Alcohol can be a relaxant and taken in moderation especially in a social environment can help to ease the stress of the day. However, it can be a small step from social drinking to becoming dependant upon alcohol to handle or escape from the problems you perceive that you have. Regular excessive consumption of alcohol will affect your ability to cope with both your professional and private life.

The other problem with alcohol is that whilst it may temporarily raise your mood and spirits it can quickly turn into feelings of depression and self loathing as the after effects kick in. Continual reliance on alcohol can lead to alcoholism and eventually serious health problems.

Non prescriptive “hard” drugs such as cocaine and heroin are an even bigger threat to a persons well being. Once someone begins taking using these props they will quickly become addicted and the “cure” becomes more acute than the anxiety or panic symptoms.
Even prescribed tranquillizers, sleeping pill and anti depressants can become addictive and lead to dependency.

So if alcohol and drugs are false props what will help you overcome anxiety and panic attacks?

There are ways that you can decrease the chance of an onset of a panic attack. You can learn how to deal with them better. You must recognize the symptoms. When the initial ones begin, they may be others that come along. Just remember to take slow and deep breaths.

Keep decreasing you anxiety level through things such as exercise and meditation. Don’t be in a rush and take your time with this. Doing it quickly can defeat the purpose. Therapy is a time consuming process and improvement will be gradual.

Don’t be hard on yourself. Take it easy. Don’t beat yourself over the head criticizing yourself because of your condition. Make sure that you avoid things such as cigarettes, teas that have caffeine, and carbonated drinks. That may be difficult, but at least start weaning your way off slowly.

Work on not thinking about things that may have been traumatic for you in the past. These traumatic events can shape how you will react to things in the future. You cannot allow the past to hinder you if you are looking to move forward.

Make sure to keep a loving and understanding support system around you so that you will be able to move forward every day. Whether it’s family members or a friend, they need to be genuinely interested in help you get better and relieve those fears that you have pent up inside.

Less common social phobias include the fear of walking down a street because the subject thinks everyone is looking at them. Another social phobia is the fear of public restrooms or eating in public. Basically phobias fall into two categories; one is the fear of acting in a certain manner in a public situation and the other is a fear of certain social interactions. Examples of the latter include parties, interviews, speaking to somebody you do not know or dealing with authority figures.

It is also important to not exactly what is and what is not a social phobia. A phobia is an intense and irrational fear of a thing or situation which is not normally dangerous. So if a person is a little nervous around poisonous spiders that is not a phobia. That is normal cautious behavior in a dangerous situation. But a person who is terrified to be near a small, harmless spider probably has a phobia.

The main concern for the sufferer, their family and friends is that if treatment is not sort the condition will grow and become worse. AS well as having an adverse effect on a persons personal, social and business life those suffering from social phobias will seek self destructive methods such as the help of excessive alcohol and or drugs to help them overcome their anxiety.

If you are or know someone who is suffering from a social phobia it is very much in the sufferer’s interest to seek proper professional medical advice. Irrational fears in someone else may at first seem amusing but if not treated can ruin someone’s life.

Why should you look for natural remedies for anxiety?
Many of the medications that have been used in the past have proved to have serious side effects and for that reason many anxiety sufferers have sought out natural non chemical remedies for their condition. That is not to say that some of the severe cases of anxiety and depression do not need to be treated by the medical profession but many anxiety sufferers could benefit from some natural remedies for anxiety.

Natural Remedies for Anxiety

Everyone suffer from feelings of anxiety at some time or another in their lives. It would be a very cold fish indeed who did not at some time have feelings of nervousness or unease. However, there are a large number of sufferers who have a permanent feeling of anxiety and or panic. The anxiety can take many forms such as a compulsive disorder, a phobia or tendency to frequent panic attacks. In this case natural remedies for anxiety could well bring about a remarkable improvement in the condition.

The time you need to see a medical practitioner is when the condition gets so bad that they are no longer able to carry on with their normal life. An anxiety state can often be prevented from reaching this stage buy use of natural remedies for anxiety. There are basically four natural remedies, herbal treatments, aromatherapy, meditation and aqua puncture. Any of these treatments or a combination can often bring about an improvement or cure for the problem.

