“I am anxious about everything…if my husband is late, if my son has a fever, if nobody is attending the call… I can’t figure out why I worry so much”

Anxiety is normal but it becomes a disorder and a problem when the anxiety and worry become excessive, exaggerated and uncontrollable in normal everyday situations. Everything that comes across in life is seen with fear, worry and apprehension. Many of us do not need a reason to be worried. Even a small harmless traffic block can make a lot many of us anxious and worried for a while. Nevertheless, anxiety is necessary as it motivates and alerts one into action in times of danger. It is just a response to stress and you don’t have to be worried about being worried occasionally.

GAD

When your worry remains the same even after the situation and you cannot relax, you probably have a disorder. If you tend to anticipate about events which are unlike to happen and cannot find piece of mind you have GAD. People with GAD complain that they keep on worrying about something or another and that they cannot remember relaxing. They cannot wait for a loved one patiently who is probably late due to a traffic block without thinking of the worst. They are further stressed by simple real life situations and experience nervousness, edginess, sleep disturbances, headaches, trembling, twitching, irritability, frustration, and inability to concentrate. They also feel tired and restless. GAD is chronic and may persist for several months. It may co-exist with IBS and make matters worse for the sufferer. Having IBS would cause nausea, gas troubles, dizziness, lack of appetite and the like. In short, it highly reverses the normal life of an individual.

Your Options

Psychotherapy is generally recommended for GAD. They may also be backed up by medications like antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs. They control your worries and provide sedation. But they are soothing and hence addictive. Psychotherapy includes counseling, cognitive-behavioral therapy and other talk-therapies. Hence cognitive-behavioral therapy is a highly advised for GAD.

Cognitive therapy essentially deal with the thinking and believing process. With this, we train our mind to change the though process and pattern from what we have been doing. We condition our mind to think healthily, realistically and positively so that the symptoms of the disease vanish. Behavioral therapy focuses on what we do. It helps to reduce or stop the undesired behavior associated with the disorder. We learn to relax at the time of anxiety and agitation and use deep breathing techniques to counteract the symptoms. We learn to be calm and de-stressed.

Cope With It Positively

You can lead a normal and happy life with GAD. However, it is up to you to talk to a therapist or a counselor to learn some relaxation techniques to sooth yourself and your IBS. Stress reducing techniques like deep-breathing or visualization, music therapy can ease IBS and unnecessary worries.

• Regular exercise
• Tight sleep
• Healthy diet

A mental health professional may also suggest certain self help techniques to reduce your agony. You can try self-talk, jotting down your worries and so on. It is also important to prepare yourself for stressful events in life so that you do not panic or startle.

Stress the Stress for a Change!

Frequently we find ourselves saying that we are tensed or stressed out at this or that. The thought of waking up early is stressful, the prospect of a traffic jam makes us nervous and the idea of writing an exam worries us. On the whole, anything in our daily life can offer a significant amount of stress. So let’s relax and think about Stress itself for a while.

Analysing Stress can be interesting.

Stress comes to the scene only when we fail to accept and adapt to a change in a positive way. When we cannot stand up to some physical or psychological stimuli it can be said that we are under Stress. Stress is the result of various circumstances. It can be born out of daily life emotional upheavals in school, work or family or it can turn up due to an emergency in life. At times, Stress can be the by-product of an illness too. It gnaws a person’s ability to face and solve a problem. Stress is a killer of humanity. Nervous people are prone to an ultimate nervous breakdown when they fail to handle stress. In all, it not only affects the individual but also the environment he is in.

How does stress show itself?

Stress can be emotional, mental or physical. The manifestation of stress can be in the form of headache, gas trouble and stomach upset, muscle tension, fatigue or insomnia. Psychological symptoms include loss of temper, loss of enthusiasm, nervousness, difficulty in concentration, depression, anxiety and mood swings.

Stress is impartial and can attack people of any age, sex, class or creed. But it seems to have a soft corner for teens. In teen-agers, Stress can cause depression and bring the idea of suicide.

Identify the Stressors

Something that blows up stress is called a Trigger or a Stressor. This can be external to the body or from within. Events in the daily life, the environmental conditions like noise or heat, behaviour of the people around are called external stressors.

Internal stressors include attitude and thinking like pessimism or perfectionism, a busy and tight lifestyle, lack of sleep and excess intake of caffeine. People also tend to lose interest in sex life, indulge in addictive habits, feel irritable, lose or gain weight or develop pain in different parts of the body.

Stress has a huge network

Stress does not end its job there. It accelerates the process of aging in some. In most of the cases, Stress links the body to many diseases and disorders. The medical conditions caused by Stress cover anxiety disorders, depression, high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases, certain gastrointestinal diseases and some cancers. Migraine headaches and asthma are also in the network. As a result of being stressed out, we tend to fall sick more often. Mental Stress is able to set off Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), a chronic functional disorder in most circumstances or even lead to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a psychiatric illness.

It is also held that the level of snoring is also related to the stress level. The higher the rate of stress level the higher will be the chances of snoring.

Stress it out

It is necessary to hear the Stress alarm at the right time and learn to strain it out. Though Stress is complicated handling it is easy. First deal it at the personal level. Since Stressors are individualized identify them yourself.

· Relax and never fret. Find time for yourself and to please yourself. Keep yourself busy in an unwinding routine including Yoga (Pranayama is great) Meditation and therapies. Listening to music often works. There are music therapies to de-stress the mind and body. Watch TV for sometime, but don’t get addicted!

· Grab some time for yourself in the work place, home or wherever you are in. Find a calm and quiet area and position yourself comfortably. Close your eyes and push away the worries and concentrate on your deep breathing. But do NOT sleep.

· Eat well and sleep tight. Have warm meals at least thrice a day. Include herbs in your diet. Some of the herbs which deal with stress are Ashwagandha , Brahmi and Jatamansi .

· Avoid too much of Caffeine (coffee). It can worsen