks and the general anxiety levels and also Destroy Depression which was very useful for teaching me CBT in order to manage both my depression and anxiety.
Final Thoughts
I used to be someone who was plagued by anxiety. My anxiety levels would sit so high that it would only take the smallest event or unexpected change to trigger me into a full blown anxiety attack. I was diagnosed as agoraphobic, because I just could not leave the house due to my anxiety. Staying inside in my comfort zone I could manage the condition better and manage my surroundings. It took me a long time to realize that there were far better options available to me. Nowadays, my anxiety no longer controls me. Using a combination of the treatments mentioned above has allowed me to live a much improved life to the one that I was previously living. It can be hard to take that first step when everything seems like it is outside of your comfort zone, but I can tell you for a fact that it is a step worth taking.
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