The Complete Guide to Dealing with Anxiety
A useful resource for anyone who is personally affected by anxiety or wishes to assist a friend or loved one suffering from an anxiety problem.
Anxiety disorders, along with depression, are the most prevalent type of mental illness. More than 1 in 10 people throughout Europe will suffer from one form of anxiety or depression at some point in their lifetime. Without the correct treatment, anxiety disorders can lead to severe physical, emotional and psychological symptoms. Anxiety is a debilitating illness that can completely ruin your relationships, career advancement, finances, and ultimately destroy your physical health and well-being.
What is Mind Coaching?
Mind coaching is a cognitive intervention delivered by a mind coach via a wide range of psychological tools, to assist individuals to affect positive change in their personal and professional lives. It can transform your life by helping you overcome anxiety, stress, depression, and phobias, or to live a healthier life through weight loss or quitting smoking. Mind coaching will help you focus, uncover your strengths, and maximise your potential to achieve peak performance in business and sports. The process embraces how we as humans, think, communicate and behave, to identify and address the subconscious patterns that stop us from achieving our desired goals.
What is a Mind Coach?
A mind coach is an individual trained and certified in the practice of mind coaching, which helps you to identify, design, and achieve your desired life goals. He/she is adept at using specific cognitive exercises that marshal your strengths, commitment, and zeal, so you can overcome obstacles and focus on your aspirations. A mind coach is the vital link between your ambitions and success and offers a much-needed objective perspective, based on training, experience, and intuitive insight. If your life, career, business or relationship is stuck in a rut, your mind coach is there to help you navigate troubled waters and chart the right course for success.
About This Resource:
Through this guide, you will know how to identify symptoms in yourself and others and also learn about the most effective and long lasting ways of treating anxiety. This guide is separated in to chapters which you can access by clicking the link in the chapter description below or in the navigation menu on the side of the page on desktop or at the bottom of the page on mobile.
The resource is based on scientific research and coupled with the experience of the author Dave Russell; TheMindCoach.ie and a former anxiety sufferer who now helps people rid anxiety from their lives once and for all. Dave has great success working with all forms of anxiety and has been particularly successful with clients that have failed to get a result through other means.
You can read the full resource for free on this site or alternately you can download it for free as a PDF.
What you’ll learn:
What you will learn in this resource are the facts about anxiety from someone that has lived with it and come out the other side. You will learn the truth and dispel the myths about anxiety that cause people to remain stuck in the belief that they cannot be helped and that anxiety will always be part of their life. And you will learn that anxiety is nothing more than the inappropriate triggering of a natural response in your body and mind that you can learn to control and eliminate anxiety from your life once and for all without the need for medication or prolonged therapy. Ultimately you will learn the best next step that you can take to start to eliminate anxiety from your life for good.
What is Anxiety?
Anxiety is an irrational and uncontrollable fear of ordinary, everyday situations and experiences which are wrongly perceived as a threat by the mind. This causes an improper triggering of the body’s fight or flight response, leading to physical and emotional symptoms such as nausea, racing heart, and dizziness. Anxiety symptoms can be debilitating if left untreated but can be eliminated entirely through mind coaching.
What causes Anxiety?
Anxiety is caused by the repeated inappropriate triggering of the body’s natural stress response which is commonly known as the “fight or flight response”. Once exposed to an initial sensitising event or events the brain can become conditioned to activate the stress response when it perceives a similar threatening situation or environment in the future. As the sensing and interpretation of danger occurs below our conscious awareness it can feel like our anxiety is triggered for now particular identifiable or obvious reason.
What are the Symptoms of Anxiety?
Anxiety manifests itself through a combination of physical, psychological and behavioural symptoms. Physical symptoms include dizziness, nausea, heart palpitations, trembling, Irritable bowel syndrome, numbness, hot flushes, difficulty breathing, and insomnia. The psychological signs are excessive fear, feelings of impending doom, panic attacks, irritability, restlessness, phobias, lack of concentration, intrusive thoughts, and memory loss. Behavioural symptoms typically involve social withdrawal, alcohol or substance abuse and avoiding places or situations that trigger anxiety.
Types of Anxiety
There are six major types of anxiety disorders; Generalised Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, and Fears or Phobias. All these types of anxiety share the same risk factors and symptoms and may occur as a combination of two or more forms in the same individual.
Understanding GAD – Generalised Anxiety Disorder
Generalised Anxiety Disorder or GAD, is a persistent, excessive and irrational fear over usual problems. Unlike regular people, individuals with GAD worry uncontrollably for weeks or even months over finances, their career, school, relationships or even nothing in particular. However, they are powerless to control their fear despite the knowledge that it’s irrational and out of proportion.
