Anxiety Causes, Symptoms & Prevalence
Most people experience a short term episode of sadness, hopelessness or frustration at least once in their lifetime as a normal and human reaction to challenges and extraordinary events. Anxiety by itself belongs to the normal range of human emotions and might be a mere expression of “the blues”. However, some have to cope with this mental burden even for several years. They worry and fear constantly causing such an overwhelming distress that it interferes with the person’s ability to lead a normal life. This is referred to as anxiety disorder, which is a serious mental illness of the brain.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health anxiety disorders are the most common mental illnesses in the U.S. affecting 18% of the population, whereof women are twice as likely to develop it as men. Anxiety disorders are often accompanied by depressions.
Read More“Very often, we find that people have more than one condition – both depression and anxiety disorder” says Charles Goodstein, MD a professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine. In a NIMH funded study researchers proved that more than 40 percent of people suffering from a specific form of anxiety disorder also developed a depression.
What Causes Anxiety and Depression?
- Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) stems from a terrifying event, violent assault, military combat, accident or a natural disaster
- Often triggered by life events such as financial, relationship, and family problems
- In general, the exact cause for anxiety disorder is largely unknown. But it is not the result of poor upbringing or personal weakness
- Mostly caused by a combination of factors including changes in the brain and environmental stress
What are the symptoms of Anxiety?
Symptoms can be as severe as they interfere with your ability to work, sleep, study, eat, and enjoy life. Physical symptoms are sweating, nausea, dry mouth, palpitation, shortness of breath, dizziness, cold and sweaty hands/feet, muscle tension and aches and trembling and twitching. As for the emotional symptoms, patients may experience disturbed sleep, nervousness, poor concentration, irritability and may have feelings of panic, fear and uneasiness.Holistic Approach to Anxiety & Depression
Conventional medicine usually prescribes a combination of psychotherapy and antidepressants to treat anxiety disorders or depressions. In 2010 antidepressants were the second most commonly prescribed medications in the U.S. However, in most cases it only suppresses the symptoms and can turn into a dangerous toxic medication when used in the wrong place.
Balance Health offers integrated treatments that are geared to each other and will be customized for your individual health condition and your personal needs. Benefit from:
- a holistic and integrated therapy plan to balance your body, mind & spirit
- an immediate revitalization of your energy levels
- improved sleep
- the non-toxic nature of our treatments
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Effective Anxiety Treatment and Depression Treatment Methods
Stress Management Counselling
EMDR is an evidence-based therapeutic intervention that uses the client’s own eye movements to dampen distressing thoughts. It is effective at helping you resolve thoughts and feelings related to disturbing life events. It is also particularly effective for solving performance anxiety and limiting beliefs. It removes mental blocks that may impede sustained efforts when reaching for a goal, by addressing the past experiences that create those blocks. EMDR has been the object of numerous research and studies where its safety and efficacy have been proven.
1. First consultation: In-depth interview about medical report, symptoms, personality, and lifestyle factors (1.5-2 hrs)
2. Analysis: evaluating body, mind and emotions
3. Medical application: prescribing customized remedies (within the first consultation or the day after)
4. Follow-up Consultation: observing the health condition and healing process (5-7 days later)
Energetic Kinesiology
Energetic Kinesiology is a complementary alternative healing therapy that uses calming and muscle testing techniques to unlock and assess the wisdom of your body to find information about physical/ structural symptoms and mental/ emotional conditions. Muscle monitoring is used to detect imbalances in tissues or organs and to indentify how stress impacts on your body.
In today’s fast paced society we continuously expose our bodies to stress. The endless list of stress factors trigger a fight flight response in our endocrine system that releases adrenaline and cortisol, and simultaneously reduces the digestive and immune system. Ongoing overuse of this fight flight response is nowadays recognized to be the leading cause for depression.
One of the most important benefits of Kinesiology is its ability for reducing external and internal stress in your physical and mental state and creating the balance you need.
