3 Ways to Start Treating Your Generalized Anxiety Disorder

If you’ve spent months, or even years, feeling tense and worrying about everything, from traffic jams to natural disasters, you likely have a generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). As its name suggests, this mental illness involves being worried about everything in general. As a result, it can leave you restless and tired, knowing that once you manage to contain one of your worries, another concern is just around the corner. Eventually, this cycle of worrying can feel impossible to control, making it even harder for you to relax or focus on other matters.

This cycle can lead to a lifetime of stress that builds up both mentally and physically. But there are ways you can break it!

Recommended Post

• 4 Ways to Conquer Your Psychological Stress Within a Few Minutes
• Are You Stressed or Anxious?

Start by checking out the following suggestions :

Seek help from a doctor.

Before diagnosing yourself as someone with GAD, make sure there isn’t another cause for your worries. Without professional insight, you may very well have misinterpreted the symptoms you’re going through. So visit your doctor.

As a health-care professional, your doctor will have all the tools necessary to help you with your mental health concerns. For one, they’ll have a better idea if your symptoms are part of GAD or some other condition. And if your symptoms do happen to be part of GAD, your doctor will be able to suggest treatments that better suit your needs. For instance, if your condition is severe, they may recommend that you take prescription medication like escitalopram.

You can lessen the expense of this treatment by buying your medication from an international or Canadian pharmacy referral service.

Try out cognitive behavior therapy.

If you’d rather avoid medication for the time being, consider trying out cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). This technique will help train you to reframe your negative thinking patterns into more positive ones. So, instead of getting stuck in a cycle of constant worrying, you’ll have mental tools to help you cope.

Get active.

While easier said than done, exercise is another great way to treat mental conditions like anxiety and depression. According to Harvard Health Publishing, moving around more often reduces the amount of the hormone cortisol in your body, which is responsible for creating stress. So it seems likely that you can decrease how much stress GAD causes by getting active.

So, start thinking about the physical activities you enjoy. Maybe you like the occasional walk in the park or a refreshing swim. Whatever it is you enjoy doing, create a schedule so that you can do it more often. That way, you can spend time doing something you like while giving your mind a bit of a break from the constant worrying.

Just keep in mind that exercise, medication, and therapy are not all the treatments available to you. So try one or two of these, and see if they feel comfortable. If not, don’t worry! There are plenty of treatments out there that you can try.