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Many people look at social anxiety as a high degree of shyness. However, we are talking about something quite different. People with this anxiety disorder can have their whole life ruined; even small and trivial things like paying a visit or taking a train or bus can seem completely impossible for them simply because of the pain the anxiety can cause.

Social anxiety is a diagnoses psychiatrist’s use when a person’s anxiety, in social situations is so strong that he or she has severe problems with functioning in their everyday lives. Many of these patients admit that their thoughts, feelings and actions are dysfunctional, but nevertheless they are not able to stop it. The disorder can be divided in two distinct groups; specialized and generalized. The Specialized disorder is anxiety that occurs in specific social situations, like partying with strangers and walking in a crowd of people.

In the generalized version of anxiety the symptoms are an excessive and chronic fear of any situation where social interaction is taking place. In this group, fear of being judged by other is dominating in addition to fearing embarrassment and humiliation because of what the patient is doing. These unhappy persons don’t trust themselves to handle social interactions either by fearing to do something to embarrass themselves or that other people will judge them too hard.

Severe anxiety and fear are not the only symptoms involved; the psychological symptoms are mixed with a number of physical symptoms as well. Symptoms like heart palpitations, nausea, excessive trembling, blushing, stammering and sweating are common. panic attacks are also a part of the disorder and can occur in situations that make the patient severely upset. Duration and severity of the symptoms varies from one individual to another.

To compensate for the pain anxiety in social situations, some people medicate themselves with alcohol or drugs, sometimes to an incapacitating point. Instead of solving their problems the substance abuse creates addiction problems on top of their anxiety. Some patients claim they are unable to function in social settings without taking drugs or alcohol to boost their self esteem.

Such a severe disorder in terms of limiting the patient’s life results in a huge demand of solutions. The supply of treatment solutions reflects the demand. The good news is that there are good treatments for social anxiety as well as panic attacks available, for example natural remedies, acupuncture and psychological treatments.

by Gary Gui

A condition in which we continuously fear and keep worrying about the situations which we actually should not bother about is known as anxiety. When one is in such situation all the time then he/she is said to be suffering from General Anxiety Disorder.

General indications of anxiety can be things such as; fear of public places, lack of self-confidence, fear of socializing (social phobia), low self-esteem, excessive crying, regular nightmares, nausea, diarrhea and so on. If you have any such indications then you suffer from anxiety and you should consult a doctor or go for anxiety self help else of worrying or thinking about your condition.

One can find anxiety self-helping tips everywhere. These tips may/may not work in your case, but it is like a “hit & trial” technique where you can try these tips on yourself and find out that the one or the other trick works for you and helps you to get cured.

Anxiety Self Help Techniques - Find out the trigger for your anxiety attack

Anxiety can be shown to appear randomly and very quickly and
spontaneously. It is well known that certain events, situations,
sensations or images can `trigger’ a panic attack or feeling of
unease. In order to begin to treat your anxiety, it is necessary to identify your individual triggers by recognizing and noting what particular thing or event causes you to become agitated or stressed.This is the first step helping you to recover from the disorderwithout the need for any medication.

If you can identify all the possible or probable triggers which affect you, it will then be possible to arrange them in order of severity so that the most disturbing trigger or situation can be overcome first.

Anxiety can be triggered by many different things or different people. It can be the memory of a bad experience, a scent, something you eat or drink or simply finding oneself in a genuinely frightening position. In order to begin the self-help program, it is essential to recognize where these triggers might be.

Avoid these triggers

Avoidance of powerful triggers is the key of overcoming your anxiety. Besides staying away from situations or events which may cause you stress, it is also important to ensure that your body is not subjected to any food or drinks which may heighten your natural sensitivity to stress such as caffeine in coffee or soft drinks, because caffeine is known to be a powerful stimulant.

Alcohol has an excitatory effect on the brain and hence it is better to avoid it. In case you are a regular drinker then try to reduce the number of pegs you have. Other fluids like water, juices etc are very healthy if consumed as part of your daily diet. Any form of physical exercise will help you keep your mind of stressful events and will help you release your bottled up energy.

Anxiety Self Help Treatment- Practice regular meditation and yoga

A minimum duration of seven hours of sleep is very necessary as this will help you control your anxiety levels, too. You could also try Yoga and Meditation because both help you relax your mind and body and regulate your breathing which in turn lowers stress.

Using yourself as a cure for anxiety attacks is the best way to
control it. You can start by checking your temper every time something triggers you to retort violently. This will also help you in thinking and contemplating before acting which is a very effective tool in anxiety management. If you put in an honest effort in following all these little tips, you will definitely see good results in a few days.

Symptoms of lazy tongue or twisted tongue and stuttering can greatly be improved with basic stress management techniques and hypnosis.

