Natural Anxiety Remedies

When we feel anxious it’s often because our bodies have perceived something as a threat to our survival. The physiological reaction to that is to produce adrenaline, which will ‘psych us up’ in preparation to either run from that threat, or fight it directly. This is the fight or flight response. In today’s society our bodies tend to perceive threats that aren’t actually capable of harming us and unfortunately, it is anxiety sufferers who have to deal with this evolutionary throwback.

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There is one other evolutionary throwback we’ve also kept and it’s one that acts as a perfect antidote to adrenaline: the ability to exercise. If you use up all that excess hormone via exercise there’s nothing left in your body to keep your brain in that state of fear and your body ready to run or fight. In fact, leaving your body to rid itself of adrenaline can cause problems, such as clenching the teeth (bruxism), stiff neck from tense muscles and general exhaustion.

Most anxiety sufferers find exercise one of the best natural anxiety cures and one of the most productive. Essentially you are hitting two birds with one stone in reducing anxiety and getting fit at the same time. There are absolutely no limits to what kind of exercise you do to help your anxiety, so it’s a good idea to choose something that you truly enjoy. What is important is that you feel comfortable with what you’re doing and where you are. If you’re agoraphobic then start small, inside the house and in your favourite room. This could involve an aerobics work-out DVD or yoga sessions. Gradually you could move into different parts of the house to get you used to exercising in different places. Move out to the garden and, if you feel ready, see if you can go to a friend’s house or another house where you feel safe.

Swimming, yoga, Pilates and walking are all wonderfully relaxing forms of exercise that are very much recommended as natural anxiety cures. After a reasonable period of exercise (don’t overtire yourself, or ruin your daily routine) try taking a warm bath with some bergamot, lemon grass, lavender or sandalwood oil in it and simply relax. You should find that the rest of the day is anxiety-free and you can enjoy whatever it is you want to do.

When I first started suffering from anxiety I’d never thought of linking another part of my life with it. A couple of years previously I had been very interested in meditation; I bought crystals, stones, books and tapes to help me out, but my life got too busy and I had no time left to practice any more. Then I began therapy and my counselor suggested that I start again.

I was nervous about going back into the world of meditation when I was feeling so low, but thought that it cant do any harm and it’s certainly a great natural remedy for anxiety. That’s when I came across Lilou Mace’s 4 minute meditation on YouTube. From that, coupled with a meditation exercise I found in a self-help book I created my very own meditation session…

Take a moment to swim about, float and enjoy the sounds and smells

Close your eyes and find yourself in a garden. There are tall trees and a blanket of bluebells on the ground. Sit on a rock bathed in sunlight and tense the muscles in your feet for 4 seconds, whilst breathing in. When you reach the top of your breath, breathe out for 5 and relax your muscles again. Repeat this, moving all the way up your body, from legs, to the abdomen, arms, shoulders and face. When you’ve finished take a breath and look around the garden. On your right there’s a door in the hedge. You push it; it’s very heavy but swings open to reveal you are standing on a cliff. There are railings around the cliff and a gate, leading to some steps. Open the gate and as you start to walk down the steps you can feel yourself sinking lower and your mind relaxing. Each step will be different, 5: you can see clouds all around you, 4: you’re walking down through the clouds and feeling more relaxed, 3: as you come through the clouds everything feels humid, but calm and you can see a huge lake at the bottom of the steps, 2: your feet feel wet as the steps get lower 1: you feel light as you slip into the warm, crystal clear lake water. Take a moment to swim about, float and enjoy the sounds and smells. Think about what it is that you want to gain from this. Set a goal, no matter how small and wrap it up in a bubble on the surface of the water. Spend time making it strong and when you’re ready, send it out into the distance. The lake will carry it. Climb out of the water and climb up the steps, getting more alert as you come through the clouds and reach the top. Come back through the garden and sit on the rock. Open your eyes.

Phew! It’s perhaps a bit cheesy for some of you, or too focused on the visual for others, but it works for me. Take a look around at free meditation videos, read books and talk to other people who meditate. Chances are, without realising, you will create your own idea of what meditation will be and you can use it as a natural remedy for anxiety.

