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#generalized anxiety
amyintherapy · 3 months
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Things I've Learned in 18 months of therapy
When people repeat the same patterns of behavior that are more negative than positive, it's usually trauma related. Examples: Your sister who has dated 15 different men who all are emotionally unavailable, short-fused guys who don't respect her. Or your aunt who has gotten into severe debt several times in her life, always buying items she doesn't need. Or your friend who has always befriended people who are not disabled but don't work and chronically need 'favors' so they end up allowing people to mooch off them to the point of it harming their own financial security. Basically anytime you find yourself frustrated and wondering 'why do they always DO that?" or "why don't they just do X instead? They always do Y which just makes things worse..." the answer likely is, they have trauma related to this issue, and/or their behavior is related to their trauma response that they are stuck in. Of course, this is true for you also! If you keep reacting to certain situations in a way you dislike, or going back to a coping method that you see as harmful and can't figure out why you can't stop...it's probably trauma related in some way.
Part of being traumatized involves your brain trying to hide the trauma from you..at least most of it, if not all of it. My therapist has used the example of a piece of paper that is standing upright. You might see the fine edge of the paper, so you sometimes know a piece of paper is in front of you, but you can only see the edge, so when that paper finally gets turned so that it's facing you and you can read everything written on it, it kinda knocks you over and you feel like you should have known all of that all along...after all, the paper was right there. But you couldn't read it before, and you didn't even know there was all that writing on it anyway so you didn't realize such a big piece of your puzzle was missing. In other cases, the paper may be more like...trapped in a book, so it was always there, but you had no idea it was as you thought it was just part of the book, not this hand-written note hidden inside. So anyway, it's very normal to feel shocked at how lacking in awareness you were about the full impact or detail of your trauma once you get on a roll with therapy. I always knew I had trauma, and I've always been a self-reflective person...so I thought I was self aware of my trauma. But I've been surprised at how much I was failing to see fully.
ADHD is stupidly named. Having ADHD doesn't mean you have a deficit of attention. It means you can't control (aka regulate) your attention the way most people can. Tons of people with ADHD would tell you that they feel like they have too much attention. They are interested in ALL the things which is why they struggle to keep their focus on one thing while blocking out everything else going on around them. The things you do that cause you problems, were things you originally did to protect yourself. For example, maybe your addiction started because you were reaching for emotional relief and had no other (healthier) way to make yourself feel better. Or maybe you shut down and isolate when you're hurt, because when you tried reaching out for support as a child it just made things worse because your caregiver was reactive instead of supportive. Endless examples, but people do things for a reason. Your coping methods have a logical cause of some kind or another, even if they do more harm than good now, that wasn't always the case. At one time, they helped you cope with or avoid some bigger pain or problem. Depression and anxiety are both forms of avoiding other feelings. Much of general society knows the concept that "anger is a secondary emotion" (which is only sometimes true, it's also a core emotion) but I didn't know this was true of anxiety and depression. They're always secondary emotions. However, it's important to differentiate between sadness and depression, and fear and depression. Fear and sadness/grief are core emotions, but anxiety and depression are secondary. The fact that I am detail-focused and couldn't be concise if my life depended on it, are both ADHD related for me. Social anxiety is usually attachment trauma aka an insecure attachment. Anxiety and depression are often caused by trauma. I wish I knew this earlier. I spent a lot of time thinking of my anxiety was simply genetic or sort of temperament based and therefore unlikely to be healed or fixed. I don't mean to suggest that genetics or temperment isn't some element but...I can't help but wonder how many people are like me and don't realize they could heal a lot of their anxiety or depression by doing trauma work. I'm definitely still an anxious person, but I've seen a really big improvement in my anxiety. More than I thought was possible two years ago. Most kids and teenagers are avoidant in therapy, so they don't usually see as much progress from the experience, at least compared to adults. It's often a rather slow process to see improvement. However, it's still really helpful in the longrun if they have a positive experience with therapy as a teen, they're likely to try again as an adult when they're really ready to face their issues. Online, I've seen child therapists outright say that their #1 goal with kids in therapy is to make them think of therapy positively so they'll come back to therapy when they're older! I saw some progress in therapy as a teen for sure, but the 4+ years of it resulted in roughly as much (if not less?) progress than I've seen in 18 months of therapy as an adult. Apparently that's quite common. Talking about trauma feels awful, and it often makes me leave trauma-related therapy appointments wondering if there is any point or if i'm just making myself sad. A "okay, I understand this issue I have now was caused by XYZ experience from my past...but wtf do I DO about it? I understand it now, but I still have no clue how to fix it?" type of feeling. This is the result of being too close to the current day to see the full picture. Over the course of time, the benefits and healing always become apparent to me.
