stress «

October 2, 2009

Anxiety Stress

Filed under: anxiety, stress, symptoms — Tags: anxiety, stress — admin @ 4:48 pm

Anxiety and Stress go hand in hand. They have a symbiotic relationship meaning that they both feed off each other.

What’s the difference between anxiety and stress?

Anxiety has specific mental and physical symptoms, and is clinically identifiable. Follow this link for an explanation of anxiety symptoms. Stress on the other hand is a much more common phenomenon. Stress also much more commonly expresses itself as anger, irritation, short patience and irritability. Anxiety, on the other hand, tends to manifest itself as fear, hyperventilation, dizziness, feeling dislocated, or having stomach discomfort.

Both Anxiety and stress have been related to IBS .

If one lives constantly in a state of stress then anxiety and even an anxiety disorder are likely to follow. However this is not the case for everyone. Some people “thrive off stress” in the same way that adrenaline junkies effectively thrive off anxiety. but that does not mean that daily stress is good for you. In fact it is much better for you to be able to unwind and de-stress. While stress might motivate you through the day and give you a buzz, when the working day is over your body needs a chance to relax.

The same tricks that help you overcome anxiety cam help you deal effectively with stress: meditation and yoga, exercise, herbal supplements and everything else mentioned on this site.

One of the main features of stress may be difficulty in getting to sleep. Insomnia can be caused by muscle tension, dwelling on the events of the day or worrying about the future or by having too many stimulants in your system.

Caffeine is an obvious candidate for removal if you want to sleep better. It can stay in your system for as long as twenty hours (although it effects different people in different ways.) Also, some people think they are unwinding from stress when they have an alcoholic drink. This is in fact not the case. Alcohol actually becomes a stimulant after it is broken down by your liver and this is one reason why many anxiety sufferers get anxiety with a hangover or even while drunk!

Comments (2)

September 6, 2009

NLP, or Neuro Linguistic Programming to give it its full moniker, has been around for several decades now and seems to promise the world to anyone with issues from anxiety and depression to anorexia and poverty. Does NLP work? I have blogged about this elsewhere. There is a lack of peer reviewed evidence that NLP is effective, this may in part be due to the fact that lots of peer reviewed journals are too snobbish to cover NLP. Certainly mainstream medicine and psychology don’t like NLP. This doesn’t mean it doesn’t work however.

Well, in my own opinion and experience some aspects of NLP are very useful tools for anyone who is suffering from some negative emotions be they anxiety or anything else. Changing how we see pictures in our mind can alter the way we feel about past events and future events that are worrying us. Changing how we hear the voices in our heads, where they come from and what they sound like can alter how much we believe of what we tell ourselves. Taking the feelings in our bodies and concentrating on them, seeing how they seem to move within us and then speeding up or slowing that movement down, or changing its direction. All of these things can have a profound effect on our mood because how we feel physically within ourselves, what images we see and what we tell ourselves are basically what makes up our mood.

You could spend hundreds or even thousands of pounds on learning NLP from a qualified and certified practitioner, they really know how to charge and finding a good one can be tricky. The great thing about NLP though is its simplicity. You really can learn it from a book. There are lots on the market and I recommend this one. I know it has a cheesey marketing page (like most NLP literature) but I think you are far better off spending money on an NLP package like this than on a practitioner that would be more expensive and no more useful (and possibly a complete charlatan). Also the NLP Practitioner Manual could be very useful in taking you deeper into the subject and learning how to apply NLP to your life, to find solutions.

Let me say a slightly less positive word about NLP practitioners. Lots of them are now selling what they call ‘breakthrough’ sessions. These are day long sessions that they say will cure you of anxiety or whatever brings you to them. I have been quoted anything from £800 to £2000 pounds for this day long session. It is in my opinion not worth doing. The skills you can gain from NLP can be learnt far cheaper from a book such as that described above. The eight hour long session, although it may be full of promises, is probably not going to be very helpful and like all therapists NLP practitioners know how to make money from people that are suffering from anxiety and other problems. They also know how to promise a money back guarantee without ever having to give money back. The last thing I would add is that Breakthrough sessions rely a lot on timeline therapy. I am very cynical about regression type therapies and am still waiting to hear from one single anxiety sufferer who was cured by releasing negative emotion from the past. My advice: avoid.

