The sexual side effects of Prozac and how to deal with them

"My libido is down and I've recently started taking Prozac (Fluoxetine). Are the two related?"

Yes, decreased libido or sex drive is a very common side effect of this popular drug. In fact, 11% of patients, both male and female, reported this symptom. There are several other side effects of Prozac in women as well.

You might consider switching to Zoloft. It has a lower side effect profile, overall. Although it does still have the problems with decreased libido, it is possible to get around this because it stays in the body a shorter amount of time it is possible to take a "drug holiday." If you discontinue the drug for a weekend (2-4 days), your normal sex drive and response will return, quickly. The drug can be resumed after short periods without a loss of clinical effectiveness.

Other Side Effects of Prozac Unique to Women

Prozac is used in depression and obsessive/compulsive disorders. Both of these are more common in women, so it is more likely women will be on the drug.

Infrequent

Infrequent is defined as 1 out of 100 (or 1%) to 1 out of 1000 (.1%):

• Amenorrhea (lack of menstruation)

• Breast Pain

• Fibrocystic Breast

• Leukorrhea (white or yellow discharge from the vagina)

• Menopause

• Menorrhagia (Excessive menstrual bleeding)

• Ovarian disorder

Rare

Rare was defined less than 1 out of 1000 (.1%):

• Abortion (spontaneous loss of a pregnancy or conception)

• Breast Enlargement

• Dyspareunia (Pain during intercourse)

• Lactation (Milk production from the breasts)

• Hypomenorrhea (Decreased menstrual bleeding)

• Metrorrhagia (bleeding between periods)

• Salpingitis (Inflammation of the Fallopian tubes, which carry the egg from the ovary to the uterus)

Pregnancy, Breastfeeding, and Prozac

Prozac is a Class B drug for pregnancy. That means that the drug should be taken in pregnancy only if it is clearly needed. Inform your doctor is you are, plan to be, or do become pregnant on Prozac. The same applies to breastfeeding.

Natural anxiety remedies appeal to some people because they offer treatment that helps you to get rid of anxiety without medication. In general, natural remedies for anxiety don’t have the risk of harmful side effects and possible dependence or addiction that is frequently associated with prescription medications.

Natural remedies can offer effective, long-lasting anxiety relief without the negative consequences associated with traditional prescription medication. This article explores 14 approaches that work. However, it is important to note that every person is different, and everyone’s experience with anxiety is unique. Some people need medication, while others don’t tolerate it at all. In considering any anxiety remedy or treatment, it is important to consult with a doctor, naturopath, therapist, or even all three.

What are Natural Anxiety Remedies?

Anxiety remedies that are considered natural are those that don’t involve taking medication. Of course, someone can take medication and use natural anxiety remedies—it’s just that the medication component isn’t counted among the natural approaches.

Natural treatment is a very broad category and includes such general healing practices as nutrition, lifestyle, and mind-body techniques. The goal of any such remedy, whether it’s taking an anti-anxiety supplement or a brisk walk around the block, is to help people naturally reclaim their lives from anxiety in a way that is effective, safe, and healthy.

The focus on natural treatments for anxiety goes beyond eradicating anxiety. Instead, the intent is to treat the whole person—body, brain, mind, spirit, emotions—to allow for total wellness, not merely the absence of illness. Many different options exist for achieving this healthy, balanced, anxiety-free life.

14 Natural Remedies for Anxiety that Work

The following list is a glance at several natural approaches that have been shown to reduce anxiety.

• Keep a journal to track mood and food to discover what drinks and foods help your anxiety.
• Be intentional about eating habits to maximize nutrition.
• Keep healthy snacks accessible (nuts, whole-grain crackers, cheese, etc.) to maintain a consistent energy level.
• Take nutritional supplements to complete what your diet might lack.
• Use herbal remedies to reduce anxiety and increase wellness.
• Reduce or eliminate caffeine intake.
• Practice deep breathing exercises.
• Meditate.
• Use aromatherapy to affect food. Lavender and chamomile, for example, are calming.
• Exercise.
• Yoga or yoga meditation.
• Engage in positive self-talk.
• Get up and move frequently, for a few minutes at a time.
• Intentionally create a life purpose. You know you don’t want anxiety, but the most important question is what do you want?

Natural remedies for anxiety work. The 14 mentioned here have all been used by countless individuals to successfully reduce anxiety. Find what treatments fit you, and use them to live well without anxiety.