People who get angry often are sort of the opposite of me. I default to feeling anxious when I "should" feel angry (like when someone is rude to me), and sometimes also when I 'should' be sad. Most people who experience chronic anger are simply people who are converting their fear and/or sadness into anger. It's sometimes the difference between being an internalize and an externalize. Anger is an external emotion, fear/anxiety is an internal one. So if you struggle to externalize, you'll convert anger to sadness or fear, and if you struggle to internalize you'll convert sadness and fear to anger.
My "small t" traumas - like emotional neglect, are at least as impactful as my "big T" trauma (sexual abuse) was.
Sensory issues are common in ADHD, not just autism even though the content online often makes it seem exclusive to ASD.
I am probably forgetting a lot, but if I don't publish this now I never will. So if I think of more later, I'll just add on. :)
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i’m rebranding my generalized anxiety.
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mogai-hotel-boss · 2 months
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[ID: A set of two images. The first is of Lucifer from Hazbin Hotel with a white outline and a translucent black drop shadow in front of a flag splice of his listed identities. The second is a blank flag splice. ID end]
Lucifer Morningstar is an autistic canonically depressed trans bi mspec fallen angel with anxiety!
For an anonymous friend!
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boyczar · 11 months
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basilsbestpainting · 2 months
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Having severe anxiety is buying both the yeast infection and the uti screening kit then immediately having an anxiety attack as you approach the check out counter
At the pharmacy :/
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ashersskye · 2 months
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Mmm telling a trauma survivor to "feel the fear and do it anyway," is about as productive as telling an ostrich not to be a fucking ostrich. We are in perpetual fight/flight/freeze/fawn, we can't even find some sense of shelter from the fear we are already experiencing. Why isn't there more emphasis on safety & how to shift our nervous systems out of panic and survival first? Having a comfort zone is actually kinda essential when you're escaping abusive situations!!! Some of us have never even had a comfort zone to begin with!!!
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copingmecha · 1 year
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I made a successful phone call the other day
It only lasted 2 minutes but it was crazy to talk to another human being on the other line
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overgrown-dreamland · 2 years
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okay, while i’m thinking about it, here’s a not-so-quick psa to the mental health and related discourse communities specifically. especially those of us with anxiety, depression, and adhd (tldr at the bottom) (/not mad /safe):
when someone with a more stigmatized or uncommon disorder or symptom talks about and tries to raise awareness for their specific struggles, it’s usually not a good idea to interject with our experiences with our different, more commonly known and accepted disorders.
yes, yes, i know - that’s the only way you can relate! how else are you going to add to the conversation? this is the single best way for you to contribute, right?
wrong. see, the point isn’t, usually, how many others can relate to the experience. for example, as someone with bpd i can say with certainty i’m not looking for kinship or mutual commiseration with someone with depression when i discuss my bpd and the struggles that come with it. i’d rather they just listen and relay that information, because if they relate with their depression, while that’s great for them, it... completely derails the point, eventually, especially when more people start doing it. the conversation isn’t for us, we don’t need to, nor normally should we, contribute. it’s their seminar and we are listeners. proper audience manners, everybody! 
they’re trying to spread the word so people change their ideas and behaviors or things that otherwise contribute to the stigmatization they face. i can’t even tell you how many times i’ve seen tired bloggers ask people to please stop bringing up x disorder on their post about y disorder. we need to start listening.
sincerely, someone with both anxiety and adhd who is a little disappointed in my communities today.
TLDR: stop derailing others’ disorder awareness posts by talking about your unrelated disorder. reblogging without adding to the conversation will probably help more, unless of course they WANT others with different disorders to talk on their post. 
(sorry for the tag dump but i want this to get around.)
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modernwizard · 1 year
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Why I love the Spymaster #84: Portrayal of anxiety disorder!
Find my full series under the HELP I WUVS HIM tag.
#84: Portrayal of anxiety disorder!
I've said here and there in my list of reasons I love the Spymaster that he runs on anxiety, but I haven't really dug into that. However, the Spymaster displays quite a few symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder.