Herbal remedies for anxiety.
There is range of herbs that can help and possibly the most common is St John’s Wort or to give it its botanical name Hypericum has long been seen as a treatment for depression.
Other herbs that can be used include

In cases where the anxiety is not as severe to the point where it is stopping someone from doing their every day business, they may try alternate means of treatment before they resort to medications. Some of the alternate means of treatment includes :Kave,
Valerian and Sam-e. You should not combine herbal treatments with convention medications and if you are in doubt you should consult your doctor.

. Aromatherapy
This treatment involves the inhaling of infused essential oils. It can be very calm and relaxing and in mild cases of anxiety can help. As with all these natural treatments they are not suitable for people suffering severe signs and symptoms who should always be encouraged to seek professional medical advice.

Meditation
Meditation features strongly in the Hindu and Buddhist faiths. There are many forms of meditation and the basic concept is to relax both mind and body and this can often lift the feelings of anxiety or depression. There are plenty of books, CDs and DVDs on the market which will help you grasp the essential of meditation and how to use it

Acupuncture
This treatment which involves sticking in a series of pins into the body originated long ago in China. In recent times its popularity in the West has grown and there is a large number of people who will vouch for its effectiveness as a natural remedy for anxiety.

There is a tendency for many people simply to rush to the doctors or Pharmacist at the first sign of any illness. IN the case of mild anxiety or panic attacks the natural remedies for anxiety are often a better option.

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The best way to get relief from stress itself is to relax. There are many herbal remedies that will help you to do this.

Chamomile tea can relax you and soothe the nerves. It may also help with insomnia.

Lemon balm can help to reduce tension. Use the essential oil for aromatherapy or take it as a tea.

Catnip tea can relax and calm the nerves.

Siberian ginseng can help to reduce the effects of stress and at the same time, increase concentration and stamina. This could be a good solution if you have a tendency to suffer from stress at work.

Keep in mind that herbal remedies are always more effective if you can take them in a quiet, calm environment and be mindful and aware of what you are doing. So you actually taste the remedy and sit for a few moments imagining its effect as it enters your system.

This means that if you are using herbs for stress at work in the form of either drops or teas, it is better to leave your desk and go someplace where you will not be disturbed to take the remedy.

Be sure that you are eating a good healthy diet and getting enough exercise. You may also want to take a good quality multi vitamin and mineral supplement because the body’s resources of these essential nutrients can become depleted in times of stress.

You might also be interested in trying Hopi ear candles. This is an Indian relaxation technique that can be great for stress relief. It may seem a little weird because it involves putting a candle in your ear and then lighting the other end, but it works a lot like aromatherapy while being possibly even more effective.

If the stress has been going on for some time, you may have side effects. In this situation you may want to look for natural remedies for those other problems. Here are some of the herbs that you might want to consider.

Migraine and other headaches: gingko biloba, feverfew, cayenne.

Eczema: aloe vera gel or calendula cream applied to the dry skin patches.

Irritable bowel and other digestive disorders: chamomile, peppermint, fennel, ginger, valerian.

Insomnia: valerian, kava kava, chamomile.

Depression: St John’s Wort or 5HTP, which is a natural remedy although not really a herb.

Those are just a few possible natural remedies for some of the most common side effects of prolonged stress.

Before you start taking herbs for stress, remember that natural remedies do not always combine well with medication. Sometimes the herb might already be included in medication that your doctor is prescribing. Other times there might be a clash so the use of a particular herb is contraindicated. They can also have side effects, even if they are natural herbs. Therefore, always consult with your doctor before taking herbs for stress or any other problem that you have.

The Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program is an intensive course to help empower participants to take an active role in the management of their health and wellness. Participants are often asked to practice mindfulness meditation and or mindful movement for 30-40 minutes a day.The object of MBSR is a clinical program developed to facilitate adaption to medical illness, which provides systematic training in mindfulness meditation as a self-regulatory approach to stress reduction and management.

Meditation can help in five different ways:

* Meditation increases the coherence of the brain wave patterns in the brain, which suggests it improves creativity and learning and changes the way the brain works.

* Meditation helps to decrease stress and depression, irritability and moodiness.

* Meditation improves memory.