It’s not the first thing we consider when we realise we have an anxiety disorder, but many people are suffering due to an imbalance in hormones. Quite often women will experience heightened anxiety prior to and during their period, and this is entirely down to hormones which we all know affect our mood. You may be immediately thinking that there isn’t a natural remedy for anxiety, but you would be surprised.

Finding out whether you have a hormonal imbalance that could be causing anxiety is quite easy. You can simply ask your GP or Doctor, or you can order a home swab testing kit that you send away to a laboratory for results. If you do either of these and find you do have an imbalance then don’t just straight on the prescription medication bandwagon.

Generally, gaining hormones or creating a hormonal equilibrium using natural anxiety remedies is far easier than reducing levels of a certain hormone. Those who are low in progesterone can use transdermal progesterone cream; a cream that contains high levels of progesterone that are absorbed through the skin, rather than through synthetic drugs that carry unwanted side-effects.

Evening Primrose Oil helps to balance the hormones

Even diet can have an effect on hormones. As mentioned in the ‘Changing Lifestyle as Natural Remedy for Anxiety‘ making sure you have lots of omega 3,6 and 9 in your diet can help to regulate hormones that affect our mood. Women may want to take Evening Primrose oil, which balances progesterone and oestrogen and both men and women often benefit from flaxseed supplements, or eating flaxseed which is rich in certain healthy fats. You can find all of these things as your local health food store.

Always remember that you don’t have to choose the prescription medication route, simply because your doctor recommends it or you think it’s the easiest way. These drugs can have negative side effects or be addictive, so before you take the prescription slip to the chemist just take a look online for the possible natural remedies for anxiety and see if you can save yourself a whole lot of bother.

Something as subtle as changing one of our thought processes can make a huge difference to anxiety and changing our diet and lifestyle can do exactly the same thing. Using food and drink as a natural remedy for anxiety is one of the best ways to deal with the disorder, whilst getting a strong hold of our physical health, too.

Salmon and other oily fish are rich in Omega 3

Different foods do different things for our brains and there is strong link between Omega 3, 6 and 9 intake and mental disorders such as depressions and anxiety. There are two ways to get omega 3, 6 and 9 – you can eat it in oily fish, nuts, seeds and products that have it added (e.g. some butter and bread) or you can simply take daily supplements (many of which are fantastic natural anxiety remedies) found in your local health food store. Omega 3, 6 and 9 not only help with mental disorders but they reduce inflammation (good for arthritis, eczema and menstrual bloating), balance the hormones and make the skin, nails and hair shiny and healthy.

It’s also important you have a balanced diet, with as little caffeine, alcohol and nicotine as possible. Each of these substances wreak havoc with the mood of an anxiety sufferer, and while people claim a drink ‘calms the nerves’, in the long term it will do the opposite. You might also feel a cigarette calms you down, but compared to a non-smoker your mood levels are all over the place. When you have a cigarette you are calm (because you’ve satisfied your craving) but as time goes on your anxiety rises rapidly, until you have another. A non-smoker has a far steadier mood because the receptors in their brain are not constantly demanding a hit.

A large part of dealing with anxiety via lifestyle is common sense. Drinking 2 litres of coke in one night is going to fill you with caffeine and cause anxiety, but you knew that drinking that much is bad for you anyway. Too much of anything is going to cause problems, whether your mood or your health, so use your lifestyle as an anxiety natural remedy. Eat and drink in moderation and you should start to see a difference.

Whichever natural treatment for anxiety works best for you depends entirely upon your individual physiology and what kind of anxiety you are suffering from. For example, those suffering from panic disorder will benefit from regular exercise and perhaps acupuncture to keep their adrenaline levels down at all times, whereas someone with social anxiety would be better off doing cognitive behavioural therapy involving exercises to boost the confidence, used only in those situations which make them nervous.