According to the DSM-V, generalized anxiety disorder is marked by the presence of excessive anxiety in one's life for a period greater than six months, an inability to manage one's worry, distress/disruption in functioning, symptoms not due to substance addiction, use of drugs, or other medical conditions, and symptoms not being attributable to another mental disorder like panic disorder.
Let's compare the Spymaster's symptoms to the list.
Excessive anxiety? Check.
For >6 months? Check.
An inability to manage worry? Check. Have you seen the Spymaster's coping skills? They all fail spectacularly.
Distress/Disruption in functioning? Check.
Symptoms not due to substance addiction, use of drugs, or other medical conditions? Almost certainly a check. Obviously we can't rule out his symptoms being caused by incorporation of the Matrix and/or the Cyberium. However, we have no evidence that he's dealing with addiction, using any medications, or experiencing another medical condition that would cause these symptoms.
Symptoms not attributable to another mental disorder like panic disorder? Almost certainly a check. Figuring this out is complicated by the fact that the Spymaster has no explicit in-universe mental health diagnoses and also by the fact that different mental health problems can share symptoms. However, the Spymaster does not seem to have something like panic disorder, which features panic attacks, which are episodes of intense physical and mental symptoms of fear.
Besides the signs above, a person must also have three or more of the following: restlessness, fatigue, problems concentrating, irritability, muscle tension, difficulty with sleep.
The Spymaster definitely experiences fatigue [see permanent eyebags of doom in #32: His eye makeup in The Timeless Children!], and irritability [#27: His headbanging!]. He arguably also evinces restlessness in his constant insecure questioning of others [#18: His self-consciousness! and #54: He's still excruciatingly self-conscious!].
Interestingly, generalized anxiety disorder is often comorbid with major depressive disorder. In other words, people with major depressive disorder are highly likely to have generalized anxiety disorder. As far as I'm concerned, the Spymaster clearly has major depression [#83], so the probability is high that he had generalized anxiety disorder as well.
Conclusion: The Spymaster is mentally ill. He has at least one mental illness. One of those is definitely major depression. He may also have generalized anxiety disorder. I feel less confident about this diagnosis because there are symptoms like difficulty with sleep and muscle tension that we don't really have enough information about for the Spymaster. However, he definitely has some severe problems with anxiety, if not a full-blown anxiety disorder.
@natalunasans @sclfmastery @rowanthestrange @timeladyjamie @whovianuncle
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broken-bodyx · 1 year
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hello everyone✨
im not comfortable with sharing names on here, so you guys can just call me A. this is going to be me just documenting everything thats going on with me healthwise for the next little bit, just so i have something to reference back to when i see my doctors.
things i definitely have (diagnosed) - patellafermoral pain syndrome - gerd - generalized anxiety - social anxiety - autism (got that double diagnoses baby) - adhd - cyclothymia
right now ive got a bunch of stuff going on that can’t really be explained by things ive been diagnosed with, so i get to continue the fun journey of constant tests. i’ll be documenting things here as i go
hope you guys stay safe and healthy <3
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leebird-simmer · 1 year
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Anxiety Disorders
Anxiety = feeling of concern or worry, with responses such as increased muscle tension, restlessness, impaired concentration, sleep disturbances, and irritability.
- Can be a necessary stimulus for optimum performance in everyday situations (e.g. it encourages more study before an exam).
- However, when anxiety increases beyond a certain level, performance deteriorates noticeably.
{note: see my Educational Psychology posts for more information about stress being a motivator at a certain level and a hindrance at a higher level}
- Strong link exists between anxiety and depression
DSM-5: Anxiety Disorders
Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Panic Disorder
Specific Phobia
Social Anxiety Disorder (Social Phobia)
Agoraphobia
Included previously in DSM-4 (until 2013):
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Etiology of Anxiety Disorders
Genetics
Stressful experiences
Medical conditions
Drugs (alcohol, caffeine, benzodiazepine dependence)
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
- Individuals show signs of constant worry and continuously predict, anticipate, or imagine dreadful events.
- Life is generally stressful, and even minor events provoke worry.
- The chronic anxiety reduces the individual’s performance on many tasks and decreases pleasure.
Panic Disorder
Panic attacks = individual experiences all the effects of a fear reaction without a threatening stimulus, accompanied by strong arousal of the sympathetic ANS (autonomic nervous system).
