If you suffer from anxiety, you may be hesitant about turning to medication to help ease your symptoms. But rather than adopting avoidance as a coping mechanism, consider this: taking anti-anxiety medication could help you regulate your stress, control your emotions, and also, promote optimal cognitive functioning.
Still unsure? Consider consulting licensed medical practitioners such as doctors, counselors, or nursing professionals who have completed the relevant nurse practitioner online programs for further information about what medications are available. You could be a prescription away from less anxious thoughts and a better quality of life.
Here are five signs anti-anxiety medication could be for you.
Sign # 1: You’re Too Anxious To Sleep
Insomnia. It could be a sign of something deeper – like severe anxiety. If you’re having trouble sleeping, and your anxious thoughts are keeping you up at night, this could be your sign to consider anti-anxiety medication.
Why? The repercussions of not being able to sleep aren’t just that you feel tired. Not sleeping enough can also impair your cognitive function, and could even exacerbate your anxiety symptoms.
Picture this: your mind is racing, you can’t switch off, and you spend your nights tossing and turning in bed. Sound familiar? Taking anti-anxiety medication could help you banish your anxiety-induced insomnia, and finally get a good night’s rest.
Sign # 2: You’re Having Difficulty Concentrating
Experiencing anxiety can also affect your ability to focus, make decisions, and problem-solve.
If you’re too busy worrying, catastrophizing, and fretting about the worst-case scenario, there’s no wonder you can’t concentrate.
With a huge portion of your brain capacity being taken up by anxious thoughts, it doesn’t leave much room for you to think rationally.
Sign # 3: You’re Lashing Out At Your Loved Ones
Anxiety can also negatively impact your ability to regulate your emotions – which can increase irritability, as well as the likelihood of lashing out at your loved ones.
Anti-anxiety medication can help us avoid causing additional stress in our households by helping temper an anxiety-related short fuse.
Sign # 4: You Have Constant Muscle Aches and Pains
Anxiety can also be felt in the body, as anxiety sufferers often tend to hold their tension physically.
If you find yourself clenching your teeth or grinding your jaw, unconsciously hunching your shoulders, or tensing up your back muscles, this could be another sign that you could benefit from anti-anxiety medication.
Sign # 5: Anxiety Therapy Alone Isn’t Helping
Before you take anti-anxiety medication, consider seeking support from a licensed therapist. Some of the therapies you could be exposed to as a patient presenting with an anxiety disorder include:
Psychodynamic Therapy (PDT)
Rooted in Freudian theory, PDT is a type of psychotherapy that focuses on analyzing the effects of past traumas on current emotions and behaviors.
It can help anxiety sufferers make sense of their trauma, as well as their trauma responses.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR)
EDMR therapy utilizes bilateral stimulation to help anxiety sufferers desensitize themselves from their triggers.
It does this by gently encouraging patients to focus on a traumatic event while simultaneously exposing them to external visual stimuli, and also, generating new emotional responses to the trigger. EMDR has been found to be especially helpful for sufferers of PTSD-related anxiety.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
If you’re an anxiety sufferer who responds to focusing on your life values, ACT could be for you. By teaching patients different ways to identify what their values are, ACT helps navigate anxiety and form better relationships with ourselves and others.
ACT anxiety treatment has also been found to be most effective when used in combination with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT.
Interpersonal Therapy (IPT)
By focusing on our relationships with others, and how we relate, interact, and communicate with the people around us, IPT can help anxiety patients better navigate social situations.
IPT can be particularly helpful for patients presenting with social anxiety disorders.
Without a doubt, seeking therapy can be a powerful way to treat and minimize the symptoms of anxiety. But if you’ve tried these therapy methods, and nothing seems to helping – it may be time to ask your doctor for a prescription.