Know MoreSomatic Bodywork & Experiencing®
Somatic Bodywork aims at helping you move out of stressful situation, unease feeling of being stuck physically and emotionally so that you feel present, safe, creative and energetic in your body and life.
Somatic Experiencing® restores resilience to the body’s responses to stress and trauma, so you can respond to life’s challenges with increased energy, motivation, and clarity. This is done by gently and safely guiding individuals to develop increasing tolerance for difficult bodily sensations and suppressed emotions.
Know MoreAcupuncture
Acupuncture stimulates the nervous system and releases neurochemical messenger molecules triggering biochemical changes in the body’s homeostatic mechanisms. Those changes support the body’s self healing abilities and promote thereupon physical and emotional well-being.
Research (Hui, 2010) has shown that acupuncture treatment significantly benefit anxiety disorders and depression symptoms as specific areas of the brain are stimulated which are known to reduce sensitivity to pain and stress. Furthermore, acupuncture promotes relaxation of the “analytical brain” which is responsible for anxiety and worry. Chinese herbs help your body to restore the balance in your organs and to overcome mental pain. The prescription can be modified, allowing to tailor your treatment to your conditions and needs.
Know MoreThe Yuen Method
The Yuen Method has its roots in ancient Chinese Shalin temples and outshines by its simplicity as it can be applied anywhere and anytime without the necessity to physically touch the patient. More than half of our patients have never been physically present as skype or face time calls are absolutely sufficient. It is an energetic principle that looks at the human experience in its core components of body, mind and spirit. It believes that you are either ”strong or weak” to any given subject matter, person or situation.
The aim of the Yuen Method is to find this weakness, strengthen it and finally delete it. Our practitioner Victor Geronimo works to make sure that all levels of consciousness are harmonious. It works to remove energy blockages and help you to overcome any given problem - even your anxiety.
Know MoreHypnotherapy
Anxiety and depression are deeply rooted in the subconscious mind. They are only symptoms of more profound issues and problems arising from the lack of alignment in our inner self, which produces consequences in our outside world. Hypnotherapy enables us to go deep inside the subconscious and gaining the self-awareness necessary to “update” our belief system.
The reason hypnotherapy works so well is that it not only deals with the current issues, belief systems and behaviors effectively and quickly; it also deals with the source of the issue and with any emotion and trauma associated with it, clearing out the source root cause and empowering us to integrate a more healthy mindset for the future.
Know MoreBody Talk
The Body Talk system offers a unique, non-invasive, and supportive approach to searching below the surface of these often-debilitating disorders of anxiety and depression to help to reveal the contributive factors and associations that may be causing the nervous system to spin out of control.
BodyTalk recognizes the interrelatedness of the mind and body and understands the powerful effect that emotions, beliefs, memories, expectations, events, and environmental triggers can have on the way that each and every one of your 30 trillion cells function.
Situational symptoms can act as valuable messengers. A reaction, behaviour, or physical symptom can be a gateway to revealing outdated beliefs, expectations, and unexpressed emotions. A BodyTalk session helps you to understand the meaning behind the meltdown while disassociating the old programming that has perpetuated it.
Our practitioner Angie Tourani is Hong Kong’s only Advanced Certified BodyTalk Practitioner and Instructor. She specializes in working with emotional issues, anxiety, depression, insomnia, immune system weaknesses, and sensory integration disorder with both adults and children.
Know MoreMeditation
Meditation is a practice in which you experience the awareness of the present moment while focusing on your breath, thoughts or emotions. It includes a non-judgmental awareness of your own body and thoughts. Meditation is highly valued for its ability to reduce aches and stress. A meta analysis published in 2014 from the University of Baltimore proved that mindfulness meditation can help ease psychological stresses like anxiety, depression, and pain.
“People with anxiety have a problem dealing with distracting thoughts that have too much power. They can’t distinguish between a problem-solving thought and a nagging worry that has no benefit“, explains Dr. Elizabeth Hoge, a psychiatrist and assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She highly recommends mindfulness meditation for treating anxiety as patients are trained to experience their thoughts completely differently.