The phrase “lazy tongue,” which I coined, basically speaks for itself. When the affected person attempts to speak, it seemsas though the tongue is twisted, lazy and simply doesn’t move fast enough to enunciate what is spoken. The result is slurred speech and or stuttering. It often feels as though the twisted tongue is enlarged and because of this feeling it is often easy to bite the tongue or the side of the mouth–it smarts.

Typically stuttering is not necessarily associated with a lazy tongue, but more often simply stuttering is associated with excessive tension in the mouth. Whereas one can begin suffering from lazy tongue at any age, stuttering is oftensomething left over from child hood.

The issues surrounding both stuttering and lazy tongue are similar. Stuttering is often associated with a less than healthy self image resulting from a conditioning experience of an embarrassing nature as a youngster, or having an overbearing and critical parent. Lazy tongue, on the other hand, is usually the result of a major stressor such as loss of a marriage, death of a loved one, loss of a job…

With both stuttering and lazy tongue, there is a situation of low self esteem. However, a boost in self esteem (although helpful) usually will not solve either problem without stress management intervention.

For example, Carl was 19 years of age and away at college. Stuttering since elementary school he successfully stopped all stuttering within three weeks of stress management training. He returned home over semester break and promised his father to clean the garage one Saturday.

For some reason Carl never got around to fulfilling his promise. His dad noticed the garage wasn’t cleaned, and called Carl a “stupid shit,” for not cleaning the garage. Carl’s stuttering returned instantly.

This is a case of having an overbearing, over critical parent who in combination with the son’s sensitive nature, contributed to his son’s stuttering which often makes overcoming stuttering a two part program.

1. Using basic stress management skills involving deep rhythmic breathing, and muscle tensing relaxation exercises for the various muscles of the jaw, mouth, and tongue.

Deep breathing into the diaphragm is for composure. The muscle exercises are to stretch the jaw in various directions, stretch the tongue and press it against various locations in the mouth. It also involves tensing the facial muscles. Each time the muscles are tensed, they are tensed to the point of extreme discomfort–almost to the point of fatigue. Then the tension is then released and self mental programming is done as to which feelings are disliked and which are preferred.

2. Self hypnotic affirmations are used to change the perspective so as to create building self esteem and build confidence. Focus is on dealing with the emotions of frustration, disappointment, and rejection. Through hypnosis the individual moves to embrace the emotion and then move beyond it to somehow benefit from the experience.

An enlightened approach to stuttering and lazy tongue involves more than one approach. Whereas many programs only focus on the mechanical, you wonder why the obvious self esteem issues are left out or only dealt with in passing. It’s clearly a mistake to ignore either the stress management or the self esteem issues. Doing the physical exercises and dealing with the mental issues of building self esteem produces real results.

Richard Kuhns B.S.Ch.E., NGH certified is a prominent figure in the field of hypnosis and stress management. His best selling cds for managing stress are at http://www.DStressDoc.com and http://www.PanicBusters.com His aim is to raise awareness as to how using basic stress management skills can be used to over come stuttering and lazy tongue syndrome. To find out more please visit
http://www.dstressdoc.com/TwistedTongue.htm or listen to the podcast at http://hypnocast.podbean.com/ in which I share my personal experience with a twisted tongue.

With global warming and the erratic weather around, you’d better be more careful with your health. You don’t want to catch the common colds virus - or worse, the Influenza AH1N1 virus. You don’t want to miss a day in the office and scramble at the contents of your men’s briefcase the following day just so you can make up for lost times.

But when your immune system has already failed you and have not guarded you against the common colds virus, don’t fret. It is called “common” because it is easy to remedy.

So here are a few home remedies for your common colds:

1. Water
If you get the cold virus, then you need to double time on your water intake. Drink as much water as you can. It doesn’t matter if you go to the comfort every thirty (30) minutes. While the virus cannot be flushed out of your system by the mere act of drinking water, taking in fluids will truly help in dealing with the dehydration. Drinking water will help ease the dryness of your throat and the discomfort of a runny nose.

Stay away from coffee and soda - at least for the time being. Beverages with caffeine content will make the dehydration worse. As a result, it would take you longer to get out of bed, take that rolling briefcase with you and hit the office once again.

2. Chicken Broth
True, parents usually hand their sick children chicken soup. At the outset, you might think that the effect of this is purely psychological. But scientists, however, have discovered that there’s more to chicken broth than just the simple tender loving care of your parents.

First, this kind of soup acts as an anti-inflammatory. This means that chicken broth helps inhibit the action of your immune system’s inflammatory response to foreign objects. Second, the rich aroma of the chicken broth is a temporary decongestant. Even for just a short period of time, broth helps speed up the movement of the mucus along the nasal membrane. Therefore, you will have temporary relief over that runny nose.

Water and chicken broth: these are just two of the most common and inexpensive things that you can find at home. These are two of the things that can help ease the discomfort of having the common colds. These are the simple things that you can have so you can rise and shine once again, take your laptop briefcases and strut to the office healthy and kickin’.