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Do you need breathing exercises to reduce anxiety? How’s your breathing right now? Chances are, it’s fairly shallow. Test it out: Continuing to breathe as you are, place one hand on your chest and the other on your abdomen, near your belly button. Which one is moving more? If your belly hand is moving out and back in, congratulations—you’re deep breathing. If, however, your chest hand is feeling the action, you might want to try these breathing exercises for anxiety and stress.

Without intentionally learning deep breathing exercises for anxiety, many of us breathe in shallow breaths that are too rapid without even realizing it. The cause is often anxiety and stress, and unfortunately, the result is also anxiety and stress, so we get stuck in a cycle that becomes a habit. Shallow, chest breathing has negative impacts on both body and brain.

• Carbon dioxide levels in the blood drop, constricting arteries and reducing blood flow to the brain.
• The body experiences a shortage of oxygen, triggering the fight-or-flight response.
• Muscle tension increases.
• The heart experiences palpitations.
• Anxiety increases.
• Panic attacks can be triggered.
• Decreased ability to think clearly and rationally.
• Stress and anxiety continue to increase.

The cycle feeds on itself, and because it’s difficult to break, shallow breathing becomes a habit. Learning to breathe deeply disrupts the cycle, allowing anxiety to diminish and racing thoughts to slow down. When deep breathing becomes a habit, the brain benefits from normal blood flow and the fight-or-flight response switches off. Stress hormones recede. Anxiety symptoms become far less bothersome.

Learning deep breathing techniques will allow you to harness the power of breathing. Anxiety breathing exercises are natural relaxation techniques that decrease anxiety, help the quality of our thoughts, and improve mood. Breathing properly reduces both anxiety and stress. Breathing exercises for anxiety work. Below are some to try.

Breathing Exercises for Anxiety and Stress

The best breathing exercises to relieve anxiety and stress are simple and can be done at any time and in any place. The goal is to be aware of your breathing and your feelings of stress, anxiety, and tension so you can use breathing exercises for anxiety relief in the moment. Try any of these 8 effective techniques.

1. Very simply, breathe in slowly through your nose and out slowly through your mouth.
2. Breathe in slowly through your mouth for five counts (or whatever feels comfortable), hold it for approximately five counts, then release slowly through your mouth for seven (the exhale should be a little longer than the inhale).
3. Do one of the above breathing exercises, but on the exhale, place the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth just behind your front teeth.
4. Alternate nostril breathing: Place your forefinger and thumb on your nose. Gently press one of them down to close the nostril. Breathe in slowly through the open nostril. Pause. Switch so that the nostril that was closed is now open and vice versa. Gently and slowly exhale. Repeat, this time starting with the other nostril.
5. Serene scene: breathing and visualization. Breathe slowly and deeply as in one of the above anxiety breathing exercises. Close your eyes and picture a scene that is pleasing and peaceful to you. When your thoughts wander, gently bring them back to the mental scene.
6. Breathing and affirmations: Breathe slowly and deeply as above, and while doing so, repeat a word or a phrase that to you is calming, inspiring, motivating, etc (Use These Positive Affirmations for Anxiety Relief).
7. Lie on your back with a light object on your abdomen. Breathe deeply enough so you can see it rise and fall.
8. Add soothing music or sounds to any of the exercises if it helps you further relax.

Deep breathing to reduce anxiety and stress is most effective when done regularly. It does indeed lower stress, anxiety, and panic in the moment, but when it is done regularly, it becomes a habit and keeps you feeling calm. You can set aside time each day, approximately 10 minutes, to practice deep breathing, and you can use your downtime to encourage brain-nourishing, anxiety-reducing breath. Stuck in traffic? Getting tense and angry won’t get you moving any faster, but using the time to breathe and lower anxiety will allow you to reach your destination feeling calmer and more centered.

Deep breathing is sometimes associated with the practice known as yoga meditation. Yoga breathing exercises for anxiety are helpful. Research is demonstrating that deep, yoga-like breathing creates smooth brain waves, the type of brainwaves associated with deep relaxation (Imparato, 2016).

Breathing exercises for anxiety and stress are indeed effective. “The breath affects your brain, and from there everything else.” (Imparato, 2016, p. 15).

