3 Ways Therapy Helps You Address Anxiety
Millions of people deal with stress and anxiety on a daily basis. Whether it’s a result of phobias, depressions, or post-traumatic stress, anxiety can take a toll on your mind and health.
If you frequently experience anxiety, you most likely have looked into ways you can help calm your emotional rollercoaster. Perhaps you’ve even tried some self-help techniques in the past. While these methods can provide some relief, it’s often temporary.
To free yourself from overwhelming anxiety once and for all, you’ve got to get to the root cause of it – the things underneath the surface that are many times outside of your awareness; the underlying factors. Therapy can help you identify and eliminate the distress that is created by these underlying factors.
If you are dealing with anxiety that creates suffering and debilitates you,
here are 3 ways therapy can help:
1. Uncover Root Causes
Like any other health issue, effective treatment gets to the root cause. For instance, your doctor can either prescribe a medication to try and manage your hypertension symptoms, or she can request you change your eating style and exercise, addressing the root causes of your high blood pressure.
A therapist will assist you in accessing your emotional world, guiding you to look more deeply into your thoughts and feelings so that you can uncover patterns. Often, unhealthy beliefs and thoughts lie at the root of anxiety. Once you identify what is causing your anxious feelings, your therapist can begin to work with you in creating a plan to help you face these underlying issues calmly and confidently.
2. Therapy Helps You Change Your Behaviors
We’ve just talked a little about therapy helping you uncover the thoughts and beliefs that are causing the anxiety. Those thoughts and beliefs are not only making you feel bad, they are causing you to have certain behaviors that may result in negative consequences.
For instance, your anxiety leads to insomnia or isolating yourself from intimate social connections. Therapy will help you make lifestyle and behavioral changes. You’ll learn how to manage your emotions in difficult situations so that you can be more relaxed and calm in the way you move through life. Therapy will help you to stop avoiding certain people and situations and develop a more balanced temperament.
3. Therapy Offers Continued Personalized Support
Making changes in your lifestyle or behavior can be very challenging, even when these changes are ultimately good for you. One of the biggest benefits of therapy is that it offers continual personalized support. Your therapist wants to see you succeed and will offer encouragement and guidance without judgement.
If you’ve been living with anxiety, know that you don’t have to deal with it alone. If you or a loved one is interested in exploring treatment, please contact me today. I would be happy to speak with you about how I may be able to help.
