Allay Anxiety|How to Deal with Anxiety, Cope without Drugs… Thrive!

Dealing with anxiety does not have to be a life altering type of situation. I talk to people all the time who think that they are going to wake up on day and be able to overcome anxiety because somebody says or does something magical. An example of this kind of thinking is believing that the right prescription pill is going to cure your anxiety. I know many people who shop from doctor to doctor, trying pill after pill and they are never satisfied with the results and they are going to keep trying new meds instead of thinking about other possible treatments that they could pursue. I know that meds do work. I have taken nearly all of them myself, but I have a secret to share with you: Medications do not work that well for anxiety. A medication is not going to by itself allow you to be dealing with anxiety in a healthy way. Sure that med will give you the baseline with which you can do something else with yourself to try to combat your anxiety. The med just allows you the clarity to attempt to use another technique to try to actually deal with your anxiety. A med by itself is just not going to do it for ya. Sorry to say.

However, I want you to realize that I am not anti anxiety medication, I believe that these pills do serve an important purpose, they get you in a clearer state of mind so that you can begin to take the steps that are truly necessary for you to begin dealing with anxiety in a healthy manner. Remember, as I have said again and again, the way that you think about your anxiety is far more likely to determine how you are able to cope about it. Now, in some cases, I do not think that my technique for overcoming anxiety can be effective even if you are willing to believe that a medicine is not going to magically cure you of your anxiety. I believe that deeply religious people will have a hard time accepting my method for reducing anxiety. I believe that in order to fully come to grips with your anxiety you have to endure a major paradigm shift regarding your state in the universe. As a result of this, you simply will not be able to continue to believe in the same things that you did while you were suffering from severe anxiety. If this means that you were a strong believer in God and you still had anxiety I think you have to question whether that means you should continue to believe in God going forward. If you believed in God and still could not get over debilitating anxiety, and I mean real anxiety, rather than anxiety about how to get rid of acne or how to get rid of blackheads or something like that. I mean if you suffer from severe troubling anxiety and do not know how you are going to make it through the day, and you still believe that you are going to heaven when you die, then I believe it is best if you just continue to suffer with anxiety and go to heaven when you die.

You can get rid of anxiety by using my method, but for it to work you will need to challenge your assumptions on every level. And for most people that means recalibrating their place in the universe and their own personal insignificance. If you believe that you are going to heaven when you die than you should continue to suffer with anxiety because the payoff for that mindset, eternal bliss in heaven, is better that the alternative payoff – a life free from anxiety. Because if you believe that if you stop believing in God that you will not get into heaven, then you must continue to struggle with panic and deal with anxiety. Why do I say this? In order to truly conquer anxiety and learn how to get rid of anxiety you need to accept the fact that nobody cares that you have anxiety, this will diminish the power of your anxiety disorder and in time you completely lose your anxiety symptoms. However, in order to truly grasp the nature of your insignificance, it can be difficult to do so if you think you are a perfect child the two just don’t go together. So, if you struggle with anxiety, then I believe you will have to make a decision if you want to be free from anxiety in this life or the next. It is a very personal decision, but if you believe you want to begin dealing with anxiety, I can help you.

For a long time I suffured from anxiety and did not realize that there were many social anxiety disorder treatment options. And that although there were many options for me to try, and I did try everything to treat my anxiety disorder, I realized after a while that there were many treatment options that simply were not that effective. But, before I get into all of that, let me tell you that I realize what it is like to suffer from a social anxiety disorder. I know how much you can find yourself dreading and panicking about social situations well in advance of when you have to go to them and participate socially. You start to worry about the social situation weeks, even months, in advance and by the time the social occasion arrives you are so panicked that sometimes you don’t even bother attending. I know this feeling. I suffered from social anxiety for years, from when I was 15 until I was 25 and I can tell you that it is a terrible feeling. It produces a feeling of shame that there is something wrong with you. I get it. I have been there. And, as readers of my blog know, I have been free from social anxiety for many years. I simply do not have anxiety symptoms anymore. I do not panic before social events and I don’t get sweaty palms or nervousness and have difficulty making proper social interaction anymore. I would not say that I am cured of my social anxiety disorder, it is more like I can’t believe that I ever had one. Now, I have explained numerous times, the steps I took in overcoming anxiety once and for all in my life. And since you can read about that all over the place in this blog, I am not going to go ahead and retell the steps that I took to find the anxiety cure though I invite you to look through the articles that I have written on those topics. Instead, today I am going to write about Social Anxiety Disorder Treatment Options. Because, let’s face it, if you found my blog by typing in Social Anxiety Disorder Treatment into a search engine then you probably want to know what I have to say about anxiety treatment options and, luckily I have a lot to say.

