Anxiety Symptoms

Talking to your doctor about anxiety medications can be a challenge experience; it’s even natural to feel a little anxious at the thought of painting such an intimate portrait of what’s going on in your head to someone else. However, if you find that your anxiety symptoms are starting to devour more and more of your day, you might want to start thinking about talking to your doctor about anxiety medications. Now, a lot of people  at this stage tend to feel like asking their doctor about anxiety medications is a sign of failure. This couldn’t be further from the truth; if anything it’s a sign that you are taking steps to control your health and well being. That’s a success in just about anyone’s book.
There’s a few things you might want to keep in mind when it comes to talking to your doctor about your anxiety. First, be completely honest with your doctor about the extent of your anxiety. For example, if you’re having anxiety symptoms and even full blown anxiety attacks frequently, you don’t want to mislead your doctor by telling them you only suffer these incidents occasionally.
Next, once they listen to you and prescribe an anxiety medication, make sure that you get as much information as you can about the drug. How often will you need to take it? When is the best time to take it? Will you need to take it with food? Those are just a few questions you should raise with your doctor. The most common mistake among anxiety sufferers is that they don’t use this special time with their doctor wisely, and end up missing key information that will make the adjustment phase of the new anxiety medication much easier to deal with.
All things considered, it’s important to make the most out of the time you have with your doctor. Remember that they are there to help you handle your anxiety symptoms more effectively and have truly heard just about everything. Lean on them and their vast knowledge to help you conquer anxiety day by day!

Self-esteem and self-acceptance go hand in hand. If you’re dealing with anxiety from day to day, then you know all too well how important these two concepts are in your life. You might notice how your mood seems to shift downward almost automatically when your self-esteem is low, and happiness can seem almost non-existent when your self-acceptance is low.
What is self-esteem, really? Self-esteem is how you feel about yourself overall. If you think you’re a good person on the inside, then that is what you will usually radiate to other people. Self-acceptance is like self-esteem, except it goes one step further by embracing how you are as a person and accepting your strengths as well as your weaknesses.
The great battle with anxiety is controlling the anxiety symptoms that seem to creep up and take away our best moments and time to best with family and friends. If we look at the problem in a different way and work on self-esteem and self-acceptance, we can build a stronger foundation that will make it easier to keep anxiety problems at bay.
So, how can you build greater self-esteem? Write down a list of the things you’re really good at. Everyone has something that they’re good at and it doesn’t have to be a “major” thing – if you make the best pancakes known to man, write it down! Self-acceptance works into this theme as well – if you decide to write down your weaknesses, draw a circle around that list and remind yourself that in spite of those areas of improvement, you are still a person of great worth and value.
Building greater self-esteem and self-acceptance will take time – it’s definitely not an overnight process. However, if you can really commit to building both of those concepts to a higher level, you will definitely begin overcoming anxiety much faster than before.

The last post was all about how to cope with being alone for the holidays. Yet if you have the opposite, you know all too well that it can be just as stressful to spend a holiday with friends and family. It’s a challenge for the average anxiety sufferer since you often must travel out of the comfort zone of your own home and into someone else’s or at an entertainment venue. There are a few things to keep in mind when it’s time to get in touch with friends and family for the holidays.
First, you want to start early in terms of communicating with friends and family. Most of the time we rush through life at a speed that doesn’t let us really show how much our friends and family really mean to us. Set the tone by taking a few weeks before the event to reach out and make sure everything is okay with your loved ones. They’ll be in a more pleasant mood when it’s actually time to see you and this has the additional benefit of lowering their tendency to criticize or offer negative opinions.
Next, take a few symbols of home with you in your travel bag. If this is a stuffed animal or a book that you read over and over, pack it with you instead of leaving it at home. Sometimes a new place is easier to deal with when you have symbols from the place you’re most comfortable being.
Finally, break the ice when you get there by bringing a fun food dish with you. It’s very difficult for people to go out of their way to make you miserable when you’ve offered them something they like. Food has long been considered the great connector, and cooking can be a fun way to let go of some of your stress as well!
All things considered, spending time with your family and friends during a holiday is a great way to reconnect and build memories that will last a lifetime. The tips above will help you make your next holiday visit much more comfortable — try it today!