Symptoms: elevated heart rate and/or chest pain, sweating, shortness of breath, fainting, choking, fear of losing control or dying
- These symptoms can last anywhere from minutes to hours.
- The word “panic” comes from Pan, the Greek god of pastures and shepherds.
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Specific Phobias
Phobia = a persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation.
- Focus on specific objects or situations such as high places or enclosed spaces, snakes or other animals, etc.
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Cynophobia (extreme fear of dogs)
- Phobias can usually be treated with behavioral desensitization: presenting the fear-inducing stimulus in gradual increments, allowing the individual to maintain a relaxed state while confronting the source of the fear.
- A more contemporary version utilizes exposure therapy in a virtual reality setting.
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Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD)
- Extreme fear of being evaluated or criticized by others
- Sufferers tend to avoid most interpersonal situations. When these situations are unavoidable, they suffer extreme anxiety.
- Onset is typically at a young age, with half of affected individuals developing symptoms by age 11.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
- Listed in DSM-5 under section 1.2.7 (Trauma- and stressor-related disorders)
- Appears after a person survives or witnesses a traumatic event
- Symptoms can persist for months or years after the event. Symptoms include...
Nightmares & flashbacks about the event
Sleep disturbances
Increased physiological reactivity to reminders of the trauma
Avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma
- Genetic component: children whose parents have PTSD are at an increased risk of developing PTSD themselves
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
- Listed in DSM-5 under section 1.2.6 (Obsessive-compulsive and related disorders)
- OCD is characterized by...
Obsessions = unreasonable thoughts and fears
Compulsions = repetitive behaviors in an effort to ease stress
- Obsessions lead to compulsions.
Ex. If a person fears contamination by germs, they may compulsively wash their hands over and over until they’re sore and chapped.
Neurobiology of Anxiety
- The amygdala is a major component of several emotion processing circuits.
- The amygdala aids in formation of emotional memories --> conditioned fear or conditioned emotional response.
- It receives highly processed sensory and cognitive information from the sensory thalamus, sensory and association cortices, and hippocampus.
- The amygdala orchestrates the components of fear: autonomic nervous system activation, enhanced reflex, increased vigilance, stress response, etc.
- Activation of the sympathetic autonomic nervous system produces increased heart rate, sweating, and other signs of “fight-or-flight” response.
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- Patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) have increased volume of the amygdala.
- PET scans show greater amygdala activity with exposure to negative stimuli in GAD and phobia patients than in healthy individuals.
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- The amygdala also contributes to memory consolidation through its connections with the hippocampus.
- The hippocampus may have a role in some anxiety disorders because reciprocal connections with the amygdala modulate emotional responses.
- Smaller hippocampus can predict PTSD.
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- The prefrontal cortex (PFC) exerts inhibitory control over the emotional subcortical regions.
- Anxiety disorders are often considered to arise from an imbalance between emotion generating centers and higher cortical control.
Neurochemistry of Anxiety Disorders
Multiple neurotransmitters and hormones are implicated in the pathophysiology of anxiety disorders.
- Monoamines
Serotonin
Dopamine
Noradrenaline
- GABA; anti-anxiety drugs are GABA agonists.
- Stress hormones (cortisol)
Treatments for Anxiety Disorders
(A) Pharmacological Treatments
Benzodiazepines
Anti-depressants
(B) Deep-Brain Stimulation (for OCD)
(C) Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
as effective as medication in treating chronic anxiety disorders
(D) Other Treatments
Electroconvulsive therapy (damages memory)
Transcranial magnetic stimulation
GABA Receptor Agonists
- Drugs that relieve anxiety are called anti-anxiety agents or anxiolytics.
Benzodiazepines (minor tranquilizers) are often given to people who are undergoing some major life stress.
- Sedative-hypnotic drugs include barbiturates and alcohol.
Barbiturates are sometimes prescribed as sleep aids, but most often used to induce anesthesia before surgery.
- Both sedatives and anxiolytics are CNS depressants; all of these drugs reduce brain activity.
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The GABA (a) receptor has two sites:
Sedative-Hypnotic site = targeted by alcohol and barbiturates, directly influences Cl- influx
Anti-Anxiety site = targeted by benzodiazepines, enhances binding effects of GABA. Effect is dependent upon amount of GABA present.
