Anxiety Reduction Through Simple Process of Stress Management

January 30, 2010 by Bob  
Filed under Stress Relief

We all experience stress and anxiety time to time throughout our lives. To some extent stress does serve a purpose, but the problem arises when we start to get overwhelmed by constant stress that can result in severe anxiety and subsequently panic attacks. If you have been dealing with stress for long enough there are chances that like many others you might have discovered that there are ways to channel our negative emotions into positive energy. In order to treat anxiety it is really important to know what the underlying cause of your stress is. Anxiety disorder usually drags the sufferer into a destructive behavioral cycle. What is even worse is that most people lose control of their behavior, emotions and sometimes even their actions. Managing stress can allow you to overcome anxiety faster than you would think, things that seem complicated from one perspective may not seem so complicated from a slightly different perspective. All that lies between anxiety and peace of mind is nothing more than the willingness and a bit of knowledge on how to manage ones your stress.

Stress management and anxiety reduction can be achieved using any of the several treatments and techniques that are available today, there are many natural treatments that can help you get rid of anxiety fast, as a matter of fact if your anxiety is not too bad, it is always wiser to go for a natural treatment. Constant negativity can make it hard for us to believe in something positive, so the first step towards managing stress is to attain a healthier lifestyle. By that we mean eating healthily, getting 3-4 sessions of moderate exercise per week and setting up a relaxing and structured bedtime routine to facilitate better sleep. Also make sure you are spending a little time each week on something you really enjoy such as hobbies or catching up with friends. These are all foundation activities and will help you improve your ability to cope. Most of the time, it is not that difficult to pinpoint the cause of your stress. While the best solution would be to try to overcome the cause if possible, but even if it is possible it doesn’t always come easy and it may take some time to overcome the cause of your stress. The quick way for a healthy transition is to learn stress management and anxiety reduction techniques.

A key technique is to start to learn to manage your thinking. First step you need to be aware of your inner voice and you can help that by writing up a log each day of what you noticed, what you were thinking and what triggered those thoughts. Reflecting on your thinking with a bit of emotional distance helps you decide how valid and balanced it is. Second tip is to create a visual image of you putting up your hand and saying NO to yourself. Every time you notice your thought drifting off into worrying or negativity bring the image to mind and stop your thoughts worrying and focus your thinking back on the present and what you are doing right now. Practice really helps this technique.

For most people a change in their lifestyle is all it takes to get rid of stress. However rushing yourself can discourage you and push you back into same destructive behavioral cycle. Concentrating on the NOW and one task at a time and dividing your goals into small sets of tasks will set you right on track. It is equally important to be persistent as well and to not get stressed about not managing your thoughts perfectly straight away, you will get better with practice. Taking things slow and rewarding yourself for your achievements is an important aspect of stress management and anxiety reduction.

Graham Hart helps Executives develop their leadership skills and resilience so improving their ability to influence positive change in their organisations. Need some ideas on how to manage your stress
Want to help others get back feelings of control
Catch my new blog at http://www.stressmanagementanxietyreduction.com To help professional people get the information and resources to help them better manage their stress for themselves and their co-workers. Free stress management advice.

Article Source: Anxiety Reduction Through Simple Process of Stress Management

Learning How To Communicate

January 16, 2010 by Bob  
Filed under Self Improvement

Effective communication skills can be used all throughout life. Once you learn the skills, you can apply them to your home, business and day to day living. Having excellent communication abilities can help you feel confident and land you those job promotions and other beneficial opportunities.

There are many courses, books, internet articles and programs within courses offered at schools, that either touch on communication or spend lots of time on it as an actual subject. This is done, because being able to communicate is an essential skill that is needed and necessary. The great aspect to learning communication techniques is that anyone can learn and apply them. Even the shyest person can develop strong communication skills and come right out of his shell.

One aspect of communication that works is the body language you exhume. The next time you are talking with someone, take notice of how you are standing, or sitting. Are you upright or leaning off to the side? If you`re sitting, are you right on the edge of your seat? Or are you leaned back on pillows and cushions? Then take a look at your legs and feet. Are they strumming, tapping, nervously banging or swaying? And moving up on the body, what are your hands and arms are doing? Are they folded? Are you talking with them? What are your eyes doing when you are talking and listening? Are you making eye contact or are you darting your eyes around?

