What To Do For Anxiety?

Walking meditation can be a great tool for reducing stress and anxiety.

It’s not always an easy question to ask if you’re the one experiencing it, but once you do, you’ve already taken the first courageous step towards making positive change.  As a rule of thumb, just about anyone who practices medicine will tell you to try the least invasive treatment first.  In this article, we’ll share with you steps to consider as you set out for overcoming anxiety and moving forward.

Ways To Decrease Anxiety

• First things first, give yourself some positivity for being solution oriented.  You’re no longer practicing avoidance, ignorance, or “playing through the pain.”  It’s easy to forget to acknowledge the small victories.  Giving yourself permission to focus on your efforts at moving forward, rather than focusing only on the problem, will help create more positive momentum.
• Secondly, try natural ways of reducing stress and anxiety such as implementing positive coping skills to help channel anxiety in a constructive way.  If you’ve read the last few blog posts, they are filled with ideas for managing stress and anxiety.  While we can’t advocate for using herbal remedies, we can advocate for natural solutions such as deep breathing, meditation, journaling, art, music, or taking a walk.  Chances are you’ve also searched for Google’s answers.  Try a few and see what works for you.  It’s all about an empowerment process that continues to look for solutions rather than focusing myopically on the problem itself.
• Keep a journal recording the intensity of your anxiety, its duration, and whether it comes in the form of panic attacks, social situations, or is related to trauma.  Record different coping strategies you’ve implemented and what works versus what doesn’t work.  If you’re still having difficulty overcoming your anxiety, then you may want to consider coming in for a mental health assessment/ screening.  Bring your journal as that will help you to have a more detailed discussion with your doctor.
• Depending on the outcome of the screening, you may discuss medication as a strategy as well as other forms of therapy.  We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: no medication in the history of the world can cure mental illness, but it can help alleviate the symptoms so that you can move forward.  Medication can help take the edge off of an anxiety attack, but you still may need to implement positive changes and coping skills in order to further reduce your anxiety.  There’s no silver bullet.

When we first opened our doors our mission was to be a place where people would be respected and treated as a human and not just a patient at a clinic.  Everyone who works at the PTI lives and breathes that mission.  That’s been the crux of our success and, we believe, the success experienced by those who trust us with their mental health.  Both of our branches in Covington and Baton Rouge are able to conduct screenings, oversee and manage medication therapy, and offer an assortment of other types of therapy for anxiety, depression, ADHD, and many other mental illnesses.  If you’re at the point where you need more help to overcome your illness, please give us a call today.