* Medication increases the subjective feeling of happiness and contentment.

* Meditation increases emotional stability.

The primary goal of MBSR is to provide patients with training meditation techniques to foster the quality of ‘mindfulness’. ‘Mindfulness’ has been conceptualized as a state in which one is highly aware and focused on the reality of the present moment, accepting and acknowledging it, without getting caught up in thoughts that are about the situation or in emotional reactions.

Mindfulness based stress reduction aims to teach people to approach stressful situations ‘mindfully’ so they may respond to the situation instead of automatically reacting to it.

Although various mindfulness training techniques differ in terms of procedure, they share the same goal of teaching people to become more aware of their thoughts and feelings and to change their relationship to them. The meditation techniques are used to develop a perspective on thoughts and feelings as mental events rather than as aspects of the self or as necessarily accurate reflections of reality.

With repeated practice, mindfulness allows participants to develop the ability to calmly step back from thoughts and feelings during stressful situations, rather than anxious worry or other negative thoughts.

Mindfulness based stress reduction programs have improved the lives of many participants ability to live and cope with chronic pain, illness, relaxation and stress reduction. By learning to actively participate in the management of health and well being people report that they are more able to manage stress and depression, fear, anger, and anxiety both at home and in the workplace.

Many also report a decrease of the frequency and length of medical visits to hospitals and health care professionals. It has also resulted in the decrease of the use of medication.

Mindfulness is a lifetime engagement, not to get somewhere else, but to be where and as we actually are in this very moment, whether the experience is pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.

Stress is a physical reaction to a threatening situation. At the beginning of our history, we needed it to prompt us to flee or fight when we were in physical danger. Now we feel stress in situations where running away or punching somebody are not usually good options. We need other options, or the stress will go on bugging us until it causes real damage.

So below you will find our top 3 ways to relieve stress. But before we begin, let’s just remember that reading them is not enough! You need to actually do them to have any effect on your stress levels. So pick one and start right now!

1. Relax

It may seem impossible to do when you are stressed, but regular use of relaxation techniques is one of the best ways to manage the stress of our modern lives. Take time out at least three times a week to relax with meditation, yoga, a binaural beat soundtrack, guided visualization or a positive form of prayer (not a list of your faults!)

Relaxation techniques like these will make you feel better right away. More importantly, they will also reduce your tendency to react to stress in your life in the future, if practiced regularly. They will also help you to sleep, which is often an issue for people who are suffering from stress and looking for ways to relieve stress.

2. Establish Healthy Habits

If you are in the habit of reaching for cookies, chocolate, beer, cigarettes or even coffee when you are stressed, it’s worth trying to change. Sure, when you are under a lot of pressure it may not be the best time to try to quit those bad habits completely, but do try to reduce your dependence on them instead of increasing it.

All of those substances will make you feel less than your best physically. They are a drain on the body’s resources. However good they may make you feel for a few minutes or seconds, the truth is that they are the last thing you need when you are looking for ways to relieve stress.

Instead, eat a balanced diet, drink water when you are thirsty, and take a warm bath or go for a walk or run instead of reaching for your usual stimulants. Playing with a child or a pet can be a great stress reliever too.

3. Realistic Scheduling

Plan your day, but don’t plan more into your day than a person can realistically do. If you are making to-do lists at work, keep the list short. Keep in mind that most of the things will take at least twice as long as you expect, plus you need breaks.

If you can come out with a well balanced, realistic plan for your day, you have a good chance of doing everything that you planned. This will give you a sense of achievement and will mean that you can relax at the end of the day. In fact, it is one of the best ways to relieve stress.

Remember that meditation is not a one shot deal. It is almost impossible to attain a calm state of mind in just a matter of minutes, especially if it’s your first time at it. It is essential that you keep on practicing meditation until you have conditioned your mind to instantaneously achieve the state just by thinking it.

Here are some steps for a beginner to start with meditation as their Stress Management strategy.

Step 1: Find A Quiet Corner To Start Your Meditation

Distraction is a hindrance to those who are still starting out with meditation. When you close your eyes, your sense of hearing will be twice as good so it is quite possible to hear almost anything in your surroundings that will make it hard for you to concentrate.