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Anxiety works its way into our minds, our bodies, and our very lives, taking control of who we think we are and what we think we can do. When anxiety takes over like this, it can be hard to keep moving forward. Thankfully, anxiety self-help gives you ways to control anxiety and anxiety attacks that put you back in charge.

Before you take a look at the list of suggestions for how to control anxiety, take a moment to close your eyes, take a slow, deep breath, and clear your mind. This creates a bit of space for you to gently shift your thinking.

Sometimes, thinking in terms of controlling anxiety or controlling anxiety attacks gets in our way. We start to struggle and resist, creating a deeper problem with anxiety and even leading to more anxiety attacks (Bemis, 2008). Instead, then, think of these approaches as ways of taking back control of yourself and your life. You’re not fighting anxiety, you’re simply creating a better life without it. By learning how to control anxiety, you’re actually moving yourself forward.

17 Methods of Anxiety Control That Put You Back in Charge

1. Step away from stress, even briefly. Taking regular breaks controls anxiety.
2. Be mindful of your present moment. Using all your senses to take in your surroundings is a way to reign in racing thoughts, even during anxiety attacks.
3. Quieting mental chatter by visualizing a calming image helps refocus your thoughts during an anxiety attack.
4. Exercise. It releases the adrenaline that surges as part of the body’s flight-or-flight response.
5. Get plenty of rest and sleep, as fatigue contributes to anxiety (Anxiety and Insomnia: Don’t Let Anxiety Keep You Awake).
6. Control your blood sugar to control anxiety. Low blood sugar often means high anxiety.
7. Eat well. Learn which foods to eat to help with anxiety and eat more of them. Nutrition plays a role in anxiety, so the better you eat, the better you’ll feel. 
8. Talk to a doctor. If brain chemistry is off balance, you can control anxiety and anxiety attacks with medication. (Note: there is no medical test for brain chemistry, but your doctor can help sort things out by talking openly with you.)
9. Check your expectations of yourself, others, and your life. Unrealistically high expectations create anxiety.
10. Get to know yourself, the whole you: hopes, dreams, strengths, abilities, relationships, and more. You are more than anxiety, and knowing yourself is a powerful way to control anxiety.
11. Meditate. Sitting in a comfortable position, breathing deeply, and letting thoughts come and go without getting tangled up in them helps you reclaim yourself from anxiety’s grasp (How to Use Meditation for Anxiety and Panic Attacks).
12. Distance yourself from anxious thoughts by stating, “I’m having the thought that....” This diminishes the realism of anxious thoughts.
13. Imagine your anxious feelings and thoughts as leaves floating down a stream and far away from you. Sending your thoughts away controls anxiety and controls anxiety attacks.
14. Look for the workability of thoughts. When worries and fear kick in, study them, asking yourself what will happen if you believe the thought. Will it create a more meaningful life? If they’re not workable, float them down the river (see #13).
15. Develop psychological flexibility. This lets us adapt to all situations, good and bad, so we can take actions to move forward. When we’re not rigid, we can bend rather than break.
16. Know your purpose. What do you value? What gives your life meaning? Knowing the “why” of your life is part of how to control anxiety.
17. Know what actions you want to take. When you know your “why,” and decide on your “how,” you move beyond anxiety and anxiety attacks.

This list is a sampling of ways to control anxiety and anxiety attacks. Use this as a springboard to create more. Try the ones that match your style, and move past the ones that don’t. You have control. It’s through strengthening and exercising your own control and power that you begin controlling anxiety and controlling anxiety attacks.

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Coping skills for anxiety are actions we can take and ways we can think in order to keep going despite anxiety. Sometimes, anxiety is really strong in a particular situation, and coping skills help us get through it. Anxiety can be a long-lasting experience, so coping skills give us ways to move forward while we are simultaneously learning ways to reduce stress and anxiety in the long run.

As you gather methods and strategies to cope with anxiety, consider these guidelines for choosing the right ones for you:

• Use coping skills that you love; they’ll be more effective than things that don’t grab you.
• Eliminate “shoulds;” don’t choose a coping skill because you think you “should” like it.
• Avoid comparisons; focus on what works for you without worrying how it measures up to what others are doing.
• Pair your coping skills with your life goals to give them greater meaning and purpose, and thus effectiveness.
• Choose anxiety coping methods that suit your personality.

Sorting coping skills into categories allows you to choose from a variety of ideas suited to your needs of the moment. The following coping methods for anxiety are a sampling of skills to get you started.

