How To Treat Anxiety Disorder Without Medication

Are you experiencing debilitating anxiety? The Drake Institute of Neurophysical Medicine provides a safe and effective drug-free treatment for anxiety disorders such as Panic Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Social Anxiety Disorder, as well as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Obsessive-Compulsive disorder (OCD).

For over 40 years, our pioneering clinical biofeedback and neurofeedback treatments have helped our patients find lasting relief. To get help reducing or resolving your anxiety symptoms and achieving a better quality of life, call us at 1-800-700-4233 or fill out our free consultation form.

Understanding Anxiety Disorders

According to the DSM-V, anxiety may become a disorder when the worry and fear becomes excessive and persists for at least six months. To be officially diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, you must also exhibit at least three of the following anxiety-related symptoms:

• Restlessness
• Fatigue
• Difficulty concentrating
• Irritability
• Muscle tension
• Sleep disturbances

Whether or not you have an official diagnosis, elevated levels of anxiety can negatively affect your quality of life and pose a significant risk to your health.

What Makes Anxiety So Dangerous?

Anxiety is a normal emotion often experienced during challenging life events, including relationship conflicts, work deadlines, parenting challenges, and other day to day pressures, but when anxiety becomes severe, out of proportion to the situation, or produces physical symptoms, it can become debilitating.

When you experience anxiety, your body activates its “fight or flight” response, releasing adrenaline and causing many immediate physical changes, including:

• Cardiovascular changes (increased blood pressure and heart rate, and sometimes, irregular heart rhythms)
• Muscle tensions (especially in the face and shoulders)
• Digestive issues (slowed or inhibited digestion, cramps)
• Physical symptoms (cold or clammy hands and shortness of breath)
• Increased blood sugar
• Weakened immune system functioning

These changes can lead to serious health problems if your anxiety becomes chronic. In fact, Research from Harvard Medical School proves just how dangerous chronic anxiety can be. In a Harvard Health Letter, they report that patients with heart disease who suffer from anxiety are twice as likely to experience a heart attack.

Beyond implications for heart health, chronic anxiety can also cause a variety of other health problems, including:

• Digestive or gastrointestinal issues
• Fatigue
• Restlessness
• Headaches or migraines
• Muscle tension
• Palpitations, tachycardia, or high blood pressure
• Dizziness or light-headedness
• Irritability and/or emotional over-reactivity
• Fear or worry
• Feelings of overwhelm
• Low self-esteem
• Social avoidance
• Difficulty concentrating/racing thoughts
• Insomnia
• Depression

What To Do If You Suffer From Anxiety

If you or a loved one are suffering from anxiety, it is important to seek professional help.

While medication is commonly suggested for treating anxiety and anxiety-related disorders, decades of clinical experience suggest that our non-drug treatment is much more likely to lead to lasting improvement. The problem with drug-based treatment is that it can cause unwanted side effects and dependency, while also only providing temporary relief, since as soon as the drugs wear off, anxiety symptoms are likely to return.

And while there are currently a whole host of non-drug treatments marketed as solutions for reducing anxiety, many of them are not clinically validated and fail to deliver effective long-term results.

At the Drake Institute, we regularly see patients who have already attempted various techniques like meditation, breathing exercises, mindfulness practices and other approaches that can be beneficial, but not as deeply beneficial and healing as biofeedback and brain map-guided neurofeedback. Without psychophysiologic feedback, either through biofeedback or neurofeedback, you may just be relaxing to a lower level of tension, but not reaching and experiencing true psychophysical relaxation, where maximum healing occurs.

The feedback is what allows the patient to know if they’re doing it correctly or not.

Drake’s Unique Non-Drug Anxiety Treatment

Over the last forty years, the Drake Institute has developed a unique and highly successful approach to treating anxiety, particularly where other treatments were not fully effective. We have successfully treated patients experiencing anxiety and anxiety-related disorders like:

• Generalized Anxiety Disorder
• Panic Disorder (and Panic Attacks)
• Agoraphobia
• Separation Anxiety Disorder
• Social Anxiety Disorder
• Specific Phobias
• Selective Mutism

Our treatment protocols utilize advanced biofeedback and neurofeedback to reduce anxiety symptoms. Here’s how our treatment works:

First, we use Biofeedback to measure several physiologic indicators of anxiety, including muscle tension, hand temperature, galvanic skin response, and heart rate variability.

Next, we develop an individualized treatment program designed to help the patient reduce tension levels to normal, also utilizing biofeedback, brain map-guided Neurofeedback and LORETA neurofeedback when indicated. These treatment technologies provide real-time visual and auditory feedback to teach you how to reduce abnormal tension levels, restoring a healthy physiological balance to your body and brain.

While traditional relaxation techniques like meditation may help you feel calmer, our clinical biofeedback treatment typically helps patients reach deeper levels of relaxation than they can achieve on their own by confirming when they’re truly relaxing or not.  By developing self-regulation ability and skills, this can create lasting changes in how your body responds to stress.

Unlike medication, which only works while you're taking it, our treatment helps you develop lifelong skills you can use to reduce anxiety via self-regulation techniques. In short, we will teach you to shift out of “fight or flight” mode naturally so that you can maintain better emotional balance and prevent anxiety from taking you over again.

Contact The Drake Institute Today!

Our comprehensive non-drug treatment addresses both the physical and neurological causes of anxiety, helping you to reduce or resolve symptoms naturally.

If you or a loved one are experiencing anxiety, we can help you achieve a better quality of life. Call us at 1-800-700-4233 or fill out our free consultation form to get started.