Anxiety medications can be of a pharmaceutical or natural herbal type.
Mainstream medicine offers a variety of sedative medications, and sleeping pills.
Antidepressants are often prescribed.
Sometimes people suffering from severe anxiety will experience mood swings between anxiety and depression and may also experience intense anger against themselves or the world because of their situation.
Taking medication for anxiety will often help a person deal with the intense rollercoaster of emotions that sometimes occurs when people are suffering from intense anxiety.
Just as people can feel happy or sad, anxiety and depression represent different sides of the same emotional axis.
The difficulty with taking any medication for the purpose of assisting with the management of anxiety or depression is that, generally speaking, when the extremes of emotion are stabilized, people feel comfortable, which is good, but because of this they may not be pro active in taking any steps to make their circumstances better.
Sometimes people can remain on medication for a long time without addressing the causes of their anxiety or depression.
Feelings of anxiety may be contained but with little progress made towards full recovery.
There is no doubt that in severe cases of anxiety, the use of powerful pharmaceutical drugs can be helpful, as people cannot begin to work on recovery when they are in severe emotional pain.
However, there has to be an acceptance that remaining reliant upon any form of medication is not in the longer term ever the best solution.
The many herbal remedies, being of a natural type, generally do not have the same impact as manufactured products.
However, using natural products means that you will not have to suffer the side effects which can come with using synthetic drug products.
Herbs and products used medicinally for anxiety include valerian, St John's Wort, basil, hops, lavender, kava, sandlewood oils, reishi, lemon balm and passion flower.
Herbal products can be made up as infusions, tinctures, tonics or lotions providing effective symptomatic relief for anxiety and stress.
The problem with all medications intended to provide symptomatic relief is that people may be happy enough to regard taking the medication as being a final solution, ceasing medication when they feel better and returning to it when they feel unwell, rather than taking the time and making the effort to find a complete cure.
It has been said that good food is the best medicine - and there is much to recommend it.
By having a diet that is high in nutrients, your appetite will be encouraged, and in the direction of eating healthy food.
Many people who suffer from excessive anxiety either fail to eat at all - or over indulge in comfort foods.
Finding a good balance of satisfying and nutritious food provides a basic platform from which to start recovery from excessive anxiety and the disorders that it can cause.
It is as well to consider using dietary supplements in place of medications just as soon as you are able to come off the medications.
Dietary supplements may often include the same substances as are contained in the medicines.
In therapeutic, rather than medicinal dosage, these substances can then be used indefinitely to assist and promote optimal health and anxiety reduction.
Whilst using medications to assist a person to cope with extreme anxiety reactions is both humane and useful, using medication on a long term basis can be counter- productive to achieving full recovery.
If a person is no longer feeling so anxious about their situation, they may not put into place better strategies and methods of overcoming their anxiety and the essential reasons for it.
Stabilizing anxiety might make a person feel good, but at the expense of full recovery.