How does therapy help with anxiety?
If you experience severe anxiety, you may be recommended to look for a therapist to help you deal with your symptoms. But how does talking with a therapist actually help with anxiety? You might feel like therapy will be a waste of time, or feel afraid that your case will just be a burden for both yourself and your therapist. While it might seem like a lost cause on the outside looking in, your therapist has a variety of tools that you will learn about to help with your individual case. Here are four things your therapist might do to help you fight back against your anxiety:
1.Understanding Your Anxiety Response
What does anxiety feel like to you? Do you feel constant worry about things that might happen in your life? Do you enter fight or flight mode at the thought of a specific place, thing, or situation? Do you avoid social encounters because of crippling anxiety and fear? Your therapist can help you better understand your anxiety and new ways to cope with it. They might also help you discover strategies you can use to calm yourself down when feeling anxious.
Do you do things to kill stress that come back to bite you with even more anxiety later? Your therapist can help you identify stress relievers that are healthy and help reduce your anxiety both in the moment and long-term.
2. Prevention of Anxiety Triggers
Once you’ve discovered some practical ways to reduce your anxiety, your therapist might help you dig deeper into what triggers it. You likely do things that make your anxiety worse without realizing it. If these activities are a part of your daily routine, it would be no wonder that you experience anxiety regularly! Your therapist can help you identify what starts these cycles of anxiety in your life and find out ways to prevent them from happening.
The kind of anxiety you experience will also influence the steps your therapist takes here. Is your anxiety brought on by avoidance? If so, your therapist might help you slowly learn to confront your fears and overcome your anxiety surrounding something in particular. If your anxiety is more like an ever-present part of your life, they might take a different approach.
3. Forming New Habits
Your therapist will likely guide you through what you can do on a regular basis to reduce your anxiety. Once you’ve figured out what things make you feel more anxious, you can work with your therapist to reduce how often you come into contact with your anxiety-inducing stressors and find new habits to replace them. Your new habits might help you regularly de-stress so the anxiety doesn’t become unmanageable. Depending on the kind of anxiety you experience, your therapist might help you confront your fears, step by step, so they don’t make you feel anxious anymore.
4. Examining Beliefs
While forming new habits will help you feel less anxious, some habits might be in your head. Do you hold beliefs that make you more likely to experience anxiety than others? Is it possible that these beliefs are not accurate to reality? Would changing these beliefs help you feel less anxious? Your therapist can help you identify patterns of thought that don’t really line up with what you’re experiencing in your life. Having a trained professional who is an unbiased third party can help you recognize when a threat is real and when it’s not.
If any of these tools seem like they would be helpful to you with your anxiety, I highly recommend seeking out a therapist to help guide you through them. You can schedule a meeting with one of our therapists here at South Counseling using this link.
We provide counseling sessions both in person and online with video conferencing. We also offer a free 15-minute consultation if you have any questions, or just want to see if you mesh well with one of our therapists in conversation.
Alternatively, you can seek out a clinician through a trusted referral service, such as psychologytoday.com, to find a therapist that fits your needs and preferences.