Join one of our meditation classes and experience the inner peace and calm that spreads throughout your body during the meditation!
Know MoreHeart Centre & Induction Healing
The Heart Centre & Induction Healing We gather, quiet ourselves and focus on our heart centre. A simple ritual will be performed to connect with the Four Attributes- Compassion, Innate Harmony, Healing Presence and Unconditional Love. Then you may lie down and let go of your thoughts. Katherine will put her hands on your Heart Centre, and the four attributes will be inducted. The Healing Energy from the Divine Heart Centre starts to operate- allow the healing energy from the Infinite Source of Divine to come forward and work on you.
Tuning Fork Therapy
The Tuning Fork Therapy A non- intrusive treatment that aims to assist the realignment and the ‘tuning” of human systems (inner world) and Universal Energy Field (outer world) with the sound and vibrations activated by different Tuning Forks. The Therapy is based on the belief that sound and vibrations pass through the body and elicit response within the body systems, while those systems in return response to the sound and vibrations that are activated by different tuning forks. With the interactive responses among the vibrations and the systems, the body resumes its path to have more harmony with the environment once again.
Our practitioner Katherine Wonghas the privilege to experience both East and West. She embraces and values her Chinese root while absorbing the essence of Western teachings. Blending both, she has developed her unique practice of healing, spirituality and meditation..
Know MoreEmotionally Focused Therapy
Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) for depression helps patients identify, utilize, and process emotions. Depression is caused by inhibited emotions and experiences, and the therapist provides a safe and soothing environment to reduce the anxiety and difficult emotions. Emotion-focused therapy includes three specific phases: Emotion Awareness, Emotion Regulation, and Emotion Utilization or Transformation.
EFT highlights the significance of emotional experience to find meaning and growth. The therapist provides guidance with experiences including feelings, memories, thoughts or bodily responses) to transform of unhealthy emotions, and allows you to live more in the present.
Emotion focused therapists work directly with emotion to help you manage your emotions using them to meet your needs and goals. In this treatment, you will learn how to distance yourself from emotions so you can have a healthy reaction to it. You will also be helped become resilient and change unhealthy emotional behaviour.
EFT has been proven effective for individuals suffering from depression, trauma (particularly related to childhood abuse or neglect), couples conflict/distress, and interpersonal problems, including unresolved feelings toward past significant others and complicated grief. EFT has been found to be as effective in the short term treatment of depression
Homeopathy & Coaching
The majority of people think that mental illnesses, like anxiety or depression, only derive from the mind. Thereupon, a lot of patients are scared of going mad. But the truth is, that there is no rational explanation for your symptoms! So you shouldn’t feel guilty just because you cannot switch it off. Our certified homeopath and counseling mentor will help you to overcome the mental burden in addressing the whole person: the physical, the mental and the emotional. His unique style of counseling and coaching enables you to change the negative way of thinking and to beat the blues. Homeopathic remedies support this process in triggering the body’s self-healing abilities. Homeopathy not only restores the balance of body, mind and emotions, but also heals the underlying mental or emotional toll you might be suffering from.
The benefits of this holistic approach result in the elimination of the root cause problem and restore naturally your balance without side effects.
Know MoreTraditional Chinese Medicine
TCM practitioners believe that physical health conditions are strongly connected to a person’s emotional state:
- Emotions are an integrated part of our organ functions and often the root cause of any disease
- The liver is the centre that governs our emotions
- The liver overheats when we feel constant anger
- As a consequence the liver qi becomes stagnant
- Long term negative emotions also badly influence the interdependent functioning of the heart and the kidney reproductive system
- A disturbance in one or more of these organs can cause an imbalanced emotional state
The holistic approach of TCM unblocks the liver qi and brings heart and kidney back to harmony.
Know MoreCustomer Testimonials
We support you in your journey to HEAL, GROW and FIND BLISS
I am truly grateful for the results I saw from treatments with Angie, which lead to be stable, grounded, healthy and deal with my work stress with positive state of mind.”