For beginners, it is important to start out in a quiet place in your home where noise is non-existent. Close your windows and lock your door. If possible, you can tell everyone in your home to minimize their noise so that you won’t get distracted.

Step 2: Ready Your Position

It is advisable for beginners to avoid lying down when practicing meditation. The aim here is not to sleep, and it is a guarantee that you will immediately fall off to sleep if your mind reaches a relaxed state. To stop this from happening, you can start your meditation in a lotus position or you can find a chair you can sit on. Make sure that your back is straight and your hands are relaxed on the armrest or on your lap.

Step 3: Begin Your Meditation With Proper Breathing

A good way to start meditation is to do the proper breathing exercise. You inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth. This way, you can come up with a rhythm that you can easily focus on. Also, the amount of oxygen in your body will be enough to keep you relaxed. Keep practicing your breathing until you can do it easily without having to think about it.

Step 4: Focus On Your Mind

While you are busy with your breathing, you will achieve a state wherein your mind will start throwing images at you. These are mostly in random — events of the day, future plans, problems and worries, fears and so on. It will be hard to ignore these thoughts and you are not supposed to ignore them. The gist here is to focus on these thoughts without really paying any attention to it.

This might sound hard but a here is a simple example to understand the concept. You know that you have furniture at home — you can see them clearly with your eyes but you are not really concentrating on it. Focusing on the furniture will usually make you think of its color, its material, how it looks in that part of your home, and more. You need to be able to look at these random thoughts in a detached state — seeing them clearly in your head but not focusing your attention on it.

There will come a time that these random thought will stop and you will notice that you are already in a blank space in your mind. This is the state you want to achieve during meditation. This is the place where you can think about your problems and focus on it till you can find a solution for it. With this, you have successfully mastered the basics of meditation for your stress management program.

Stress is what it is. Situations come up in our lives that we look at as good or bad. How we react to them determines what the amount of stress we experience. Learning this lesson can save you a lot of stress on your job.

Handling your Duties

Believe it or not, there are people who like their jobs. When the work is satisfying you are more productive and don’t mind taking on extra duties when warranted.

But, when you are under the gun to get work finished and there just don’t seem to be enough hours in the day, you may be headed for trouble. If your frantic pace keeps up you’ll start to notice the adverse effects. At first it may just be a stomachache or a headache when you get up in the morning. You may pop a few pills before heading off to work.

It’s not a flu bug, it’s stress. And, here are a few ways to help you handle it.

1. Create a schedule – If you have several projects going at once, map out when they are due. Set up time blocks each day to get work done on each one, with more time given to earlier deadlines.

2. Learn to say “No” – No one is super human. If all you can handle well is two projects at a time, decline a third when your boss asks if you can take it on. You’ll save yourself a headache or three and your performance on the other two will be better.

3. Take lunch – Many think it increases their productivity or shows commitment if they skip a meal. Well, it doesn’t. Getting nourishment and taking a break allows you to refocus on your goal and get more work done. If you are tired, you won’t be able to think and are less productive.

Are you stressed right now? In case you are in doubt, here are a few signs that your stress level has gotten too high at work.

• Tiredness

• Snapping at coworkers or your family when you get home

• Lack of focus

• Headaches

• Irritability

• No longer look forward to going to work

Don’t let stress ruin your workplace experience. Take steps to get your workload under control so you can manage your stress level.

1. An easy method to reduce stress today is to initiate an exercise program. This is an excellent technique for managing stress. Your body may be reacting with some ‘fight or flight’ responses in reaction to stress, and getting physical will help to dissipate the hormones that your stressed body is releasing.

Sustained cardiovascular exercise is ideal for mood regulation.

Any activity that raises your heart rate long enough to release endorphins (the feel good chemicals) will help in the relaxation process.

2. Stress occurs when a person is subjected to unusual situations, to demands that are difficult to handle, or to extreme expectations or pressures. One of the most common causes of stress is the work place.

There are now many good stress management courses available to organizations. Stress management training in the workplace programmes can deliver the tools for improved working conditions and a significantly happier and healthier workforce. Changing economic times have pulled us in many different directions. The pressures and demands between work and personal life are now blurred.

