Hot and Cold Flashes and Anxiety

Treatment

When hot and cold flashes are caused or aggravated by other factors, addressing those factors can reduce and eliminate them.

When this symptom is caused by apprehensive behavior and the accompanying stress response changes, calming yourself will end the active stress response and its changes. This anxiety symptom should subside as your body recovers from the active stress response.

Keep in mind that it can take up to 20 minutes or more for the body to recover from a major stress response. But this is normal and needn’t be a cause for concern.

When this symptom is caused by hyperstimulation (chronic stress), eliminating hyperstimulation will end this anxiety symptom.

You can eliminate hyperstimulation by:

• Reducing stress.
• Containing anxious behavior (since anxiety stresses the body).
• Regular deep relaxation.
• Avoiding stimulants.
• Regular light to moderate exercise.
• Getting regular good sleep.
• Eating a healthy diet of whole and natural foods.
• Passively-accepting your symptoms until they subside.
• Being patient as your body recovers.

Visit our “60 Natural Ways To Reduce Stress” article for more ways to reduce stress.

Recovery Support members can view chapters 5, 6, 7, 14 and more for more detailed information about recovering from hyperstimulation and anxiety disorder.

As the body recovers from hyperstimulation, it stops sending symptoms of hyperstimulation, including hot and cold flashes.

However, eliminating hyperstimulation can take much longer than most people think, causing symptoms to linger longer than expected. This is why patience is required as the body recovers.

In the meantime, remember, as long as the body is even slightly hyperstimulated, it can exhibit symptoms of any type, number, intensity, duration, frequency, and at any time, including hot and cold flashes.

Even so, since this symptom is a common symptom of stress, including anxiety-caused stress, it's harmless and needn't be a cause for concern. It will subside when unhealthy stress has been eliminated, and the body has had sufficient time to recover and stabilize. Therefore, there is no reason to worry about it.

Since worrying and becoming upset about anxiety symptoms stress the body, these behaviors can interfere with recovery.

Passively accepting your symptoms – allowing them to persist without reacting to, resisting, worrying about, or fighting them – while doing your recovery work will cause their cessation in time.

Acceptance, practice, and patience are key to recovery.

Since the body can take a long time to recover from hyperstimulation, it's best to faithfully work at your recovery despite the lack of apparent progress. However, you will succeed in time if you persevere with your recovery work.

You must also do your recovery work FIRST before your body can recover. The cumulative effects of your recovery work will produce results down the road. And the body's stimulation has to diminish before symptoms can subside.

Nevertheless, eliminating hyperstimulation will bring results in time!

Focusing on your sensations and symptoms makes them more pronounced. If you'd like to lessen their impact, learn to focus your attention elsewhere through distraction, enjoying your hobbies, undertaking pleasing and calming activities, regular deep relaxation, and recalling pleasant memories or experiences.

Short-term strategies

While your goal is to address this symptom for the long term using the strategies mentioned, there are a few things you can do to reduce this symptom in the meantime:

• Keep yourself calm – Keeping yourself calm can quickly reduce and shut off this symptom. The better you calm yourself, the faster you can minimize and eliminate this symptom.

• Contain your worry and fretting – Containing worry and fretting can help keep you calm. As mentioned above, the better you contain, the faster you can minimize your sensations and symptoms, including this one.

• Get regular good sleep – Regular good sleep can help reduce stress- and anxiety-caused sensations and symptoms, including this one.

• Reduce as much stress as you can – The more stressed the body becomes, the more symptomatic it can become. Reducing stress will reduce stress’s sensations and symptoms, including this one.

• Avoid stimulants – Stimulants can irritate the nervous system, which can aggravate existing stress- and anxiety-caused sensations and symptoms. Eliminating stimulants can help calm down the nervous system, making it less reactive and symptomatic.

Therapy

Unidentified and unaddressed underlying factors cause issues with anxiety. As such, they are the primary reason why anxiety symptoms persist.

Addressing your underlying factors (Level Two recovery) is most important if you want lasting success.

Addressing Level Two recovery can help you:

• Contain anxious behavior.
• Become unafraid of anxiety symptoms and the strong feelings of anxiety.
• End anxiety symptoms.
• Successfully address the underlying factors that so often cause issues with anxiety.
• End what can feel like out-of-control worry.

All our recommended anxiety therapists have had anxiety disorder and overcame it. Their personal experience with anxiety disorder and their Master's Degree and above professional training give them insight other therapists don't have.

If you want to achieve lasting success over anxiety disorder, any one of our recommended therapists would be a good choice.

Working with an experienced anxiety disorder therapist is the most effective way to treat anxiety disorder, especially if you have persistent symptoms and difficulty containing anxious behavior, such as worry.[9][10][11]

In many cases, working with an experienced therapist is the only way to overcome stubborn anxiety.

Research has shown that therapy is the most effective treatment for anxiety disorder, and distance therapy (via phone or the Internet) is equally, if not more effective, than face-to-face in-person therapy.[12][13][14]