AnxietyHelpOnline

Anxiety Tip of the Day

January 7/06 Part One Insight into your anxiety is probably one of the most important keys to getting relief. There may be many reasons we suffer from anxiety so we will have to look at all aspects of our lives. Many things can be the cause of this condition such as stress, chronic pain, depression, medical issues, alcohol/drug abuse and traumatic events in our lives. Maybe you fit into one of these categories or maybe a combination of them. It is important to reflect on our current lifestyle and past life experiences to find the answers. So what happens when we find these answers. Well we can use a problem solving approach to deal with each of the issues. How is it done? The first phase is the assessment phase which involves what was just described earlier in this article. We need to look back at our current lifestyle and past experiences. It is very helpful to write down these thoughts for easy reference when moving to the next phase. Once we have completed the assessment phase what do we do with all of this information? The next step in exploring our causes of anxiety is to identify problem areas from this information. You should be able to see the problem areas quite easily. Some areas may be work related, medical, stress load, family, past traumatic experiences etc as discussed earlier. Make a list of these problem areas keeping them as simple as possible. Try to use only a couple of words to identify each problem if possible. So if you complete this exercise properly your list should look something like this: 1)chronic stress 2) Employment problems 3) current alcohol use 4) death of loved one 3 years ago. Of course this is an example and you will make your list out of the problems you have discovered in your assessment phase. This is a good start and may be time consuming to complete so the rest of this article will be posted in upcoming Anxiety Tip of the Day column.

posted by anxietyhelponline @ 9:55 PM