Turning Stress Into Success: Understanding, Managing, and Overcoming Anxiety, Panic Attacks, and Panic Disorder

By Elizabeth O'Brien

Do you find yourself struggling with constant feelings of fear, worry, and dread just facing each day? Do you frequently tell yourself to "buck up," only to find that the attempt is impossible? Do you blame yourself for your failed efforts and feel you’ll never overcome your tirelessly chattering and obsessive mind?

Anxiety affects 40 million Americans every year, and the numbers aren't getting better. Many anxiety sufferers feel "cursed" by their overwhelming fears. Eventually, many become physically depleted from the side effects of anxiety, including insomnia, muscle tension, heart palpitations, headaches, and digestion problems, among others.

The good news is that there are a multitude of ways to address anxiety and ease its effects on your mind and body. Many artists, public figures, scientists, and others have learned to manage their anxiety and to transform all of that negative energy into success. You can too!

Inside “Turning Stress into Success: Understanding, Managing, and Overcoming Anxiety, Panic Attacks and Panic Disorder”, you’ll come to understand what anxiety, panic, worry, and fear mean in your life and how to address each. You’ll learn different mental and physical strategies that can alleviate stress and bring your mind back to focus. You’ll also look at the different schools of psychology and how to choose a psychologist or therapist that can help you on your journey to become anxiety-free. And lastly, you’ll learn about how nutrition and physical health can turn your body and your mind around.

You don’t have to live behind a wall of fear anymore. Pick up “Turning Stress into Success: Understanding, Managing, and Overcoming Anxiety, Panic Attacks and Panic Disorder” today, and use the tools within not just to defeat anxiety, but to transform that energy into positive, creative expression and success!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lucky Leaf Media
• Release date: Apr 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781632300225

Elizabeth O'Brien

Elizabeth lives in south Dublin. She has three children, a dog, and a cat. She is divorced. Her education included a brief year in Commerce in UCD; and five years studying Veterinary Medicine, also in UCD. Her career has included working in a pharmacy; working in the UK and in Donegal as a Veterinary Surgeon; being a Veterinary Inspector in the Department of Agriculture; running her own veterinary practice for about a decade, and running a post office.Writing started as a hobby and became a fixation! In starting up Flagstone Publishing, her aim was to promote reading as an expansion of the mind, to encourage people to broaden their thinking and to enjoy books in a world that is increasingly daunting and seems to be losing its grasp on simplicity. We strive always to only use sustainable forestry paper and eco-friendly materials, and packaging that is free of plastic. Flagstone Publishing will hopefully produce many of the best books! There is a unique sense of accomplishment in reading a book that one enjoyed: it stays with you like an ally, a friend, with an unspoken loyalty and a positive influence on your own creativity.

Book preview

Introduction

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

Edgar Allan Poe – The Raven

The creeping fear and uneasiness that accompany anxiety can feel like being trapped in a horror story by Edgar Allan Poe. If you're among the 40 million adults (in America alone) affected by ongoing anxiety, you know how that uneasiness can progress. Anxiety disorder, and its bastard brother, panic disorder, can eventually cripple you mentally, emotionally, and physically. Your heart thunders. You feel like you're suffocating. You begin to sweat profusely. Your mind races. Dizziness ensues. Your muscles contract, rendering you trapped and unable to move. You feel like you're dying or going crazy--or both.

Recent surveys indicate that between 14 and 18 percent of Americans and Europeans are affected by anxiety and panic disorders. You're not alone. The question begs itself, though: Why are so many Westerners afflicted with anxiety today? And the even greater question: How do we get beyond anxiety, fear, terror, panic, and worry? Is it possible to even breach this seemingly insurmountable mountain without downing bottles of pills or undergoing a lobotomy? The answer is that it is possible. There is hope.

In this book, you'll discover the causes and effects of anxiety and panic, a history and analysis of treatments, and effective ways to manage and overcome the physical and mental effects of anxiety. You'll learn how to stop a catastrophic mind from taking you through mental nightmares and how to regain your breathing during a full-fledged panic attack. In addition to looking at a variety of physical and mental techniques to attain greater relaxation, you'll learn about different schools of psychotherapy and how to choose a therapist that's right for you--if you choose to see one. Perhaps most importantly, you'll learn to recognize the early symptoms of oncoming anxiety so that you can do something before you feel pulled under.

The good news about anxiety is that it is quite treatable through a number of different means. You don't have to try every technique in this book; simply find what works for you and go for it. The first step in fighting your way out of that terrifying Poe story is to turn the first page.

A Personal Testament

Between the ages of 25 and 30, I went to the emergency room for panic attacks at least four times, saw three different psychiatrists, and began regular sessions with a psychotherapist. I took medications for depression, others for anxiety, and still others for insomnia. I felt like I was perpetually hanging on the edge of a cliff--clinging for dear life to some hope that I could ever live without fear and sadness overwhelming and debilitating me. Sometimes the drugs worked; sometimes they didn't. Sometimes they worked for a while and then seemed to make me feel even worse. I didn't connect with the psychiatrists that I saw, and I often felt like a lab rat, constantly taste-testing different concoctions in an attempt to find happiness--or at least, relief from cataclysmic fear and depression.

The greatest help I found was in the psychotherapist that I met with for over two years. Despite my various attempts to pull away and to minimize my emotions, she coaxed me from my shell and helped me to address the real culprits of my terrors. She didn't do this by some strange Freudian analysis or by tracing every minute detail of my childhood. Rather, her approach was more in the present and focused on getting to the roots of what I was avoiding in my life and why. I learned to assess my reactions and overreactions to various situations and eventually, to understand why I react as I do. I came to realize the immense pressure I had always placed on myself--and that I still placed on myself then.

Psychotherapy was one major component in my transformation from a neurotic mess to a grounded individual. There were many others. The change that came about was at times gradual and at others abrupt. Because of the therapy, I began questioning many of my notions about myself and about the world. I began to question what specifically about my life was unhappy and why. I began to truly search for what it was that happiness meant to me. It seemed, at that point, that it certainly was far from where I was--but I couldn't identify the qualities of what I wanted. Over several years, I finally began to put together a picture in my mind--and it looked, surely enough, like nothing I knew or had ever known.

I live in that world now. And moreover, you too can find your own happiness and live a life that is free of anxiety and panic. To undergo a change that significant is never easy--but it is doable. And it is more than worth it.

In the following chapter, we’ll get started on ways of managing anxiety by defining anxiety, fear, and panic. You’ll have the opportunity to take a few quizzes and personal surveys in order to evaluate your own levels of anxiety and the stimuli that cause it. It’s time to get started on the road to a happy life!

Anxiety, Fear and Panic: Naming the Dragon

In order to understand anxiety, it is important to examine it in the context of the other emotional states with which it is most often compared—and confused. Anxiety is a broad term that derives from a Latin root word