Anxiety Coping Skills that Help Thoughts and Outlook

Anxiety interferes in our thinking, making our thoughts race and causing us to overthink almost everything. This impacts our outlook, putting a negative slant on how we view ourselves, others, and life in general. Because this is unpleasant, we naturally tend to fight our thoughts, but struggling against them only feeds them and increases anxiety. Rather than struggle with yourself, your thoughts, and your anxiety, accept things as they are in the moment.

• Gently give yourself permission to be anxious.
• Replace harshly negative self-talk with acceptance of who you are as a human being.
• Be a passive observer, noticing your anxiety symptoms without fighting them; resistance increases anxiety while just observing induces calm.
• Use positive affirmations to remind yourself of your positive qualities, your accomplishments, and your life goals.

Think of anxiety like a Chinese finger trap. When you put your fingers into the trap and then try to remove them by struggling and yanking hard against it, the trap tightens and you become more stuck. However, when you relax, accept the trap’s presence, and calmly slide your fingers out, you get rid of the trap’s hold on you.

Anxiety Coping Skills that Soothe and Inspire

Anxiety causes tension and can make us feel agitated and unsettled. Some ways to cope with anxiety include soothing yourself to feel calm in the moment. Connecting to something greater than ourselves and feeling inspired also helps us cope with anxious feelings. Try these techniques:

• Get out into nature;
• Appreciate beauty/cultivate a sense of awe;
• Get lost in something you love such as reading, crafting, running, etc.;
• Keep a positivity journal to acknowledge the good in your life and enhance a sense of gratitude;
• Slow down;
• Practice mindfulness, a way of reigning in your anxious thoughts and centering yourself;
• Pause now and then during your day to acknowledge that you are “Awake. Active. Alive” (Imparato, 2016, p. 46).

Anxiety Coping Skills That Release Energy

Anxiety can agitate. Sometimes it can be hard to sit still because we are wired, feeling as though we might jump out of our own skin. When this happens, coping skills for anxiety that allow us to release this pent-up energy and tension are extremely helpful. Some such anxiety coping methods include:

• Exercise;
• Any movement, such as a brisk walk up and down flights of stairs;
• Deep breathing exercises; while it can be hard to stop and breathe when you’re worked up, doing so calms our body’s physiological response to anxiety, thus reducing tension (Lejeune, 2007);
• Journaling to release bottled-up thoughts and emotions.

Other Anxiety Coping Skills

Additional coping skills for anxiety are:

• Music that fits your anxiety-reducing needs in the moment, calming to soothe or peppy to release pent-up energy;
• Distraction techniques to shift your thoughts away from anxiety and onto something else. Consider carrying a small object to manipulate, wearing a rubber band to snap, chewing gum, doodling, etc.;
• A running list of your strengths and accomplishments;
• Acupressure, or using your fingertips to release muscle tension and energy.

Anxiety coping skills come in many forms because people are so different. What works for one person might not work for the next; to be sure, though, everyone has the ability to find or create ways to cope with anxiety. It’s a good idea to stockpile many different coping strategies because what you need varies from day to day. With a host of tools at your disposal, you’ll be able to cope with—to keep going despite—anxiety.

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Anxiety and insecurity are a combination detrimental to relationships. Together, they can kill a relationship. The irony is that partners do care about each other, but anxiety and insecurity in the relationship can cause the very thing that the anxious partner is desperately trying to prevent: a break up.

The mix of anxiety and insecurity causes distinct worries and behaviors that can end a relationship. Exploring them can help you avoid them in your own relationships.

Signs of Insecurity and Anxiety in Relationships

One partner’s anxiety and insecurity are usually directed toward both themselves and their partner. Signs that someone has insecure thoughts and emotions include:

• Giving up their own values and ideas to defer to those of their partner
• Difficulty regulating their own emotions when someone else is showing emotion
• Developing over-attachment to their partner
• Displaying a constant need for approval
• Occasionally distancing themselves from the partner in an attempt to strengthen their sense of self, but this is brief due to separation anxiety caused by over-attachment

Anxiety and Insecurity in Relationships: Types of Worries

The signs of insecurity cause significant relationship worries. These worries can be sorted into three primary categories:

1. the relationship
2. the people in it
3. imagined terrible things that might happen

Insecurity can make someone afraid of being hurt. The type of hurt that causes excessive fear in relationships is the thought of the relationship ending. Worry that their partner might leave them causes significant distress and heightened anxiety.

