Feeling anxious from time to time is a natural part of our lives. However, feeling anxious constantly or letting that anxiety get in the way of living a normal life is not natural. If you feel you may have more anxiety or your anxiety is more intense than is proper, you may have an anxiety disorder.

Is your level of anxiety appropriate for each situation? If you see a man walking your way with a gun, your level of anxiety should appropriately be high. On the other hand, if you’re feeling incredibly anxious about driving two miles to the mall, your anxiety is probably out of proportion.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Constantly worrying about everything. It can keep you up at night, make you chronically tired, and cause nausea. Your levels of anxiety are higher than the average person’s and you invent and worry about situations that will most likely never happen to you or your loved ones. Example: Worrying that your daughter will get in a bike accident when she rides to school, worrying that you will be in a car accident as you drive to the grocery store, playing out the funeral scene in your mind should your husband die unexpectedly tomorrow.

Social Anxiety

This is beyond shyness; it’s a high level of anxiety about being out in public or in a group situation. It’s an excessive fear about social places and situations, and it can be incapacitating. You may have low self-esteem or worry too much about what others think of you. You may practice avoidance rather than deal with the anxiety. Example: Severe anxiousness when attending a church service or intense fear of going to a crowded movie.

Panic Disorder

Anticipated or random attacks of panic brought on by excessive adrenaline and incorrectly assessing a situation with intense anxiety. You spend a lot of time worrying you will have another panic attack and go to great lengths to avoid situations that might bring on an attack. Example: Having a panic attack with symptoms of not being able to breathe, racing heart, and clamminess while on an airplane.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Obsessive thoughts and anxieties that are tempered by performing rituals. These rituals are done over and over again the same way each time or great anxiety is the result. Example: Unlocking and locking your car door 6 times before you can leave it, or washing your hands with 3 squirts of soap and washing the back of the hands 4 times each.

PTSD

Varying anxiety symptoms as a result of a traumatic event. You have very real feelings of anxiety that a similar event will happen again. Example: The traumatic event of rape can lead to fear of men, flashbacks, not being able to sleep alone, and the new occurrence of panic attacks, etc.

Phobia

Phobias are persistent, irrational fears and are associated with anxiety. If you are presented with the object of your fears, you immediately experience high levels of anxiety. Example: Fear of airplanes or fear of snakes.

Having some anxiety in our lives is a normal occurrence, but when it is out of proportion to the event or seems to be taking over, then it could be that you are suffering from one of the above anxiety disorders.

The American Medical Association says that 75 percent of all illnesses are attributed to stress. Unhealthy stress kills — that’s no surprise. It’s been proven time and time again that stress is complicit in a host of diseases — heart disease, cancer, lupus and and even asthma. Experiencing constant stress wears out the mind and body, but brain training is one way to rejuvenate a frazzled state of mind.

There are studies showing that brain training could actually help people who are suffering from depression and anxiety. Neurofeedback can be used to look at areas of the brain triggering these problems. Eventually, people are trained or coached on how to recreate a calm state to overcome symptoms.

Chronic stress can also have a physical affect on the brain. The neurons of a stressed out brain cells die faster. Chronic and long-term stress can hurt brain functions such as memory and motor skills. Stress can also affect ability to focus and concentrate.

Physical health is not the only thing affected by stress. Stress can lead to depression and anxiety attacks, which translates to doctors visits and prescriptions for medication.

Relaxation techniques, exercise, and healthier lifestyle choices can help in relieving stress. However, brain training can help in achieving longer-lasting results. Brain training to reduce stress can be in the form of meditation, visualization, or even self-hypnosis.

Recently a joint study conducted by the University of Oregon and the Institute of Neuroinformatics and Laboratory for Body and Mind (China) showed that meditation could reduce stress. The study followed a group of people who meditated — a form of brain training — and found that the practice reduced stress, lessened the amount of cortisol released by the brain, and improved attention span within five days of training.

Meditation combines breathing techniques to relax the body and visual imagery. When meditation is combined with physical exercises, it produces even more benefit. Yoga is a perfect example of this as it combines breathing exercises, relaxation techniques, physical movement, and visualization.

Everyone can benefit from brain training — children, working adults, and the elderly as well can reduce stress and enhance their brain fitness by engaging in memory games. Those who have been using brain training as a form of stress relief have reported numerous benefits like an increase in creativity, energy, better sleep, and most importantly relaxation.

If you feel stressed out, don’t start to think of it as a normal way of being. Your brain can learn to handle things differently, and you can develop a new way of handling your stress. There are different ways that a person can reduce stress, and there is a form of brain training that can help reduce your stress level.

The most common stressors are not physical. Usually family, financial, and career related problems are the culprits. They may all combine to create excessive amounts of stress which can be harmful to your body. Daily responsibilities and non stop activities are compounded by not getting enough sleep and lifestyles that don’t allow for time to relax and rejuvenate. When you put your body’s needs aside, it suffers in a variety of ways.

Stress is anything that disturbs your mental, emotional, social, economic, and/or physical equilibrium. Stress causes your body to boost production of the hormones cortisol and adrenaline, which speed up your heart rate, raise your blood pressure, and increase your metabolic rate.

In most cases, the body’s first symptoms of stress are things like headaches or weight gain. This is because in your heightened state of flight-or-flight, levels of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline raise your blood pressure and increase your heart rate, among other things.

Too often, no one listens to the body’s warnings signs. They simply take a pill to make the headache go away, and then go about heaping on additional stress and burdens. Your body was not meant to live under constant psychological and emotional stress.

It is a well established medical fact that people who suffer from excessive levels of stress are more likely to develop heart disease than those who live calmer lives. One study showed that accountants and tax preparers had a greater incidence of artery-clogging blood clots during tax season than at any other time of year.

One way our body tells us it’s had too much stress is to simply break down. Emotional breakdowns are somewhat common for people who have subjected their body to too much stress for too long for instance. Physical breakdowns can occur too–the body will simply collapse from exhaustion, or you may experience a more severe warning signal such as panic attacks or chest pains.

When these types of warnings occur, most people end up in the hospital. And even though it’s found that there is no major health issue – a person with chest pains or limited breathing didn’t actually have a heart attack for instance – the end result is that the body got what it needed: rest. It put you in a hospital bed, and that gave it the much needed rest it required.

No one can completely eliminate stress from their lives, but each of us can learn to deal with it in ways that don’t compromise our health. Conventional treatment may recommend a drug for anxiety such as elavil or valium. Both of these drugs have multiple side effects however including drowsiness, agitation, and weakness.

Other drugs in this class such as Lorazepam and Diazepam cause blood abnormalities. Amitriptyline has caused hair loss, change in sex drive, coma, and stroke. And remember, your problems are still waiting for you when you stop taking the drugs.

Resource: Say Goodbye to Stress Forever