August 30, 2009

In this post I want to talk a bit about posture…not the kind of Victorian deportment stuff, although that does come into it. What I really want to talk about is the link between posture and how we feel…I think there is in fact a much greater link than people realise.

Click Here for more posture info

Firstly, let’s get down to some basic physiology and anatomy…your spine carries all the nerve messages from your brain to the rest of your body, this includes parts of your body which are very important to your mental health, such as your stomach (which in itself produces neurotransmitters although medical science is not entirely sure why) and your adrenal glands. Your spine is very important and you need it to be functioning properly. A poorly aligned spine, brought on by bad posture, can put pressure on your spinal column and cause it to work less efficiently. It’s not just back pain you have to worry about, it’s also anxiety, depression, insomnia, stress and tension headaches, panic attacks etc.

Now, that doesn’t mean you can blame all your emotional problems on poor posture, but it may well be a (significant) part of the problem. And solving posture problems can be a great help towards feeling better.

So, how does one go about improving posture? You can of course seek the help of an osteopath or a chiropractor, and this should definitely be done if you are experiencing pain or have serious postural difficulties.

If however you want to feel more confident and relaxed, and have less anxiety and stress, sleep better and improve your mood, then some simple posture exercises might help you get into the good habits you need re-acquire.

Try standing in front of a mirror. Gently push your shoulders back and down, don’t force anything or push to the point of pain or discomfort. Next, push your hips forward, again, don’t exaggerate it, just push them forward so your bottom is tucked in. Now, without pushing your chest out like a sergeant-major, try to imagine your ears becoming aligned with the centre of your shoulders, hips and ankles, so they all pass through one vertical line.

Now, imagine your body is a string of pearls. Imagine that the top pearl is being held up, this is your head. Imagine it floating up to the ceiling, pulling you taller. As before, don’t force anything and stay within what is comfortable, good posture takes time and practice. So as your head floats up, imagine the rest of your body as the other pearls, pulled gently towards the ground by gravity.

Hold this position for as long as feels comfortable, but more importantly come back to it in your daily life as often as you can imagine, as you walk, work, sit and eat. The more you do it the more habit-forming it will be and the better your posture will become.

July 23, 2007

Rimonabant (also known as Acomplia) is a drug which is used to treat obese patients with a risk of developing diabetes.

As I blogged about a month or so ago, the drug is considered controversial. There is now evidence to suggest that one in every ten people that take the drug suffer from some kind of psychiatric side-effect.

We say this is too high! Mental health issues are not taken seriously enough, and any drug which has this much potential to cause psychiatric side-effects should be banned (as it is already in the USA).

Treating diabetes and obesity related cardiovascular disease is important, but not at the risk of causing suicidal thoughts, depression, and, in one known case, self-harm.

It is time for some joined up thinking when it comes to medication which effects how our brain functions. The organisations and bodies that licence drugs need to be better prepared to stop harmful drugs reaching patients. This habit of stopping drugs which have now been used , and done harm, for some time has to be replaced by a more efficient system.

February 28, 2007

Researchers from Southampton university have found a link between stress and IBS.

For a long time many people who suffer from IBS (and many self-styled nutritionists) have suspected that the symptoms are caused, exacerbated, or lead to stress.

The study found that those people who were anxious about their symptoms or who were generally stressed in terms of pushing themselves at work were more likely to suffer from IBS.

There could well be 3 million people in the UK with IBS, many of whom contracted it after a gut infection.

The type of person who does suffer from IBS is likely to be “driven”, carrying on regardless until they were forced to rest.

Dr Rona Moss-Morris commented that “These people were not hypochondriacs. But they did have a negative attitude towards their symptoms.”

She added: “These are people who have high expectations of always doing the right thing – and going off work goes against their beliefs.”

It is thought that CBT might help bring anxious and perfectionist thinking under control.

Professor Robin Spiller gave two possibilities:

“It might be that stress and anxiety affects the immune system. “But it could also be that if you don’t rest, it might do you more harm.”

The important things are to get checked out, rest until you completely recover from gut infections, and learn to relax and let go.

Anxiety 2 Calm

October 2, 2009

Anxiety Stress

September 6, 2009

NLP The Promise of Salvation from Anxiety

August 30, 2009

Posture anxiety and stress

July 23, 2007

rimonabant – Risks too high

February 28, 2007

Perfectionists IBS link