"Let me know if there is anything I can do..." we often tell a friend who lives with a chronic illness. I've offered this numerous times, but there are very few times someone has actually felt comfortable calling and asking me to help them out. When a friend is in pain we may try to warm her spirit with a dish hot from the oven.

“I’m sick and tired of hearing about stress,” he said. “I read about it in magazines and the newspaper, they talk about it on the radio and air it on T.V. That’s all they talk about at work. Stress, stress, stress. So what’s the big deal? ”

He had come for hypnotherapy because he suffered from IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome and had been told that hypnotherapy might help him. He was also seriously overweight. After the introductions, I asked him to describe the stress in his life. He responded by telling me he had no stress. A summary? His job was perfect. His marriage was perfect. His schedule was perfect. His children were perfect. Even the dog was perfect. (I didn’t ask him about his daily commute to and from work. I just couldn’t believe that driving the freeway in rush hour could be continuously perfect).

Does life in the “fast lane” leave you feeling overwhelmed? Do you find that even a relatively routine decision makes you feel stressed? Perhaps stress relief dietary supplements could solve your frequent feelings of anxiety. Perhaps you would benefit from learning more about the benefits of vitamin supplements for stress.

Out of the blue, you feel terror. Your heart is pounding. You're dizzy and you can't catch your breath. You begin to sweat profusely and perhaps even feel pain in your chest. You're certain that you're on the brink of a heart attack--or even, as inexplicable as it may seem, fear you're going to die. You may have just had a panic attack.

In anxious situations, you will react emotionally, cognitively and behaviorally. The following are examples of how you might experience these situations:

When severe anxiety emerges and persists, our lives seem to take on a pervasive pall. We're convinced we'll never feel like ourselves again, that no one could understand what we're going through. Sometimes anxiety is milder, not so devastating, not so disabling, not so constant--but disturbing and bothersome nonetheless.

An anxiety disorder can make you to feel chronically distressed, uneasy and frightened (even to the point of prolonged panic). Left untreated, an anxiety disorder can dramatically reduce your daily productivity, as well as steadily erode your overall quality of life. Fortunately, there are effective treatments that can bring relief.

The most important aspect of effectively managing a crisis is keeping hope alive even when it appears to be lost. Often, crisis becomes tragic or needlessly agonizing because those involved completely give up hope that change can occur or better times are within sight. Although keeping hope alive in a crisis might appear to be a gift that only a few people have, the truth is that anyone can keep hope alive in a crisis situation simply by acknowledging those circumstances over which they have no control, and also accepting the responsibility to respond and act appropriately to aspects of the situation over which they do have some control.

How could you possibly prepare for a test, meet a deadline or psych yourself up for an important event without at least a few butterflies flitting through your stomach? "Some level of anxiety is probably healthy," says Jack Maser, M.D., a psychiatrist with the National Institutes of Mental Health. "It motivates you to get up and do something."