Understanding OCD – Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
OCD is a type of anxiety caused by obsessive behaviour, which is uncontrollable fears and urges in the form of intrusive and unwanted thoughts that cause immense stress. In order to prevent the obsessive thoughts and relieve the anxiety, a person with OCD is forced to engage in compulsive behaviours such as repeated handwashing, counting, tapping or cleaning, which results in more anxiety, frustration, and disability.
Understanding PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
PTSD is a debilitating form of anxiety disorder which affects survivors or witnesses of severe trauma, such as war, physical violence, rape, car accident, or terrorist attack. The memories, anger, fear, shock, and distress of the event will persist for several weeks or months, only to be relived and re-experienced through intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, and nightmares.
Understanding Panic Attacks or Panic Disorder
A panic attack is the inappropriate triggering of the fear response which causes a sudden and extreme onset of fear and anxiety. Panic attacks can strike without warning or the existence of any danger or threat. This irrational fear is so severe that you alter your lifestyle to avoid triggering another attack. If you have frequent panic attacks and live in fear of experiencing another one, then you have a panic disorder.
Understanding Social Anxiety Disorder
Social anxiety is an irrational and extreme fear of ordinary social interactions or activity. People with social anxiety experience a profound fear when meeting new people, speaking to a person in authority, eating in public, or striking a conversation at a party. They experience uncomfortable physical symptoms such as nausea and dizziness and will take active steps to stay away from any social activity that may trigger anxiety.
Fears and Phobias
Fear is a natural reaction to a perceived threat, but when it is out of proportion, uncontrollable, and triggered by ordinary everyday objects or environments, it becomes a phobia. Persons with phobias will experience excessive anxiety when they encounter certain objects or animals e.g., spiders, enclosed spaces, heights, or blood. One individual may have a combination of phobias at the same time.
How to Treat Anxiety
All forms of anxiety disorder can be eliminated entirely from your life only if you choose the correct treatment. Mind coaching is a form of cognitive intervention that restructures the negative thought processes that cause excessive fear to rid you of anxiety in a healthy and lasting manner. Unlike medications and their nasty side effects, mind coaching is a proven method of treating anxiety which works far more effectively than other just options such as yoga, mindfulness or meditation.
Why Most Anxiety Treatments Don’t Work
Popular but ineffective anxiety treatments such as meditation, yoga, and mindfulness may prove ineffective simply because they do not address the root causes of anxiety. Prescription medications, on the other hand, not only cause severe side effects but can actually worsen anxiety symptoms and lead to addiction. Cognitive interventions such as mind coaching are the only tested and proven method of entirely eliminating anxiety without any side effects.
Anxiety Medications
Popular anxiety medications which include Diazepam, Prozac, Nardil, Inderal, Anfran, and many others are commonly used to counter the symptoms of anxiety. They attempt to treat anxiety by altering the chemical balance of the brain which affects the function of brain neurotransmitters. This may reduce the symptoms of anxiety in the short run but will ultimately cause extreme side effects such as addiction and suicidal tendencies. Anxiety medications typically worsen or even cause the same symptoms of anxiety they are supposed to treat.
Anxiety in Children
Children are more vulnerable to traumatic experiences and therefore more likely to develop anxiety disorders than adults. Although 23% of children suffer from anxiety, a vast majority of them are never diagnosed or provided with help or treatment of any kind. Children with anxiety will suffer extremely debilitating physical and emotional symptoms that wreak havoc on mental development, social skills, and schooling, which usually leads to social withdrawal, panic attacks, and potential substance abuse later in life.
Workplace Anxiety
Workplace anxiety is triggered by undue stress, fear, and employment concerns common in a workplace environment. It usually leads to debilitating physical and psychological symptoms, which can negatively impact job performance, interpersonal relationships, job satisfaction, and career progression. Workplace anxiety can have a multiplier effect on a team or even the entire organisation, leading to poor performance and a toxic work environment.
How to Help Someone with Anxiety
Although talking about mental illness is difficult, opening up about it is the most essential step in overcoming anxiety. Once you identify your symptoms and honestly acknowledge the problem, reach out to an experienced professional or person close to you and share your concerns. Keep in mind that there are people who are willing and ready to help, but remain patient and
Why is Anxiety on the Increase?
Anxiety rates are going through the roof, and at least one in three people will suffer from anxiety at some point in their lifetime. The increase in anxiety is a result of several factors including overmedication by prescription drugs, financialisation of everyday life, mental overstimulation by technology, a decline in physical well-being, the idolisation of celebrities and unrealistic social and financial expectations fuelled by social media.