One reason for the fear of the relationship ending is an overwhelming sense of inadequacy reinforcing the insecurity. Anxiety convinces people that they aren’t good enough for anything—and especially not for a relationship with their partner. Often, low self-esteem makes people fear that they’re a burden, which fuels the fear of abandonment.

Fears and anxieties join insecurity to invade thoughts. Imagined situations and worst-case scenarios can plague someone day and night. Fear of not being good enough and of the relationship ending cause anxious thoughts and “what ifs” in someone’s mind. The scenarios always end disastrously.

All these worries can lead to behaviors that exacerbate problems in a relationship.

Anxious Behaviors Caused by Insecurity in Relationships

Feelings of anxiety brought on by insecurity (or, conversely, feelings of insecurity resulting from anxiety) impact behaviors. To avoid breakup and ensure their partner approves of and accepts them, people with anxiety in a relationship try to take measures to please their partner. Someone might use unhealthy coping skills like these:

• Constantly asking for reassurance
• Texting or calling too frequently
• Being hypervigilant for any sign of partner’s disapproval and apologetically asking for acceptance and approval
• Avoiding conflict and uncomfortable conversations
• Acting and feeling possessive, jealous, and worried that their partner likes everyone else better than them
• Unfortunately, these behaviors create more problems than they solve. That doesn’t mean, though, that there’s no solution to a relationship suffering because of anxiety and self-doubt.

What to Do About Anxiety and Insecurity in Relationships

Improving self-esteem is one of the best gifts you can give yourself, your partner, and the relationship between you. Give yourself time to explore your own unique interests, strengths, and values. What makes you feel vibrant? What can you do to pursue these things? Create opportunities to do things on your own and with a friend. Additionally, you and your partner can discuss and decide on things to enjoy together as a couple. Take care to avoid deferring to your partner’s wishes. Chances are, they’ll want to hear from you. Sharing your thoughts will boost your self-esteem and strengthen your relationship.

As effective as these things are in building self-assurance, they’re not easy to do when you’re not used to thinking and acting without anxiety stopping you. For this reason, working with a therapist can be extremely helpful. With professional guidance, you can reduce anxiety and self-doubt and develop relationship skills. Self-help books can offer value as well. Both therapy and work on your own can cultivate your sense of self and belief in your worth. Additionally, they can help you strengthen your relationship by reducing behaviors that are ineffective and replace them with beneficial new ones.

Work with your partner to nurture healthy attention, affection, intimacy, and communication. Anxiety and insecurity can kill a relationship for many reasons. You and your partner can revive it.

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Anxiety management has entered the world of technology. Anxiety apps for smartphones, iPods, and other high-tech gadgets offer anxiety self-help to anyone who has access to such a device.

Do Apps for Anxiety Work?

Researchers in the field of mental health have begun to study the effectiveness of anxiety management apps. The findings are promising. A recent study indicates that apps can indeed be helpful; for example, IntelliCare, a group of apps that helps with anxiety, has been shown to reduce the severity of anxiety of symptoms by 50 percent—approximately the same improvement seen in therapy or with medication (Gregoire, 2017). Additionally, apps make anxiety help accessible to people who otherwise don’t have access to in-person mental health help.

Not all apps are equally credible, though. Gregoire (2017) discusses research indicating that more than 80 percent of apps haven’t been tested or proven effective. This is due in large part to the fact that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States doesn’t regulate mental health apps. Further muddying the water is that most apps are created by app developers rather than by mental health professionals.

Apps to Help with Anxiety

Pitfalls aside, anxiety apps can truly help manage anxiety when you find the right one. Generally, a valid app has been developed by mental health professionals who know what helps and what does not. Below is a list of seven of the best self-help anxiety management apps. All were created by mental health professionals or other experts in the field, and all have been reviewed and approved by other mental health professionals who have no conflict of interest with the apps.