Tea made from dried chamomile flowers is one of the best known natural anxiety remedies

Many people use essential oils as natural anxiety treatments on a daily basis, for subtle yet positive effects. Lemon grass oil, bergamot and lavender are among some of the best and you can dab them onto a hanky to sniff wherever you go, add a few drops to a warm bath, mix them with massage oil or burn them in an oil burner. In a very similar way herbal teas are a wonderful natural treatment anxiety is often kept at bay with. If you suffer from nausea when you are nervous this can often make you feel worse, particularly if you have emetophobia (the fear of vomit/vomiting) and a vicious cycle starts. If you feel nauseous then ginger, peppermint and nettle teas are very effective at calming the stomach down. If you need a quick fix when you’re out and about, suffer from travel sickness and are pregnant and have morning sickness then eating crystallised ginger or sipping flat ginger beer can help too. For those suffering from an inability to calm down, even in the home or having trouble sleeping at night then chamomile tea is also a good natural treatment for anxiety. Please note that drinking caffeine (tea, coffee, fizzy drinks and even sometimes green tea) in even small amounts can make some anxiety sufferers ten times worse.

There are, of course, ways to exercise that are much less stressful than going for a run or doing aerobics. Some health anxiety sufferers are particularly worried about raising their pulse and this is where exercises such as Tai-chi, yoga and pilates can help. Even those with agoraphobia can take part, by ordering yoga kits and DVDs from the Internet.

Swimming is good for working every muscle but still allowing you to relax and even 20 minutes walk each day is plenty. Try to have a warm bath with essential oils following your exercise to round off the relaxation and leave you feeling refreshed afterwards.

If you are suffering from anxiety you should always talk about it to your GP or doctor first, before attempting to treat your own symptoms with natural anxiety treatments. Remember that treating symptoms leaves the underlying cause of your worries there to cause damage in the long term and therapies such as hypnotherapy, CBT and counselling can be far more beneficial to your condition.

Using an oil burner is an easy way to enjoy the benefits of essential oils

The easy and truthful answer to that question is yes. Essential oils have been proven, scientifically, to have a significant effect on the activity of the central nervous system and the brain. This means that our reactions to stress and anxiety-inducing situations can be altered by using them as natural treatment for anxiety too.

Clinical trials on the effects of essential oils may be inconclusive, or show that they have very little effect, but when you think about how essential oils are used their calming effects begin to make sense. One of the best ways to get the benefits from essential oils is through massage. This way the oils are absorbed into the skin, which radiates heat and pulse points pump the scent out into the surrounding air. Massages as natural anxiety treatments relax the muscles and allow the recipient to wind down too, so you could argue that oils have more of a chance to get deeper into the nervous system this way. Another way to administer essential oil is in a bath. Here the pores are opened and oil can penetrate them and moisturise the skin. At the same time the steam from the bath traps oil within it, sending the scent into the humid air and the hot bath relaxes the muscles. This is the ideal combination for anyone suffering from anxiety; particular after they’ve taken part in exercise to use up their excess adrenaline.

So exactly which essential oils should you be using? Both lavender and bergamot are perfect, but is readily available in different forms than just oil. It’s easy to grow lavender in your garden, but many people (not just anxiety sufferers) mix the oil with emulsifying wax to make a ’sleep balm’. Lavender and bergamot oil smell quite good together and because their effects are quite similar a bath with drops of each oil in it will work wonders. If you’re anticipating an event where you need to stay focused, yet don’t want to be stressed and ‘over anxious’ then lemon grass oil is great too. Simply put 4-5 drops on a handkerchief and take it with you to sniff every now and then. Lemon grass oil will refresh your senses, making you feel ready for whatever is coming and with a positive attitude.

So before you dismiss essential oil as a natural treatment anxiety simply won’t respond to, try doing some personal research. You may find that some aspects of your nervous system are particularly susceptible to them. Having only mentioned 3 of hundreds of different oils you’ll find so many more that could be beneficial to you as well. Find them sold at most health food stores in handy 10ml bottles with droppers in the lids.

