So you finally have a name for it.  For as long as you can remember, you were sure you were just a worrier.  Now you know that your problem is called GAD: Generalized Anxiety Disorder.

But now what?

If you exhaust all other possibilities, you may need to seek professional help.  If you have extreme and debilitating stress, this is certainly the recommended method.  But short of that, there are several self-help techniques to deal with your stress.

Disrupt Your Irrational Train of Thought

The core of GAD is the illogical thoughts that ignite our worries.  If you can analyze your thoughts and replace them with more rational and reasonable replacements, you can usually rob your anxieties of their fuel.  For example, if the first signs of your nervousness start when you put your kids on the bus in the morning, you might start working through your train of thoughts right then.  You might wonder how long your city has been around and how very few school bus incidents have occurred there.  You might think about how unlikely it would be that even if you kid’s bus got in an incident, that your kid would even get minor injuries given that the bus doesn’t go on highways and how big the bus is relative to other cars.

By beginning on a more rational set of thoughts like this, you may be able to suck out the power of your anxiety and get it back to its normal level.  This is exactly the approach that a specialized therapist would take with you in behavior modication, but why shell out the dough when you can teach it to yourself.

Create a Less Stressful, Healthier, Lifestyle

There is no replacement for living well.  The key to combatting nervousness is reducing stress.  One of the best ways of reducing anxiety is creating a healthier, less stressful lifestyle for yourself. 

Often our anxieties are heightened by our jobs and/or our love relationships.  You may simply have a job that is inherently high on the anxiety scale.  Police officers and Wall Street brokers, for example, are not likely to discover ways of relieving their on-the-job anxiety.

Most of us, however, do not work in fields that are inherently stressful.  If you find you’re overwhelmed by your workload, perhaps you can ask for help or to work weekends to help you keep up.  Reasonable employers will usually respond in a responsible manner to such requests if you frame your request as an increase in productivity for them.

The other area that can be the source of a great deal of worry is your personal relationships.  If you have problems in your family or with a close loved one, these issues can often lead to problems with your nerves.   If you have a recurring personal issue, the most effective way of making sure that it does not create added stress is to deal with it head on.  Sometimes therapy or a greater emphasis on communication can really have positive effects.

Exercise and Diet

Exercise and diet are a couple of the less noticed ways of reducing your anxiety level.  Making your anxieties into your impetus for running or weight lifting can really change the whole dynamic of your problem.  People who exercise regularly report much lower worry levels.

Diet and rest should not be overlooked in this equation either.  Eating well, minimizing your intake of harmful drugs like caffeine and nicotine and having a full night's sleep can really have beneficial long and short-term effects on your overall health.

Relaxation Techniques

There are several kinds of relaxation approaches that you can use to bring your anxieties under control as well.

Of the general anxiety disorder treatments we have noted, relaxation methods are the ones that confront the actual episodes of anxiety you suffer during the day.  When you feel stressed out and your thoughts get going, this is one of the best approaches you can adopt.

Build Your Support Network

Finally, there is no substitute for a circle of friends and family that you can summon when things get out of hand. A caring shoulder to cry on and a trusted confidante to listen to your nervousness can really go a long way toward dampening the flames of anxiety.

Even if you do all of this, however, it may not be what is needed to get rid of your GAD.  Some of us are simply genetically predisposed to it.  In the end, you may need to seek professional psychological services.  But until then, you should keep on doing what you are doing now, getting information about your condition and trying new ways of treating it.