Even if you might be reading this after a holiday has passed, you’re still familiar with the feelings of stress, frustration, and even loneliness that a holiday can bring on. Although holidays are traditional times where friends and family come together, the reality is that not everyone has friends and family around them for the holidays. For anxiety sufferers, this often leads to a feelings of loneliness and inadequacy. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way at all. If you have a holiday coming up where you will be spending all or part of it alone, there are a few things you can do to make the experience a lot more comfortable.
First, the major key is to stay busy for the entire length of the holiday. This is a good time to pick up a hobby you’ve had to pause due to other obligations, or even to finally get a chance to read that book you’ve been waiting to read.
Generally speaking, anxiety symptoms tend to arise when the mind has time to think about them. By surrounding yourself with plenty of pleasurable things to do, you will keep the mind from feeling it’s starved of attention. In addition, you’ll also be sending a silent message to your mind that you really can have a happy holiday without having friends and family around.
It may take some time to really make these changes stick. At first, it is common to still feel a deep loneliness, but as you practice spending time alone you will become more and more comfortable with these additional periods of solitude. There’s no need to feel like you have to have this mastered the first time you try this method — give yourself plenty of time to adjust.
So, how do you handle being around friends and family for the holidays? If you have the opposite problem, then the next post is definitely for you – stay tuned!

So, how many individual challenges from the Great Anxiety Challenge did you successfully complete? Even if you only managed to “pass” one challenge, give yourself a round of applause — those five challenges are pretty tough! Since each challenge is designed to force you to step outside of your comfort zone, it’s important to look at what you were supposedly to actually gain from the Great Anxiety Challenge as a whole.
Breaking The Comfort Zone
Getting out of your comfort zone can be painful, but the benefits are s worth it in the long run. By stepping out of your comfort zone you get to experience a new world fille dwith opportunities that may not reach you while you’re in your comfort zone. In other words, it changes your perspective in order for you to see something new. That is always worth exploring.
Creating New Connections
The majority of the challenges all revolved around dealing with new social connections. Building new social contacts has personal, professional, and deep psychological benefits. The support groups you will use later in use often start with that single, awkward conversation that you were afraid to begin in the first place. That alone is enough reason to go out and try again to build new connections.
Learning More About Yourself
The last real benefit you should have gained from the Great Anxiety Challenge is new knowlege about yourself. All of life is really about learning more about yourself and what brings you happiness and joy. In order to fight anxiety, we have to step back and truly go on a journey to learn more about ourselves. Once we have that new information, we can develop strategies for an even better life.
Next post, talk we’ll a little more about self-esteem and self-acceptance, two very important keys to a healthy life without anxiety getitng in the way!

While it’s true that all work and no play makes for a dull person, avoiding too much work can cause your professional life to suffer. If you’re a hard worker, eventually you will want to be rewarded for your work. While your boss is more than likely a very nice person, it can still be a stressful experience working up the courage to ask for a raise. However, a raise is one of the clear signs that your work is being taken seriously and you are making progress in your career. This makes it perfect for a good Anxiety Challenge — it’s a total win-win situation: you get the reward of a possible raise while stepping out of your comfort zone in a big way!
So let’s get started. The best way to make sure you have everything for this challenge is to be prepared from the start. Sit down for a few moments and write down a list of all of your accomplishments over the last three months, six months, and one year. If you are still new on the job, you will want to try to go as far back as you can. At this step, you can either memorize the achievements, or print them on nice paper to take with you when you sit down in front of the boss.
The rest is fairly straightforward: just sit down and talk honestly and openly with your boss. Let them know that you would like to have a formal performance review where a possible raise can be discussed. You can use your list of accomplishments as a leverage tool to let your boss know how much you really are contributing to the company.
You can consider this challenge “mastered” if you actually schedule and go through with the performance review meeting. This is a very big milestone in your anxiety recovering process as well as your career — by showing your boss that you aren’t afraid to approach them, you will set yourself up to be noticed more for any future accomplishments you build.
While the five challenges are over, there’s still some lessons to be learned. If you’re ready to move forward, the summary of the anxiety challenge is right around the corner!

There’s a lot of posts here already about the importance of friendship, but one more won’t hurt anything at all — in fact, friendship is such an important topic because it really feeds the soul in ways that we don’t really think of. Everyone stands to benefit from making a few new friends; the support derived from true friendship goes beyond mere words. So this Anxiety Challenge is all about making new friends, which means another trip out in public. However, since we’re also trying to keep this as budget friendly as possible, there’s only going to be free venues allowed for this challenge. Parks, coffee houses, and public meeting places are all fair game. Coffee houses often have free events that are open to the public where purchases are not required, which is why they’re allowed.
First, you want to want to pick a space that’s going to have plenty of people. While this seems obvious, it can be tempting to cheat and pick a venue that won’t be filled with people in order to make it more comfortable for yourself — avoid this at all costs if possible. Breaking through anxiety requires getting out of your comfort zone, not going deeper within it.
Next, once you have the crowded space set up, you’ll want to take plenty of time to get seated and physically comfortable in the space. Read for a few minutes, or sketch in a journal if that’s what relaxes you. A few moments of comfort to loosen you up is not a bad thing — just don’t get stuck there! After a while, it’s time to reach out and look around you at the crowd for another person that’s alone. If they’re reading a magazine or also drawing, this is a great conversation starter. The trick is to always look friendly and maintain a healthy distance. You do not have to get in their face — a simple greeting and a few questions may be all you need to open the door to a great conversation with someone that will become a great friend.
You’ll be able to consider this challenge passed when you can successfully approach at least one person. Again, the bar is set low but you can always raise it higher by requiring two or three successful conversations.
Ready for the last challenge? Great, let’s move on!

