How to Manage Anxiety Without Medication

If you are wanting to manage your anxiety symptoms without medication, there are alternative treatment options. Treatment for an anxiety disorder usually should not rely on medication alone. Medication should be paired with other treatments that help get to the root of your symptoms and improve the quality of your life long term.

A medical doctor will prescribe medication because that is what they practice. Medication should not be overlooked if you are having severe symptoms, panic attacks or dangerous thoughts.

Anxiety sufferers know that it can be daunting to continue dealing with the issue and it can seem hopeless at times. Having alternatives to medication can be empowering and help you take control of your road to healing.

So How Can You Manage Anxiety Without Medication?

Don’t skip this first step!…

First off you need to be nourishing your body with the right nutrients. Most of us don’t want to deal with this first step. We don’t feel great so why can’t we have our favorite treats to help us feel better? Try “treating” yourself by feeding yourself brain healthy foods.

Read this post about our brain gut connection.

Avoid caffeine. You will see this advice tied to every piece of mental health advice yet Starbucks keeps popping up stores all over the world. Our nation’s caffeine addiction is out of control!
Try a caffeine fast for 2 weeks. After the initial withdrawal you will begin to feel your body providing steady energy throughout the day. No more energy spikes and crashes.

If you must reintroduce caffeine remember the horrid withdrawal symptoms you just lived through during your fast and use it only occasionally.

Sauna Time

How can the sauna help eliminate anxiety?
Science has proven heat stress from the sauna has some amazing mental health benefits. Read my post here about all the benefits I’ve seen from using the sauna! I was shocked to learn something like sitting in a hot room for 20 minutes would have any lasting effects.

What the sauna does to your brain: Scientific experiments show that the discomfort you feel from the high heat in a sauna session produces a hormone called dynorphins. This burst of stress you are causing will then result your body producing beta-endorphins which are like a natural opioid in the body making you feel real good.

This has been shown to have permanent effects leaving those who continue to have sauna sessions 20 minutes 3 to five times per week have happier brains!

Your Circadian clock and Your Anxiety.

If you manage to quit caffeine you will notice how much more repairing your sleep is. Even if you didn’t think it had been affecting your sleep you begin to reap the sleep benefits of being caffeine free.

How your sleep effects anxiety levels…

In each of us is an internal clock, called circadian clock, that is synchronized with the sun.
Our body has a built in system regulating every aspect of our body based on this circadian clock. An extremely important part of this system happens at night. Our heart rate slows down, our food stops digesting…which why I have found Intermittent fasting to be so important for me. (Read about IF here)

Darkness tells our body it’s time to do all the repairing that it does at night…while we sleep. If we don’t turn down the lights at night and get to bed, without our phones, our body gets real confused about the time of day and produces too much cortisol which can give you a second wind keeping you up late.

Try a sleep mask or my favorite sleeping headphones. Your phone should have an early bedtime and be charged on the other side of your room.

Try a melatonin supplement like this one here. Melatonin is what your body naturally produces that tells your body it’s dark and time to sleep.

Make sure morning light will come in your room as scheduled by the sun. You will be amazed at how you will begin to feel as you allow you circadian rhythm to get in sync with how it is made to run.

This Device…

The tDCS device has been cleared by the FDA to treat anxiety, and other mental illness, without serious side effects. tDCS stands for Transcranial Direct Current Stimulator. The device causes a painless current to excite neuron activity in the brain.

This one here has a ton of positive reviews on amazon. Read the reviews to find out all the ways this device has been helping people.

EMDR

EMDR stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. This will be done with a trained therapist. It has shown to help heal emotional trauma. If you have trauma at the root of your anxiety please consider this treatment!

If your insurance covers psychotherapy, EMDR should be covered. The treatment helps reprocess memories rewriting traumatic events in the brain.

Tough Love

Get real with yourself. Is there something at the root of these anxiety symptoms that needs to be addressed and dealt with? Online therapy, like this one here, may be an option, it is almost like anonymous help. It’s a little less scary than driving yourself to a therapist’s office.

You may have been trying to put bandaids on your anxiety up until now thinking you will just get over it. Anxiety can be a beast that no bandaid can cover. Take action, no one can see into your brain so you may have to take some big scary steps alone to get you on a road to healing.

You can do this. Life is meant be be enjoyed!