Attacking Anxiety and Depression

There are many causes for our anxiety, stress, and depression. There can be purely medical causes for these conditions, and there can be emotional causes. In attacking anxiety and depression we need to find its source, and look past the symptoms.

Some sources might be genetic: If there is a predominant personality type in the family, it can pass on from parent to child, as in the case of many bipolar disorder cases, both by learned and biological means. In this manner, these conditions of depression and anxiety can pass on over generations.

Attacking anxiety in this case would mean the family becoming aware of their tendency for stress and compensate accordingly. Outside counseling would be necessary to provide new viewpoint and perspective.

Anxiety can come in the form of fear of loss of control. These fears result in extreme forms such as panic and related to that are obsessive, compulsive disorders where we are always trying to regain sense of control.

A similar situation is when it may be passed on by mostly learned values, which we call cultural, as in the case of an outlook on life that the parent has, which they teach the child. In this manner, the child learns to live in the world that their parent, grand parents, and even their great grandparents created for them, and not they themselves.

The children learn how to look at themselves and their role in their world environment as their parent sees things. Daughters learn how to relate to men by their fathers, and sons learn about the opposite sex from their relationship with their mothers. Parents teach their children what they can do, and what is not okay for them to do. They learn to act out in adult relationships what is seen with their parents as children.

Anxiety and depression can be simply results of not getting our emotional needs met from these relationships. Attacking anxiety and depression may be a matter of mostly fixing the relationships, and a little self esteem work and little more.

The way of attacking anxiety and depression here is to introduce the child or sufferer to more positive ways of thinking, and to respectfully question negative values. With much effort, we can identify those negative beliefs we have that are holding us back from the full life we deserve. Often times these abilities taught have little to do with what the child’s natural capabilities are, but more to do with what the parent sees as proper for the child to believe they can do. There can be a big difference!

The first step in attacking anxiety and depression from these sources is to understand what our true capabilities are, and what capabilities that our parents allow us to do are. The correction is with questioning if our parents' limitations are indeed our own.

Unmet emotional needs from lack of nurturement and emotional and sexual abuse are the biggest causes of all depression and anxiety, in our opinion. Unmet emotional needs, if left unaddressed, will later cause medical and biological imbalances, as well as addictions which will further increase the problem.

The foundation for attacking anxiety and depression is to work on the unmet emotional needs along with medical treatment if the emotional sense of well-being does not correct the medical imbalance on its own. Sometimes the need is for greater medical or natural remedies and supplements and sometimes the need is for greater counseling, therapy, or self help. There is no set ratio of how much of each.

Unmet emotional needs, also if not understood, will cause financial and material scarcity as well, as we overlook our natural outlets for our talents and lose desire to put out our best efforts in building our lives. We will also spend more of our funds on addictions such as coffee, alcohol, cigarettes, gambling and even drugs, pornography and sex.

It is very important to understand that we always have an emotional side, and that emotional side cannot be ignored. Anxiety and depression are different. Anxiety is from stress from perceived threat from our environment, and depression is emotional fatigue and hopelessness. Depression can also be described as anger turned inward.

Those who suffer from anxiety are not cowards and those who suffer from depression are not weak, nor inferior, although they may feel low self esteem because they often blame themselves.

Custom Search