So far, the Great Anxiety Challenge has propelled you through some fun activities: singing karaoke and eating alone were the first two challenges. How do you feel so far? If you’ve got a journal system going already, you might want to take some time and write a few entries around both of the Anxiety Challenges you have taken up to this point. Be sure to be completely honest with yourself as always in order to get a clear picture of what your strengths are, as well as the opportunities you have for improvement.
With that said, let’s move onward to the next Anxiety Challenge: speed dating! You’ll be diving headfirst into the fast paced world of speed dating in order to continue to work on getting out of your comfort zone. Speed dating is appropriately named because instead of spending the night getting to know one person, you’ll be attending a special event designed to allow you to meet several people through the evening. Since this series is written for the budget conscious person specifically, this is still not an expensive venture. In fact, many nightclubs and bars offer speed dating events in order to attract new customers.
The primary key that you want to keep in mind as you go through the speed dating event is to just be yourself. Of course, proper hygiene and wearing good clothes will go a long way in making you feel comfortable enough to open up to other people. Since you normally only have a few minutes with each person, you can focus on putting your best foot forward instead of worrying about what the person thinks about you in the long run. Your natural personality will carry you through each “date” and make it easier over time to open up, have a good time, and maybe even meet someone special!
This challenge will be considered “mastered” if you can truly step back and say that you felt a connection with just one person. That may seem like a low goal to some; if you can achieve more connections, then definitely go for it! The main lesson here is that stepping out of your comfort zone does not have to be a bad thing.
The next challenge is right around the corner – are you ready?

A great meal doesn’t automatically mean eating with friends — there are some hidden benefits to eating alone. For one, it forces you to get comfortable with yourself very quickly, as you will not have your normal friends around you to buffer any anxiety symptoms that flare up from the experience. In addition, eating alone can also encourage you to seek out the company of a stranger, thus developing a new friendship or even something more. The sky really is the limit here, which means you have plenty of options when it comes to eating alone. If you’re watching your budget (and who isn’t these days?), you may wish to go with a fast food or other budget option that won’t cost too much. The venue you ultimately select will not affect the Anxiety Challenge at all.
First, regardless of the venue you ultimately select, comfort is the real key to making the challenge work. You will most likely already feel nervous just by eating alone in public — don’t make it even harder on yourself by choosing a place you won’t be able to relax at.
Next, you will want to order your meal and then take stock of the room around you. When you really take a look at the people around you, ask yourself this: how many people are really that focused on you? It is likely that you might draw the attention of one or two people as you begin eating since you’re by yourself but the majority of people you will observe are far too busy with their own conversations to pay much attention to what you’re doing.
Finally, take a deep breath and enjoy your meal when it comes. As you realize that the people around you really aren’t paying you that much attention, you will feel truly comfortable in your own skin in public. This may take time, but you can consider this challenge mastered once you can truly look back on the experience and say you would do it again!

This popular social activity has its roots in old Japan, but karaoke is quite the modern pastime nowadays. It’s done as an after-work activity where people get on stage and sing catchy pop songs, or well known power ballads. No matter how you do your karaoke, one thing is certain: it definitely gets you out there! That’s why it’s perfect for our first Anxiety Challenge, since you will have to stand up in front of others and do something that’s fairly unscripted. If you want to make it easier on yourself first, you can bring people you know into this Anxiety Challenge. On the other hand, if you find it easier to do this with an all-stranger cast, you can take that route.
First, you’ll want to actually pick a place that does karaoke night. Many karaoke clubs actually offer very affordable karaoke tickets, and even give first time karaoke singers free tokens so they can try their best without having to pay for the chance. There are even home karaoke machines that you can either purchase or rent for an evening — do whatever is most affordable for you.
Next, you’ll want to pick out a song. For the Anxiety Challenge, it’s okay to pick a song that you actually know very well. In fact, it’s recommended — the better you know the song, the more comfortable you’ll feel when you step on the stage. You’ll want to wait until it’s your turn to get on stage, but your turn will be up before you know it!
Finally, you’ll want to go ahead and sing your heart out! Don’t worry if you don’t have a song fully memorized – you can always look down at the scrolling lyrics in case you lose your place or train of thought.
What makes this Anxiety Challenge fun is that you will be forced to not only step outside of your comfort zone, but interact with other people at the same time — truly a win-win situation! Don’t worry about sounding like the next music superstar — the point is to have fun, meet new people and fight anxiety! Good luck!