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Areas › Worry and anxiety › Treatment and medication
The list is usually short and dull: the light on a charger, the pile of unfinished things on the chair, the television, the clock you keep checking. Change one item this week rather than all of them. Doing this before reaching for something to help you sleep is not a lecture about willpower, it is simply cheaper and it lasts longer.
This explains how treatments work. Never start, stop or change a medication because of something you read here.
Unless they change what is in themselves (Quran 13:11). The change described begins with the people themselves, which is a fair description of a room you have decided to sort out.
الرعد
لَهُۥ مُعَقِّبَٰتࣱ مِّنۢ بَيۡنِ يَدَيۡهِ وَمِنۡ خَلۡفِهِۦ يَحۡفَظُونَهُۥ مِنۡ أَمۡرِ ٱللَّهِۗ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَا يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِقَوۡمٍ حَتَّىٰ يُغَيِّرُواْ مَا بِأَنفُسِهِمۡۗ وَإِذَآ أَرَادَ ٱللَّهُ بِقَوۡمࣲ سُوٓءࣰ ا فَلَا مَرَدَّ لَهُۥۚ وَمَا لَهُم مِّن دُونِهِۦ مِن وَالٍ
each person has guardian angels before him and behind, watching over him by God’s command. God does not change the condition of a people [for the worse] unless they change what is in themselves, but if He wills harm on a people, no one can ward it off–– apart from Him, they have no protector
Qur’an 13:11read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
For a sense of what ordinary changes can do, strength training has been tested for anxiety in randomised trials and reduced symptoms in both healthy people and people with a physical or mental illness. The effect is modest but real, and it comes from something that is not a therapy at all. That work was not about sleep or bedrooms, so take it as encouragement for non-medical changes rather than as evidence for this particular exercise.
Gordon BR, McDowell CP, Lyons M, Herring MP. (2017). The Effects of Resistance Exercise Training on Anxiety: A Meta-Analysis and Meta-Regression Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.. Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
A photograph shows you the room as it is rather than the room you are used to.
Nothing you take can act on something that is not there to be acted on. It is a plain limit, and it explains a good deal of the disappointment people carry about treatment.
There is an older antihistamine used for anxiety that works by making you drowsy and carries no risk of dependence. It suits a rough stretch, and it is a bridge rather than somewhere to settle.
Something that settles a surge of panic within minutes and something that changes how often the surges come are doing two different jobs. A person can need both, and it helps to say which is which.