There are many social anxiety disorder treatment options available to you these days. I personally have been through every social anxiety treatment form that there is so I have some perspective on the things that you can do to try an control your anxiety. Before I discuss the several main options I want to tell you that I simply do not believe that any of these options can really eliminate your social anxiety. These things can help but, honestly, they are not terribly sophisticated and if you ever are able to eliminate your social anxiety disorder it will probably be because of breakthroughs that you have had and will probably have very little to do with the standard social anxiety disorder treatment options. However, that does not mean that social anxiety treatments do not work entirely. I believe that many of the people who work in social anxiety fields are truly well-intentioned people and some of their methods will help you with your social anxiety some. It’s just that some people think that if they pay a bunch of money or hire a bunch of experts that they will be able to cure their anxiety easily and permanently. I have to tell you that I think you are putting too much faith in these experts. Anyway, back to the matter at hand, let’s look at some social anxiety disorder treatment options.

1. Take medication. There are many anti-anxiety medications out there and I have tried just about all of them. I do believe that some anxiety medications can help, but only in very specific situations. For instance, take the benzos. If you have a severe panic or anxiety attack and you need immediate relief because you are hyper ventilating then a benzo like Xanax or Klonopin can be very effective. However, if you suffer from daily, chronic anxiety then a benzo is probably the worst thing for you. These classes of medication are terribly addicting and have an awful withdrawal syndrome when you are forced to come off of them, and quite simply they don’t work very well for chronic anxiety. If you have a chronic anxiety disorder and you take a Xanax everyday within a few months you will get no relief for your anxiety from the medication and you will be addicted to xanax and still having anxiety. Does that sound like fun? And while there are other anxiety medications not benzos they are not that effective in treating severe anxiety I have found. And believe me, I have tried them all. So, if you think that you need an anxiety medication try buspar or something like that. Don’t expect much and stay away from the benzos if you are smart.

2. Another social anxiety disorder treatment option is therapy. Now, I do believe that therapy can be helpful for anxiety, however not one on one therapy with a therapist. That simply doesn’t really work for a number reasons. While therapists tend to be caring people they are not really anxiety sufferers themselves usually. Because of this they don’t really know how to cure anxiety or treat anxiety from any first hand experience. They usually just know what they read in a textbook twenty years before. Really, I think one on one therapy for anxiety is a complete waste of time and money. If you want someone to talk to because you are stressed or need a mediator for a relationship or what have you then fine go see a therapist but one on one therapy will not help with anxiety. However, there is another social anxiety disorder treatment that I believe can help and it involves therapy. Find yourself a good therapy group. With group therapy you get to experience situations that will arouse your social anxiety and force you to confront it in a supportive environment. You will actually get better at dealing with social anxiety if you do group therapy. It will take a long time, probably years and you will need a good facilitator/group leader but if you find this then you will be able to actually see some results. However, realize that you will do most of the work on your own, the group therapist won’t actually help you much if at all. But the environment does help quite a bit and because of this I wholeheartedly recommend group therapy.

3. Another social anxiety disorder treatment option is to check into an inpatient treatment center. This is the most expensive method you can take and it is also the most intense. However, it is among the least effective options for treating social anxiety disorder mainly because you are working with a bunch of highly trained individuals that have never dealt with social anxiety, have only read about it in books and simply think all the text book things about curing anxiety. They are simply not that helpful. Also, be advised you spend a lot (and I mean a lot) of time working on DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) training which I don’t believe is very helpful unless you are a very low functioning human being. If you have trouble, like extreme trouble, with very basic tasks then you might find DBT useful, but if you have higher level difficulties you will simply be annoyed with this type of stuff. Though the experts (who read the textbooks) will tell you how great it is. So, as a social anxiety disorder treatment I don’t think inpatient treatment centers are as effective as they would need to be to justify spending that kind of time and money.

So, that’s my wrap up of the three main social anxiety disorder treatment options and, as always, feel free to leave comments below.