Anxiety — causes and cures

Anxiety

What it is, causes, cures

The earliest memories of anxiety are from my childhood, when my mother would get ready to go out and I felt an unpleasant coldness in my belly, hands and feet. When I turned eighteen I had my first full-fledged panic attack, when my heart raced so hard that it felt like it was going to break out of my chest, and I thought that I was going to die. For many years after this first incident, I had numerous shades and grades of anxiety, and when I began to experience relief through healing arts and methods, I found out that there was a rich world of information laying underneath my feelings.

Anxiety is an umbrella term for a set of feelings such as tension around the chest and the belly, cold sensations, heart palpitations, and pressure in the head. The experience can arise in response to a life event or situation, or it can be chronic and generalized.

To address anxiety, it is helpful to begin by looking at its possible causes and factors. A few factors to consider are:

• An unresolved current life dilemma. For example: should I stay in my stressful job or marriage, or should I leave? Very often merely making the decision is all that is needed to have peace. Even if there are difficult consequences as a result of this or another course of action, resolving the dilemma through choice brings immediate and significant relief.
• A parasitic — viral, bacterial or other infection. Parasites are known to affect the host’s mood in order to elicit a behaviour which ensures the reproduction of the parasite. For example, the rabies virus that has infected an animal causes its host to act aggressively and bite another animal, ensuring self-propagation through the infected animal’s saliva. A civilized infected person won’t bite another, and if emotion-type feelings are not being expressed in an embodied way, any aggression that the parasite causes remains internalized, causing anxiety. For the sake of peace of mind it is useful to get tested and rule out parasites.
• Extreme fatigue, whether physical or mental, feels like anxiety. In the healing arts jargon, Qi / Chi / Ki (vitality) depletion causes an anxious feeling, and is usually treated with energy healing and by practicing a Ki management practice such as Qigong, Tai-Chi, Reiki, Yoga or some Martial Arts.
• A nutritional deficiency can cause fatigue. Looking at the minerals and vitamins in the body…