There are hundreds of natural treatments for anxiety available all over the world, some growing in your back garden and some already prepared and packaged for sale in stores. The ones that you choose should depend entirely upon yourself, what type of anxiety you are suffering from and what feels right to you.

The main and most effective natural anxiety treatments are all derived from herbs, plants, flowers, fruits, vegetables, leaves and roots which grow by themselves in the wild. It’s often beneficial to grow your own, if you have the time and the space in your garden to do so. Some of these remedies might need cooking, mixing or preparing but many can simply be used as they are and have a wonderful calming effect.

Bergamot and lavender oil have calming properties

One particularly effective natural treatment for anxiety comes from the bergamot flower. It’s actually probably far easier (and cheaper) to buy bergamot oil from a local health food store or online, rather than try to get an extract from your own flowers in the kitchen. A 10ml bottle will set you back around $5 and should last 2-3 months. Bergamot oil is great for people suffering from all kinds of anxiety, because if affects the central nervous system directly, calming you down almost immediately.

It’s not simply oils, herbs and plants that can be used as natural treatments for anxiety however. Most experts will recommend breathing exercises, including breathing in through the nose for 4 seconds and out through the mouth for 5. This might seem like the last thing you want to do when you feel nervous but it actually does work, as does a slightly more bizarre method of breathing out as far as your breath will allow, then breathing in to the same degree and then breathing out as fast and as deeply as you possibly can. This is a great remedy for those suffering from ‘air hunger’; a chronic symptom of anxiety associated with hyperventilation. This ‘resets’ the body’s breathing and should stop you feeling breathless.

Along with exercise, massage, yoga and meditation there are many other natural anxiety treatments. You may have to give a lot of them a go before you find the right one, or indeed the right combination as a lot have subtle effects that only make a difference when persevered with. Always remember that natural remedies can have adverse effects when used in conjunction with prescription medication, so ask the doctor who prescribed them to you if you’re going to try any significant natural treatment for anxiety.

Before you begin using natural anxiety treatments, it’s important to have a good understanding of what it is you’re actually suffering from. Of course you are more than aware of how it feels to have anxiety; the shallow breath, the weak feeling, dizziness, nausea etc., but you also need to know exactly why it’s happening.

Firstly your brain notices the cause of stress (for a person with a phobia of dogs this might walking through a park with dog walkers) and in turn it releases a number of chemicals. These chemicals are designed to induce the ‘flight or fight’ response, which is at the heart of an anxiety attack. Millions of years ago this response was vital; running away from danger could save your life, just as staying to fight it could too. The chemicals released are necessary to give you the stamina to do either of these things. Today this response is almost completely unnecessary, but it’s an evolutionary trait that we still possess.

Now when you think of how to deal with this response using a natural treatments for anxiety it makes sense to start at the beginning. If you are able to calm yourself as much as possible when the cause of stress is introduced then you are at an advantage. This is the kind of thing that behavioural therapies such as CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), hypnotherapy and EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) will help greatly with, but these can be enhanced with other natural anxiety treatments too. The key here is to learn the individual properties of the essential oils and how to use them. Lemon grass oil is a good natural treatment for anxiety when you cannot avoid the cause of stress. It helps to clear your head, give you energy and focus through a stressful time. Alternatively, if you are trying to relax at home and simply can’t then try burning bergamot or lavender oil in an oil burner (3-4 drops in a well of water), sitting down and breathing it in. All of these oils will have a much stronger effect if you exercise first, to use up the excess adrenaline that your body has created. This could be light; a 20 minute walk or a full workout. After exercise have a warm bath and add some drops of oil to that too.

These are just a few of the natural anxiety treatments that are available today, many of them costing next to nothing and can be found almost anywhere. As James Wong from the BBC’s ‘Grow Your Own Drugs’ show explains, the western world is the only culture on earth to have ditched the ancient natural and herbal remedies for mental and physical ailments. We now favour man-made medicines over those that grow naturally and for free in our back gardens. Instead of those we are here to give you that knowledge back and help you find the right natural treatment anxiety will succumb to.