When you are listening to someone or talking to another person, remember that the other person is looking at your body language. They are wondering if your folded arms mean that your angry or bothered. Your darting eyes might even mean that your not confident in what you are saying or that you are making up things. Not looking the other person in the eyes might seem like you are not interested in what they are saying. Try to make your body look relaxed and interested in the other persons conversation and in what you are saying. Strong eye contact shows that you are self assured.

When you are listening to someone else its important to let the other person finish and say everything that they wanted. Interrupting is not a great sign of having good communication skills. Save your ideas and thoughts for when there is a break in conversation and the timing is ideal.

When speaking, ensure that you make eye contact with everyone you are talking with. Shake hands if you want and keep your confidence level up by making people feel comfortable in what you are saying. Speak clearly and slowly and give opportunities for questions and breaks for other people to give their ideas.

Remember that strong communication skills involve great listening and excellent talking. Keep your body language positive and keep yourself looking interested. When the other person is talking you can also add things to show that you are really listening to what they are saying. When the person pauses you can even replay back a few words to show that you are listening.

Also keep in mind what wording you are using. If you are having a conversation with someone that is on a heated matter, refrain from using strong words such as “you should”, find other ways to say it. Telling someone they should do something can make the other person get into a defense mode. Instead you could say “another idea could also be…” Learning great communications skills can take some practice and time as you continue to do it, and reflect and then do it better next time.

You can have access to articles about self help in Portuguese language from page Self_Help

Roberto Sedycias works as IT consultant for Polomercantil

Article Source: Learning How To Communicate

Stress Management: The Practical Person’s Guide

January 11, 2010 by Bob  
Filed under Stress Relief

Stress is a person’s physical and mental response to environmental pressure. The body has a built in physical reaction to stressful events. When a person encounters pressure, challenge or danger, he needs to respond quickly and the body elicits hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline.

This hormones form part of the so called “fight and flight” response, which affects the rate of metabolism, heart beat and blood pressure resulting to a heightened state, that signals the body for optimum performance in engaging with stressful situation.

It is necessary to distinguish between temporary stress that will subside when a situation is settled and chronic or long term stress. Oftentimes, an individual can adjust with short term stress. It can be resolved by meditation, taking walks and interaction with friend or simply rest/sleep. While chronic or long term, on the other hand, is more difficult to deal, and eventually result to physical and emotional imbalance.

Walter Cannon, (1896) advocate on stress, made use of an x-ray instrument known as fluoroscope to observe the digestive system of a dog under stress. He also observed that it causes hormonal imbalance in the body. With this experiment, Cannon used the term Homeostasis, an equilibrium state of the body.

A Canadian Scientist, Hans Selye (1907-1982), observed that individuals who suffered from chronic diseases revealed some symptoms related to it. This time, the experiment on rats was done. When rats are exposed to various physical trauma factors: shock, poison, high temperature, and noise, their glands enlarged, and thymus gland and lymph nodes shrunken. Selye then created the three Stages of Stress Response consisting alarm, resistance and exhaustion.

Among the causes of physical or mental stress are unpleasant events such as death of a loved one, divorce/separation, imprisonment, injury or ailment, marital problem, loss of job, pregnancy or change of ones financial condition.

Stress is mediated by the hormone, cortisol which is released when a person is stressed over confrontation with other people or their environment that is thought to overpower their adaptation and threaten their welfare.

The perception elements of human beings and their reaction to it differ in various aspects. It all depends on the physical attributes, personality, coping mechanism and general health of an individual.

When one suffers from this, it is important to identify the aspect of life that causes it. Although it cannot be avoided, simply changing ones lifestyle makes a difference.

Find tips about pruning wisteria and growing wisteria at the Wisteria Tree website.

