Photo Credit: Freepik.com

Can therapy help me if I’m feeling anxious?

The essential symptom of anxiety is excessive worry, people who have anxiety find it difficult to control the anxiety and worry, which is often accompanied by restlessness, being easily fatigued, having difficulty concentrating, irritability, muscle tension and disturbed sleep. They often find it difficult to complete simple tasks if it involves any amount of anxiety around the task. Anxiety can also arise specifically during social scenarios, this is referred to as social anxiety disorder, it is characterized by an intense fear in social situations that results in considerable distress and in turn impacts on a person’s ability to function effectively in aspects of their daily life. Central to the disorder is a fear of being judged by others and of being embarrassed or humiliated. This leads to the avoidance of a number of social situations and often impacts significantly on educational and vocational performance. There are many courses of action that someone that has anxiety can choose to better help deal with it. They could either get on medication or give therapy a try.

Therapy can be a great tool that can help with anxiety, these are some of the ways therapy can help anxious people: 

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT): CBT is widely used by therapists to help people with anxiety disorders. CBT is very effective in treating various forms of anxiety such as social anxiety, generalized anxiety etc. CBT addresses negative patterns and distortions in the way we look at the world and ourselves. Since CBT focuses on thought patterns, therapists can use CBT to help clients identify negative patterns and recommend changes to better their overall experience in dealing with anxious scenarios. With the help of CBT therapists can teach their clients to recognize when and why they are anxious and also highlight how it feels in their body, it also teaches them coping skills and relaxation methods to mitigate their anxiety and panic.

Exposure Therapy: Anxiety often results in people wanting to reduce their encounters with anxiety. One of the ways that people do this is by steering clear of the situations that make them anxious. The body often gives off a sign of anxiety, which may result in people avoiding interaction. Aside from the inconvenience factor, the problem with avoiding your fears is that you never have the chance to overcome them. 

These are some of the things clients can expect to learn during their therapy sessions to help deal with their anxiety:

Identifying Triggers: Learning to identify the specific situations, thoughts, or behaviors that often lead to anxiety. Identifying these can help clients reframe their thought process and increase overall self-awareness

Developing Coping Strategies: These are tools and techniques that clients can use to manage their anxiety symptoms. 

Improving Emotional Regulation: Clients could learn skills that better help them regulate their emotions and reduce the intensity of their anxiety responses.

Addressing Underlying Issues: Sometimes anxiety is linked to deeper issues such as past trauma or unresolved conflicts. Therapy can be an essential tool to help surface the unresolved and buried trauma. 

Building Resilience: Therapy can also help clients build resiliency, making it easier to cope with stress and prevent future episodes of anxiety.

Overcoming an anxiety disorder takes time and commitment. Therapy involves facing your fears rather than avoiding them, so sometimes you’ll feel worse before you get better. The important thing is to stick with treatment with a therapist you trust. Our therapists at ImPerfect  can assist you cope better with your anxiety.