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- Combining sedative-hypnotics (alcohol, barbiturates) with benzodiazepines (ex. Valium) is extremely dangerous and can result in coma or death, due to:
the double inhibitory effect
enzyme competition (for cytochrome P450)
Barbiturates
- clinically introduced in 1904 and become popular sleep aids
- Between the 1920s and the mid-1950s, barbiturates were practically the only drugs used as sedatives and hypnotics.
- Today they have been largely replaced by benzodiazepines for medicinal uses, such as...
General anesthetic
Sleep aids
Anti-anxiety drugs
Anti-convulsant (to suppress seizures)
- Examples include...
Pentrobarbital (Nembutal)
Secobarbital (Seconal)
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- Side effects include...
altered sleep
loss of judgment, mental “cloudiness”
slowed reflexes
- High doses lead to severe intoxication. Coma and death result from respiratory depression. Barbiturates are extremely dangerous when combined with alcohol.
- Barbiturates produce significant physical dependence and potential for abuse.
- Terminating drug use after extended treatment produces a potentially fatal withdrawal syndrome similar to that for alcohol.
- For these reasons, they are no longer prescribed as anxiolytics or hypnotics.
Benzodiazepines
- relieve physical symptoms of anxiety, along with sense of worry and fear
- first choice for short-term treatment of anxiety, or for acute anxiety
- The introduction of benzodiazepines in 1955 led to a decrease in the prescription of barbiturates, and by the 1970s they had largely replaced the older drugs for sedative-hypnotic and anxiolytic uses.
- They target anxiety without producing excessive sedation, loss of judgment, loss of motor coordination, and produce less mental cloudiness (compared to sedative-hypnotics).
- Examples include:
Alprazolam (Xanax)
Diazepam (Valium)
- Longer-acting BDZs are useful hypnotics to aid sleep.
- Some BDZs are useful muscle relaxants and others are anti-convulsants for the management of epilepsy.
- They can also prevent acute alcohol or barbiturate withdrawal symptoms.
- BDZs do not induce liver enzymes, resulting in less tolerance.
- There is a lower risk of dependence and abuse, but it does happen.
- Reinforcement is much lower than with barbiturates, but BDZs with rapid onset can be self-administered by animals.
- Recreational use of BDZs is often combined with alcohol, opioids, or other CNS depressants, which can be highly toxic.
Anti-Depressants for Anxiety
- Antidepressants including tricyclic antidepressants, MAOIs, and SSRIs can treat both anxiety and depression, which often occur together.
- SSRIs are the first choice for chronic anxiety because they have fewer troubling side effects, a high therapeutic index, and low abuse potential.
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MDMA for PTSD
- also known as “ecstasy,” “molly,” or “mandy” (in the UK)
- currently illegal, no approved medicinal use
- increases sociability, empathy, emotional awareness {note: it was developed for use in family & couples therapy.}
- August 2017: FDA designates MDMA as “breakthrough therapy” for PTSD.
- MDMA is currently in Phase 3 trials, the final stage before FDA approval. Learn more about that here: https://maps.org/mdma/ptsd/phase3/
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cautiousgoose · 2 years
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I think one of the worst things about having an anxiety disorder is that knowing that stressing about the thing won't fix the thing does not stop the stressing.
So like, then you get to have two downward spirals: one about whatever the original issue was, and a second spiral about how all the first spiral is doing is negatively effecting your physical and mental health.
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Panic attacks
Social anxiety, mental health
Some types of anxiety need additional, more specific tools to help manage them effectively. We have linked to sections of the Adult Self-Help section of Anxiety Canada’s website for these extra tools. Panic attacks Some new moms fear having panic attacks. They may begin to avoid doing things or going places that may bring on a panic attack or panic attack-like symptoms, such as: certain places…
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lovelylaceeee · 4 months
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I don’t know how to explain how I’m feeling. I just feel lost and depressed. I look at my future and I can’t see any brightness to it. I just want to feel happy again.
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equilibriumhealthllc · 6 months
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We all feel anxious sometimes, but when feelings of anxiety start to negatively affect your life, you may be dealing with an anxiety disorder that may require therapy.
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familydocblog · 10 months
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Worrier to Warrior: 7 Small Steps for a Brighter Mind
Worrying is a typical behavior that frequently coexists with anxiety and stress. It can be difficult to escape its hold, but with a little work, you can reduce anxiety and improve your general wellbeing. This blog post will delve into helpful recommendations designed especially for the vivacious 20–50 age group. Learn how empowering yourself with modest efforts can help you overcome worry and…
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