Home Remedies for Anxiety

How much anxiety is too much?  Are there home remedies for anxiety?
Your mind is racing.  You can’t sleep.  You feel tense, worried, and you’re getting that feeling in your gut that something is just plain wrong.  

Everyone suffers from mild to moderate anxiety at times.  But are you over-stressed by things that really shouldn’t be so stressful?  An adrenaline rush before public speaking, for example, can be helpful.  Driving yourself crazy with worry about everyday events or always feeling “wound up” or “on edge” can interfere with your plans, make you more susceptible to illness, and drag down your mood.  

Fortunately, there are several things you can do at home to relieve anxiety.  But it’s hard to fix a problem you can’t define: before treating anthing, you should get to know your own type of anxiety. 

Types of anxiety
Ok, so you’ve come to the conclusion that your anxiety level is negatively impacting your life.  Is it time to start popping herbal supplements and meditating for three hours straight?  Hardly.  Before attempting to treat any kind of emotional health problem by yourself, you should get better acquainted with what is causing your anxiety. 

In other words, can you pinpoint the cause of your fears or not?

1.  Anxiety with A Specific Cause

Let’s say you’re getting married next month, and as the big day approaches, you find yourself feeling more and more fearful, tired, jittery, and unable to deal with the details of everyday life due to this stress.  

Or perhaps you’re a high school student enrolled in a public speaking class.  You’re absolutely terrified of the thought of getting up in front of people, having them stare at you and judge you, and worst of all, the idea of potentially embarrassing yourself in public for all the world to see.

Or maybe what sets you off is a fear of flying.  Or spiders.  You might have suffered a death in the family.   Physical illness, talking to the opposite sex, your marital problems, or any number of other specific things or situations can be the cause of mild to severe anxiety.

If your tension is based on an event (in the past or the future), a person or group of people, or is it a phobia of a specific situation?  If so, this realization can be both good and bad.  While herbal supplements and exercise regimens will help with the physical tension, you should also address the root cause of your anxiety.  Why is this event/situation stressing you out so much?

2.  Anxiety without A Specific Cause

This type of anxiety is just as real as the first type and can be equally debilitating if not treated correctly.  Experts often use the term “free-floating anxiety”, which basically feels how it sounds:  your anxiety isn’t caused by an stressor that’s easy to pinpoint.  It’s just there all the time.

However – and this is the tricky part – you might think that it is.  Maybe when you’re in a good mood, your daily stressors don’t get to you as much.  But when you’re down, everything can seem like the most daunting task in the world: school, work, paying bills, social relationships, and even going to the grocery store can be a candidate for extreme tension. 

Even when there isn’t a real problem, your mind latches onto the nearest available thought and turns it into a source of rumination. Maybe you’re a worrywart or a chronic insomniac, or you might deal with muscle tension and restlessness.  Overall, you simply cannot relax.

Fortunately, there are several treatments and home remedies for anxiety.

Herbal Anxiety Treatments
Whether your anxiety is specific or generalized, it’s not something you want to be feeling on a daily basis.  Taking herbal and vitamin supplements can take the edge off your anxiety and, in some cases, relieve the problem altogether.

Valerian, kava, passionflower, and chamomile are herbs that have been long prescribed by holistic and natural health practitioners as remedies for tension, anxiety, and insomnia.  Valerian, especially, acts as a mild sedative and can help with sleeplessness and muscle tension.

If you’re experiencing stress related to a hectic lifestyle, try an adaptogenic herb (or combination of herbs) such as eleuthero (siberian ginseng) or rhodiola rosea.  These herbs are thought to tone the body’s nervous system and increase stress tolerance.

In the realm of vitamins, both magnesium and the B vitamins support the nervous system.  Magnesium, additionally, acts as a mild muscle relaxant.

Other Treatments
Introspection can be helpful, especially for the more specific types of anxiety.  Get to the root of the problem by writing down when you feel anxious, what triggers these episodes, and what you think the cause is.  You might notice a pattern, and, in time, train yourself able to stop the freakout before it starts.  

Regular exercise, such as daily jogging or jumping on a miniature trampoline, can reduce anxiety levels and improve overall health.  

Deep breathing and meditation can provide temporary relief from anxiety as well as helping to retrain your brain over time to respond differently to stress.  

Listening to relaxing music, while it might not provide long-term benefits, can improve mood and decrease tension.  

Something to Remember
If you aren’t getting the kind of relief you hoped for from home anxiety treatments, talk to your doctor about the problem.  Remember, anxiety is normal (and sometimes even healthy), but past a certain level, it isn’t helping you live your life.