Anxiety Relief Through Behavioral Modification

An Alternative To Medication

The predominant method of dealing with overwhelming daily anxiety (e.g. generalized anxiety disorder) that most people employ is through medication. Medical agents known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) such as Xanax, Valium and Lexapro are able to alleviate depressive and anxious moods by maintaining high concentrations of serotonin in interneuron spaces. The mechanism is not well understood, but a long history of biochemical research shows a strong associative correlation between anxiety relief and drugs.

Fears of Long-term Repercussions

However, the long term brain chemistry changes induced by SSRIs cannot be easily predicted. For this reason, some sufferers of intense anxiety have tried turning to other methods that obviate medication to reduce or eliminate anxiety. One such collection of methods is known as behavioral modification - through a structured series of repeated actions, the activity of worrying becomes controlled and confined. Worrying is forced to become a tool of the mind, as it was meant to be.

Controlling the Worry

The first step of behaviorial modification is to learn to take control of worrying before it takes control of you. The way to do this is three fold, (1) Create a time-table for worrying during the day, (2) Record worries that crop up at other times but relegate them to later, (3) During the worrying time-period, carefully go through the recorded items and consider each one carefully. Make notes of possible solutions. When the time-period is over, stop! Put the list down to carry on with your day's work. These activities have one primary purpose: wresting control of anxiety to bend it to your own purposes. Indeed, anxiety plays an important and useful role in our lives by giving us a sense of urgency and incompleteness about particular problems, which in turn is an impetus for action to address these problems. When anxiety runs your life, it no longer has the useful role but has become deleterious. To reverse that, it is necessary to think of anxiety has a psychological tool that you have to manage, but on your own time rather than on anxiety's time table.

Understand the Source

The second step of anxiety relief thorugh behavioral modification is to understand the source of your anxieties, and how that fits into your life. By being objective, you can prioritize the things which gave rise to the overwhelming anxiety. It is important to realize, consciously, that anxieties do play an important role. And in fact, it is important understand that the source of much anxiety lies in our incomplete control over all all the events of our lives. But confronting this source can bring much needed comfort. At first, the anxiety sufferer rails against the injustice that no one can prevent frivolous but life-changing events from happening. But careful consideration of uncertainty quickly shows that complete certainty would be absurd and impossible. Logically, uncertainty also implies that good outcomes should be as likely as bad outcomes. And likewise, the long term consequences are also incompletely known in the face of normal-life uncertainty.

Reversing Negative Thoughts

The third step requires a proactive attempt to reverse negative and anxious thinking by accentuating the positives in the mind. This may be the most difficult because it requires a real 180 degree change in psychological direction. Usually anxiety sufferers dwell on worry. Such activities may themselves change brain biochemistry. After all, it is known that certain repeated activities (such as learning) induce long term changes in brain intraconnectivity between neurons. Some amount of reasoning would also help.