Panic attacks
Integrating Exercise Into Your Life
Medicine, therapy, social support – all of these are an important part of living with depression, and play a significant role in your ability to remain happy and healthy every day. But it’s the little things that can end up making a big difference, because you’re not in therapy every day or always with your friends, and the time you spend alone is time that needs to be spent in a healthy and productive manner.
Exercise is perhaps one of the most basic strategies you can integrate into your life, but it is also one of the most powerful. It has an actual effect on your ability to regulate hormones and improve your mood (through endorphins) and provides numerous additional benefits that go a long way towards improving your quality of life. If you want to recover from your depression, make sure that you integrate little things like exercise into your life every day.
http://www.calmclinic.com.
Mindful meditation
Mindful meditation has been discovered to foster the ability to inhibit those very quick emotional impulses.
Paul Holmes, http://www.linkedin.com/pub/paul-holmes/1b/165/a24, had several sessions of EMDR a few years back and says it had the greatest affect on his illness. He says: “Also unlike pills and talking therapy the effect was immediate. The colour of the light was a striking dark blue that felt it should burn into the back of your eye but it was far from that, it was incredibly soothing. You associate different light positions with good memories and each time the light passed over that position it gave a great sense of calm. I think it would be perfect for anxiety treatment. I also feel it needs the right therapist to guide you through it. Their voice is also part of the whole experience as they guide you through your thoughts and feelings.
As for panic attacks and anxiety, I am very lucky as I haven’t had one for over 3 years but the memory still lingers especially if I go to job interviews etc. I always felt as if panic attacks were excessive energy that I didn’t need albeit a negative energy, so exercise on a regular basis kept me calm and relaxed. I also knew my attacks would come if I did not get good sleep, so the exercise used to help that also. My anxiety was all tied in with PTSD from my crash. So I was living the incident over and over again in my mind, so the panic would always be there. It was EMDR that helped me to think of other things and keep calm.”
Alternative Therapies
I’m a great believer in alternative therapies alongside conventional treatment. There are many forms of alternative therapies. We are all very different and different things appeal to and work for different people but because there are so many alternative therapies, there’s most likely to be one to suit everyone. Paul Holmes says ‘Something like an Indian head massage can be so relaxing and also seem to keep anxiety at bay for a while. Also yoga, the breathing exercises were fantastic.’
I found acupuncture helpful for stress and relaxation (and it didn’t hurt a bit despite my phobia of needles!), and like Paul I find yoga very good for my depression. Do share with Paul http://www.mentalhealthy.co.uk/blogs/paul-holmes and or the site /index.php/interact/positive-suggestions/
what you find works for you.
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