1. IntelliCare by Northwestern Medicine and funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH). This is actually a suite, or grouping, of mini-apps that are designed to be used frequently and in little bursts at a time. IntelliCare focuses on building skills needed to relieve and reduce anxiety. Among the 12 mini-apps are Worry Knot to teach worry management, Purple Chill to develop relaxation skills, and iCope to create coping messages to use when you need them. The skills taught are based on proven, research-based techniques used by therapists.
2. MindShift by AnxietyBC (Anxiety Disorders Association of British Columbia). Originally created for teens and young adults, this anxiety management app can be used by adults as well. MindShift helps people overcome all diagnosed anxiety disorders as well as self-help for stress, worry, performance anxiety, perfectionism, and text anxiety. This app teaches skills and provides coping strategies and skills. It seeks to help with thoughts, emotions, and behaviors to create balance as anxiety diminishes.
3. Self-Help Anxiety Management (SAM) by the University of the West of England. SAM provides information, helpful external links, guidance, and 25 self-help options to help you manage your anxiety in a way that works for you. With this anxiety app, you can use resources provided to build an anxiety management toolkit. It also includes a closed social network of SAM users so you can connect with others who are also working to reduce anxiety.
4. Anxiety Coach App by the Mayo Clinic. Anxiety Coach uses cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) to decrease your fears and worries. With this anxiety app, you can take a self-test, create a plan to reduce anxiety, track your anxiety, and monitor your progress. This app focuses primarily on your anxious negative thoughts. The Anxiety Coach App is currently only available for iPhone.
5. Breathe2Relax by National Center for Telehealth and Technology, part of the Department of Defense and Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury. Because proper breathing is crucial to stress and anxiety reduction, this is a useful app for learning breathing exercises for anxiety and stress and teaching body scanning to induce relaxation. The app is interactive so you can customize your own breathing pace. It offers helpful information to read, charts to track your deep breathing and relaxation progress.
6. Headspace by two experts, one a Buddist monk and clinical practitioner. Headspace is an app exclusively focused on learning meditation for anxiety and stress reduction. This app helps with anxiety by increasing deep breathing, mindfulness, relaxation, and concentration.
7. Panic Relief by a psychiatrist and CBT specialist. Panic Relief is an app for anxiety management that contains four simple tools to control panic, anxiety, and stress. Two of the tools teach deep breathing techniques, and the other two teach progressive muscle relaxation.

Each of these apps truly helps with self-help anxiety management. Of course, every person, and every person’s anxiety, is unique. Apps aren’t one-size-fits-all, so for greatest satisfaction with your anxiety apps, pick the one(s) that appeal to you. Then, with an anxiety app to help manage your anxiety, you can take your tools wherever you go and use it when you need them to effectively reduce anxiety.

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To get rid of anxiety can seem like an impossible dream when we’re in the midst of struggling with it. While medication is a legitimate treatment option, it doesn’t work for everyone, and some people would rather not have to take it. To get through anxiety and come out on the other side, think in terms of things you can do, ways you can be, and how you can replace it with something else to get rid of anxiety without taking medication.

How to Get Over Anxiety: What You Can Do

Getting over anxiety is a process that requires action. Some specific things to rid yourself of anxiety include:

• Biofeedback. Knowing what is happening in your body when you are feeling anxious or having an anxiety attack helps you gather the insight you need to get over anxiety. This knowledge allows you to take charge of your own wellbeing, both mental and physical.

Biofeedback uses non-invasive technology to help teach you what your body is up to. When you know your body's responses to anxiety, such as increased muscle tension or a quickened pulse, you can target your anti-anxiety efforts to address these physical signs. For example, if muscle tension is one of your body's anxiety responses, learning muscle relaxation techniques will help you get rid of anxiety.

• Exercise. Regular aerobic exercise (exercise that gets your heart pumping) is, according to Dr. Edmund Borne (2010), “one of the most powerful and effective methods for reducing generalized anxiety and overcoming a predisposition to panic attacks (p. 105).  

Exercise increases the flow of oxygen to the brain, creates alpha waves associated with relaxation, outs stress hormones such as cortisol, and releases enkephalins and endorphins, our feel-good chemicals that relax the brain and reduce anxiety. Exercise is a releaser and a relaxer, and it's a welcome distraction from our anxious thoughts.

• Connections. Another proven way to get over anxiety is to increase connections to others. Isolation is a legitimate response to the worry and fear that make up anxiety; however, the more we remain isolated, the harder it becomes to face our anxieties. Isolation also robs us of human connection.

Being connected makes us feel part of something larger than ourselves and can pull us out of our anxious ruminations. A sense of belonging brings support and encouragement. Increasing your connections is a powerful way out of anxiety.