Article Source: Stress Management: The Practical Person’s Guide

Understanding the symptoms of a panic attack

November 10, 2009 by Bob  
Filed under Stress Relief

There are more and more people suffering with panic and anxiety attack than ever before. This is due to a number of factors; however, the primary factor for the exponential growth of panic disorders is that we are more and more exhausted. When we are tired, run down and overworked we are at our most vulnerable. At this point of vulnerability is the birthplace of our anxiety. Anxiety is our minds defense mechanism to warn us of danger and to promote self preservation. Most panic treatments revolve around medication or relaxation techniques. These outdated and incomplete panic treatments only address the symptoms, they don’t address the cause. Without treating the cause we can never be set free of this disorder.

In order to implement reliable and effective panic treatments, you have to understand why you are manifesting the emotional, mental and physical symptoms of a panic disorder. As I had said, you find yourself very exhausted and life is taking its toll on you and everything that could go wrong does go wrong. Your sympathetic neurological system senses that you are extremely vulnerable and understands that consciously you are doing nothing to combat this. It believes you are defenseless and reacts by activating your self preservation instincts to kick start your recovery. The method to fire off this effect is to increase your anxiety levels so high that your sub conscious believes you are in imminent danger. Your body then goes into self defense mode in preparation for a fight or flight reaction to this perceived danger. This is when the physical symptoms occur.

In regards to the fact that your body is defending itself, it will increase the blood supply to the necessary limbs. This often violent heart pounding is interpreted as a potential heart attack. Coupled with the fact that your blood is drained from weak areas to prevent blood loss from the skins, toes and fingers, this often leaves tingling feelings in those limbs. Breathing is escalated to oxygenate the muscle tissue, which often results in the sufferer trying to counteract this breathing and this conflict results in choking and feelings of suffocation.

Once you understand the context of these symptoms it becomes much easier to implement panic treatments. Your panic treatments can now deal effectively with the attack by virtue of the fact that your panic treatments are not opposing your bodies’ natural desire to protect yourself. Think carefully about the panic treatments you have had or undergoing and then think about what you felt like before your attack. If you felt over run, vulnerable and exhausted then your panic attack was probably a defensive reaction. This means that your panic treatments need to help you cure your vulnerabilities and you will get your anxiety under control.

To find fast, reliable and accurate panic treatments then you need a clear understanding of the anatomy of your anxiety disorder. You can then implement these panic treatments and see remarkable results without the use of medication.

Article Source: Understanding the symptoms of a panic attack

Agoraphobia – First Thing to Understand

November 9, 2009 by Bob  
Filed under Stress Relief

Are you afraid to go anywhere? Do you only feel safe within the walls of your own home? Are you afraid you may become overwhelmed by anxiety in a public place where other people will see you? Do you cling to the privacy of your own inner world and miss out on the one outside?

If so, you are probably suffering from agoraphobia, one of the many anxiety disorders afflicting millions of people of all ages and all walks of life.
Your experiences of agoraphobia may manifest as a particular fear of being in a place that is crowded, such as a shopping mall or subway, or it may be a fear of waiting in a line at the grocery store or being in an elevator in a public building. Driving a car may seem especially threatening. You may terrorize yourself with images of having a panic attack while you are in heavy traffic, or waiting for a stoplight to change.

All of these feelings become heavy chains that bind you to the inside of your house. You live your life in anxious frustration, constantly making excuses to friends and family as to why you don’t join them on shopping trips or at school events.

But you do not have to live this way forever.

The first thing to do to overcome your agoraphobia is to stop judging yourself for your fears. Be compassionate with the most important person in your life. That person is you. Stop the negative self-talk. You deserve all the loving care you can give yourself so that you can reclaim your life and live as a normal person. Many people live with some level of anxiety. For you, anxiety is often overwhelming. This does not mean that you are a defective person or insane. You just need extra help, extra love.

Give yourself this extra love in the form of nonjudgmental acceptance. This is the first thing to do to overcome agoraphobia.

Once you have given yourself the love and kindness you deserve, explore the various methods for the treatment of anxiety, including agoraphobia. Some people turn to therapists and medications, and are helped in this way. Some prefer more natural, drug-free approaches that may involve meditation.

Rest assured that many people overcome agoraphobia. You can be counted among those people who are not afraid of being away from home. You can be fully engaged in the world around you.

FaithAnne gravitates towards methods of natural healing such as this one for overcoming agoraphobia
She writes at http://faith-and-feelings.blogspot.com.

Article Source: Agoraphobia – First Thing to Understand

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