*Please note that I wrote this article as my personal story, not as medical advice on how my anxiety, depression, and panic attacks were healed naturally. These are the things that helped me the most and I have not required medicine for healing. Please, please please feel free to email me at anytime if you have questions! steph@debtfreespending.com.
During my first year of college I had my first panic attack. I remember thinking I was having a heart attack. My mom is a nurse so she had me go to the Emergency Room, and they referred me to my doctor because of heart palpitations. I wore the 24 hour halter monitor, and everything came back fine. However, I wasn’t fine. I was miserable. Growing up I had bouts of anxiety but never depression. I was active in school, played sports, accompanied the Glee Club on the piano, and never felt depressed.
College was totally different. I was under a lot of pressure, and wasn’t exercising as much. When March hit so did the depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. I met my husband that same year and we were married a year later. I tried everything – anti-depressants (which I stopped shortly after because my reflux was so bad), counseling, hypnosis tapes, and just about everything in between.
I had some faith, but I was having so many back-to-back panic attacks I didn’t go to classes for a week or work. I thought I wasn’t going to survive this and I was terrified. I clung to the Bible. I read it everyday for the first few weeks, and while it did help, I would spontaneously have them at different places which was incredibly embarrassing. I was desperate and wanted to be better instantly. As someone who had never struggled with depression much I hated the feelings – the hopelessness, the fear, anxiety. These were definitely not my normal feelings.
While it took a few years to completely get them under control, I’ve still never taken medicine because of my family history of stomach problems. It forced me to find other ways to control my feelings, thoughts, and my physical body. Several doctors did help me figure out some of the things that made me predisposed to panic attacks, such as the worst deviated septum my ENT had ever seen (I can’t chew food with my mouth closed on a good day), and significant allergies which kept my adrenaline/histamine levels high pretty much constantly.
Two things that did help me get some quick relief were to take an anti-histamine everyday (I wasn’t and still haven’t had the deviated septum surgery), and also learning to control my breathing. When I first feel like I’m hyperventilating (which happens VERY rarely anymore) I breath out fairly forcefully a few times (like 1-3). Hyperventilating causes over oxygenation in your body and forcefully breathing out helps with oxygen/carbon dioxide levels. You can also walk up stairs or exercise because it helps decrease over oxygenation. Also, taking deep cleansing breaths can help as well.
While I’m saying all this, I still dealt with the thoughts and fears in my mind. While I realize that not everyone has faith in God, when you can’t turn to medicine you have to turn to God. It forces you to rely on Him, so I went to Him. Every.Single,Day. and sometimes minute by minute. I learned to pray and talk to God naturally, so I was constantly telling Him, I’m feeling nervous, please help me through this.
I sought out what the Bible had to say about anxiety and depression and learned there were a ton of people who struggled with both in there! I had never really given much thought to what I was thinking about, so I read an extremely good book called The Battlefield of the Mind, which helped me realize that my thoughts were extremely negative. My thoughts about myself, my life, and just about everything in general were fairly negative.
Spiritually I was a mess, and I knew it. I also started asking God to help me through these moments, and He would totally work things out in a way I would have never imagined. I eventually learned the one thing that helped me the most – that I could trust Him to take care of me. He had provided for me time after time in those times of anxiety and depression, and I started having glimpses of joy! Eventually I had less and less feelings of depression, and while the anxiety still tries to attack me at times, I haven’t struggled with anything even comes close to those feelings when I was in college.
I was concerned about postpartum depression after my son was born last year (one of the benefits of adopting our first son was that I never struggled with the physical changes of pregnancy). While I did have baby blues for about one month, that eventually subsided but I also have a more unshakable faith now that I’m older. HOWEVER, I do want to say that anyone who struggles with postpartum should definitely let their doctor know, and I was super concerned that I might still need meds no matter how strong my faith was, and I think some woman definitely need medication. I was just worried that if I did how would I take them with my stomach issues.
I have to interject here that having faith and going to church are two different things. I love God, and I love other people who identify as Christians (and I also love those who don’t). However, going to church did (and still does at times) produce amazing amounts of anxiety because the one place you want to go for unconditional love is often filled with the most judgmental people. Please know that I’m not bashing church. I go regularly, but I have to say that my faith in God has increased because of talking to Him and spending time with him daily. I actually go to church to encourage others, not to be encouraged (even though there are many times I’m encouraged at church, and other times I’m discouraged).
So, my personal relationship with God has helped me more than anything else- more than any other tip I’m going to give you, that is the one thing that has healed my mind and my thoughts. Think about what you are thinking about for 2-3 days and I’m sure you may see a negative pattern too! I can assure you that I’ve tried just changing my thoughts on my own, and the only way to get healing in this area was to let God do it for and with me!
Exercise. I can’t say enough. Everything about my body changes for the good when I exercise. My mood, my stress and anxiety levels, even my stomach. After prayer and my relationship with God, this is the next line of defense for me. I can’t stress enough how much exercise makes a difference, especially if you want to be healed naturally.
Positive Relationships. I also learned eventually to get rid of all the “junk” people in my life. If they were filling my life with junk, they were gone, or I talked to them on a very limited basis. Please note that I did go through several very rough times because sometimes these were family members. However, once I eliminated them (or drastically decreased the amount of time I spent with them), I felt SO MUCH BETTER! Yes, so much that it requires all capital letters!!! You need to value yourself more than those that try to hurt you and sometimes this means eliminating them from your life – even if its a parent, sibling, or heaven forbid, a grown child.
Surrounding myself with positive people was essential. Seek out those positive people in your life and tell them you need some extra encouragement right now! One positive relationship may be a counselor as well. Even though I was a person of faith, and God had moved mountains for me, I sometimes needed people in my life to ask the right questions or help me see things from a different angle. Counseling helped me realize things about myself that I couldn’t see from inside my own head. I did seek out counselors that shared my same faith as well, which really helped.
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