How to Get Through Anxiety: Ways You Can Be

• Be flexible—psychologically flexible. Anxiety can make our thoughts, feelings, and behavior rigid. We easily become stuck in our anxiety as we struggle against it. With psychological flexibility, we can bend without breaking, adapting to situations rather than increasing anxiety by resisting. This kind of flexibility lets us move forward even though our anxiety isn’t fully gone from our lives. It’s a way of limbering up so we can nimbly move through anxiety.
• Be Objective. Anxious thoughts are bothersome and disruptive to our lives, and feeling anxious is miserable. Instead of stubbornly trying to change these things, it can be helpful to step back and look at our situations, and the resulting anxiety and negative thoughts and feelings, objectively. Quite likely, there are different interpretations. Snubbed by a friend? Does the friend suddenly hate you, or is she maybe preoccupied with a problem of her own? It’s this type of objectivity and psychological flexibility that can help you get through anxiety.

How to Get Rid of Anxiety: Replace It with Something Else

What we pay attention to is what grows. Rather than focusing on and struggling against it, get rid of anxiety by concentrating on what you want in its place. Acceptance and commitment therapy gives us three broad ways to cope with anxiety.

• Accept anxiety. Accepting anxiety allows you to stop struggling and start living. Accepting anxiety doesn’t mean giving up or giving in. It means you’ve made a choice to stop fighting and start replacing. You’ve freed yourself to live.
• Choose your values. Your values are what’s important to you. What is worth your time and energy? What do you want your life to be like when anxiety is gone?
• Take action. Go after what you value. The more you increase the things that are important to you, the more anxiety will decrease.

Biofeedback allows you to target anxiety in your body in order to get rid of it. Exercise chases out the bad and floods your body with the good. Increasing connections gives you a support system and sense of belonging. These tactics help create psychological flexibility and greater objectivity, which in turn allow for an attitude of acceptance that provides the space to focus on what you want and the energy to go after it. Together, each and every one of these forms a system to allow you to get rid of anxiety without medication.

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Positive reminders are a vital part of your toolkit when mental health is challenging. Although there are days when nothing you read, see or hear makes a difference to how you feel, those simple words of support can help to rebuild your armor when you feel defenseless ("Benefits of Positive Thinking: How It Helps Your Mental Health"). In the infamous words of Mother Teresa, "Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless." With this in mind, let’s look at how positive reminders can help restore your mental health.

What Are Positive Reminders?

We know by now that positive thinking has the power to alter our brain chemistry, but many of us still struggle to apply it to our daily lives. We are born to survive, so naturally, we are wired to look out for danger, to be suspicious of others, to mistrust the world and question our place in it. These survival instincts may have been useful in the past, but they are out of touch with modern life. The struggles we face now (such as exposure to a negative stream of news and unfriendly comments on social media) require a new kind of coping mechanism: positive reminders.

Positive reminders are reminders to be positive when everything around you feels downright negative. The problems we have – mental illness, relationship troubles or anxiety about world events – are, of course, worth worrying about, but negative thinking does not help solve them. On the contrary, a downward spiral of negative thoughts can stunt productivity and make us feel like shutting out the world. Positive reminders, on the other hand, offer a healthier perspective, making us more receptive to creativity and change.

How to Use Positive Reminders

Positive reminders come in many different forms, but they only work when practiced regularly. Here are just some of the ways you can incorporate positivity into your daily routine.

• Repeating positive mantras: Positive mantras can be incredibly effective at improving mental strength, boosting confidence and giving you a more upbeat perspective. To benefit from positive mantras, choose a phrase or affirmation and repeat it daily. Say it out loud in the mirror, write it on a post-it note and stick it above your bed, or write it down in your positivity journal. Examples include:
  
  “I choose to see good in every day”
  
  “I will live in the light.”
  
  “I am strong, capable and confident.”
   
• Collect positive reminders and quotes: When you need a reminder that the world is mostly good, it helps to draw wisdom from others. Flick through your favorite self-help books or search the Internet for a dose of mind-medicine. You can keep these quotes in a folder on your phone or write them down in a notebook to look at when you need a pick-me-up.
   
• Set yourself positive reminders for the day: Take advantage of the “reminders” function on your phone. Instead of using it to schedule tasks and work prompts, set reminders throughout the day to boost your mood such as “You got this” or “Stay strong.” This is a great thing to do for a loved one who is struggling, too.
   