As a result, the consequences of stress in the workplace come from what is happening to each of us both on and off the job. Through interactive learning participants apply these stress management training tools to getting more of what’s important done in less time. Organizational skills are improved so that stress is relieved.

Stress management training courses aim at helping those who are suffering from stress, depression and anxiety. It can also benefit individuals suffering from alcohol and drug addictions, anger management issues or other health problems. The benefits of stress management training in an organization include increased productivity and responsibility, retention of valued employees and better teamwork and communication. They offer ways to relieve stress and improve relationships both in and out of the workplace.

3. Another method to reduce stress can be learning a variety of relaxation techniques. Making a conscious effort to breathe slowly and deeply can help to diffuse stress. Most people are shallow breathers, they breathe from the chest rather than the diaphragm and as a result they are not receiving all the oxygen they need to function optimally. By making an effort to breathe deeply, your brain and mood will benefit from extra oxygen, and slowing down your breathing rate also has a naturally relaxing effect on both mind and body.

4. Listening to relaxing music or sounds has a well known effect on the psyche and can be an excellent stress reliever. In general, slow mellow music has a powerful relaxing effect.

5. Finally, meditation is another excellent way to relieve stress naturally. There are lots of different meditation techniques, but one of the most effective (especially for beginners) is brainwave entertainment meditation. This involves listening to a recording which features rapidly repeating sounds of specific frequencies. These have a powerful effect on the brain, encouraging it to slow down and relax more deeply.

With such recordings it is much easier to achieve a relaxed and focused state than with traditional meditation methods, which may often take years to master. Regular meditation can have a positive effect on your stress levels, as well as many other aspects of your life.

Stress can sometimes be a daunting task to tackle. There are copious suggestions on ways to deal with it both at home and in the workplace, natural and medicinal. Certainly recognising stress and it’s cause are the first steps to treating it. Stress management training can give you the tools to relieve stress in your life.

When it comes to long term stress management tips, it is a good idea to make sure that you are living a healthy life with plenty of good food and exercise, and to incorporate some kind of relaxation therapy or cognitive therapy into your week.

However, when you are suddenly faced with a stressful situation, you need some stress management tips that you can use right now to help you cope. Here are some ideas.

1. Deep breathing

When we are under stress we tend to breathe quickly from the upper part of the lungs. This can lead to hyperventilation and panic attacks. To relax, we need to breathe more deeply and slowly, flexing the diaphragm at the bottom of the lungs.

If you do not know how to do this, you will need to practice in a situation where you can be alone at first. If you are at work, you could go to the bathroom. Sit or lie down, loosening any tight belts or waist bands. Put one hand on your belly and one on your chest. Breathe slowly through the nose, feeling the belly expand and contract as you breathe in and out.

2. Stress balls

A stress ball is a small ball or toy that you can squeeze in your hand. In size it is likely to be between a golf ball and a tennis ball, although it may not be a sphere. It could be egg shaped or formed into a toy, and it is usually made of foam.

Squeezing the ball is said to relieve physical tensions, especially those that build up from repetitive movements like using a computer mouse. This type of stress reliever can also be used to get rid of psychological tension and aggressive feelings. You might imagine it is your boss.

Depending on the manufacture, you may also be able to throw the ball around in a corridor or against a wall and relieve tension that way.

3. Exercise

In stress, the body prepares for a physical response to a difficult situation – the fight or flight response. This means that even when it is not appropriate, we are physically prepared for taking action. The stress will usually dissolve quickly if you are able to work off the adrenaline by doing some form of exercise. This could be anything from yoga to running to simply touching your toes a few times beside your desk.

4. Prioritize

When you need stress management tips that directly relate to managing the workload that you have, prioritizing your tasks comes top of the list. This means making time for the important long term projects as well as the hundreds of little things that can break into our day and result in nothing else getting done.

Large projects can be broken into small steps to make them manageable. In the same way, be sure that your list for each day does not include more tasks than you can possibly do. Having a lot of ‘important’ things left undone at the end of the day makes us feel even more stressed.

Instead, spend some time considering what you could delegate, or what should not be part of your job at all. A few minutes spent working with others to reduce your workload for the long term could be one of the most important stress management tips you could follow.