• Download a positive reminders app: Collecting positive reminders can be time-consuming, so if you’re really pushed for time, let your phone do the hard work. Download an app like Happify that will send you positive messages and prompts throughout the day.

Life can be hard, with or without a mental illness, which is why everyone could use a little extra positivity in their day. By harnessing the power of positive reminders, you will welcome good vibes into your life.

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Self-help books for anxiety can be excellent tools for empowering you to reduce anxiety’s power and live well. They can be used on their own or paired with therapy. The right anxiety self-help books aren’t just feel-good words but instead offer legitimate substance to help with stress and anxiety.

Not all books are created equally. Dr. Srini Pillay, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School (2017), asserts that self-help books and programs can be quite beneficial as long as they are credible. To help people assess quality, Pillay uses a system he calls REST. REST is an acronym representing what we should look for in anxiety self-help books:

• Research. A self-help book should be based on research, not just someone’s thoughts about reducing anxiety. To determine if the book is researched-based, check for a bibliography at the end of the book. If there is a list of references, it means the author based the book on proven ideas and approaches to reducing anxiety. A lack of references means the author used his or her own ideas rather than evidence-based ideas.
• Expertise. What are the author’s qualifications? An author with an advanced degree, such as a master’s degree, MD, Ph.D., Psy.D., or Ed.D. typically has more academic training in the topic of his or her self-help book. Licensure in a field, such as social work or counseling, also points to credibility and experience.
• Self-Applicable. Does the book appeal to you? A book could be the best anxiety self-help book in the entire world, but if it doesn’t resonate with you or provide the type of information you’re looking for, it’s useless to you. Some self-help books address thoughts while others address feelings and still others address behaviors. What are you looking for? Seek out books that you find personally helpful.
• Trustworthy. Anxiety self-help books that claim to have quick-fix approaches or the ability to solve all problems are based on false claims and false hope. As much as we all want to get rid of anxiety completely and quickly, that’s not realistic. Beware the book that seems like a magic wand.

These guidelines will help you find self-help books that move you forward rather than waste your time.

7 of the Best Self-Help Books for Anxiety

There is a good number of credible anxiety self-help books available. The following list adheres to the REST method of assessment and contains seven of the best self-help books for anxiety, listed alphabetically by title.

1. The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook by Edmund J. Bourne, Ph.D. While a bit long, this is an outstanding resource to help people master their own inner and outer lives. It contains a wealth of valuable, practice information that is user-friendly and easy to read. It also contains helpful exercises so readers can immediately apply what they’re learning.
2. Break Free: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in 3 Steps by Tanya J. Peterson, MS, NCC. This self-workbook teaches readers to use the principles of acceptance and commitment therapy to break the chains of anxiety and general unhappiness and create their version of a high-quality life.
3. The Feeling Good Handbook by David D. Burns, MD. This comprehensive book helps people overcome both anxiety and depression using cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). The book provides information to help readers understand the role thoughts play in anxiety and guides readers as they apply that knowledge to change anxious thoughts.
4. Maximum Mental Health: Overcome Depression, Anxiety and other Mental Illnesses with 20 Principles for Happier and Healthier Living by Aleks George Srbinoski, MS. Great depth in a relatively short self-help book, Maximum Mental Health provides a practical, usable approach to overcoming problems such as anxiety in order to live well.
5. The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Anxiety: A Guide to Breaking Free From Anxiety, Phobias, and Worry Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy by John P. Forsyth, Ph.D., and Georg H. Eifert, Ph.D. This anxiety self-help book allows readers to use proven tools and strategies to address anxiety and fear and take meaningful action toward their goals.
6. A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook by Bob Stahl, Ph.D. and Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. This easy-to-use self-help book responds to panic, anxiety and stress in a constructive way. Readers create balance in their lives using a clinically proven mindfulness-based program.
7. Mindfulness for Beginners: Reclaiming the Present Moment—and Your Life by Jon Kabat-Zinn. A very useful addition to any anxiety self-help book list is a mindfulness self-help book. Mindfulness is an important component of many anxiety-reducing approaches, but it’s not always easy to practice. This book puts mindfulness in your reach so you can use it to beat anxiety.

Check your favorite bookstore or online to examine these books that are among the best self-help books for anxiety. Choose the right one for you.

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