Anxiety Therapy
Is Anxiety Making Your World Smaller?
Do you constantly worry, fret, and ruminate? Are you filled with self-doubt, fearing you’re being judged by others or second-guessing important decisions? Does anxiety negatively impact your life to the point where you often feel overwhelmed and stressed out?
Perhaps as you’ve gotten older, you’ve noticed that you’re often consumed with racing thoughts that never stop. Whether you’re thinking about the expectations you’re expected to uphold at school, work, or in your social life, you may find yourself catastrophizing—fretting over all the hypothetical “what if’s” that might happen. Even though the worst-case scenarios you imagine rarely come to pass, your body doesn’t know the difference.
Anxiety Affects Your Body
There are telltale physical signs that are hard to ignore when you’re anxious. You may become restless, unable to sleep, lose your appetite, or experience a nervous stomach, sweaty palms, and rapid heartbeat. Your anxiety may even culminate into panic attacks that paralyze you with fear, making it hard to breathe.
When anxiety takes hold, it might also impact your relationships. Perhaps you fear being abandoned by your partner or that your friends negatively evaluate you behind your back. You might avoid social situations because of how uncomfortable they make you, realizing more and more how isolated you’ve become. Gradually, your world is getting smaller because unregulated anxiety is preventing you from achieving your goals.
Like spinning plates, you’re trying to keep everything in your life going without a hitch, but in your quest to control it all, you’re emotionally exhausted. If only you could let go of perfectionism and allow life to happen without overthinking, your world would open up to so many more possibilities.
The good news is therapy offers you tangible solutions for addressing anxiety. With effective counseling, you can learn how to regulate anxiety so that it no longer negatively affects your life.
Anxiety Is A Common Symptom Of Modern Life
Everyone experiences anxiety. After all, it’s a survival instinct we are all born with that can help us remain productive and motivated. But when we experience too much anxiety, it impairs our physical and emotional well-being.
Because our culture emphasizes being productive and successful in favor of slowing down and just “being”, it’s no wonder that “anxiety disorders are the most common of mental disorders and affect 30 percent of the population at some point.” We also live with the social pressure to have a large friend group and fulfilling relationships. With social media's perpetuation of this ideal life serving as a constant reminder of when we fall short, no wonder we’re stressed out.
This drive to succeed is often planted in us when we’re kids. From an early age, we were conditioned to believe that happiness equates to achievement. Whether through academics, sports, or other pursuits, many of us were pushed to achieve excellence. Now as adults, this lifetime of high expectations with little downtime to decompress may be catching up with us.
When We Try To Push Anxiety Away, It Can Worsen Our Symptoms
Because anxiety is so uncomfortable, our first instinct is to try to extinguish it, outrun it, or push it away. However, that only makes anxiety grow stronger. We can think of anxiety as a messenger that is trying to tell us something—when we avoid or ignore it, it gets louder. To truly heal from anxiety, we have to confront it and learn to understand its message.
In therapy, you can tap into the root causes of your anxiety and gain awareness of how and why it affects you. Whether you suffer from social anxiety, phobias, or panic attacks, treatment can help you manage your symptoms so you can honor your values and enjoy life.
Therapy Can Help Anxiety Work For You, Not Against You
If you are going through a transitional time in your life, whether making the adjustment from college to a full-time job or transitioning into marriage or parenthood, you might be feeling overwhelmed. Even when the change is welcome, shifting gears into a new chapter of your life can often be bittersweet. You might grieve the loss of your prior identity and find that your old friend anxiety has reared its ugly head yet again.
But rather than try to outrun or push your anxiety away—a futile exercise that only makes symptoms more acute over time—therapy can help you understand where your anxiety is coming from. Getting to the root of the problem rather than merely focusing on reducing symptoms will help change your relationship with anxiety so you can finally heal from it once and for all.
What To Expect In Sessions
We aim to create a safe and welcoming environment that allows you to share your concerns without embarrassment or fear of judgment. Once you feel comfortable, together we will explore the root causes of your anxiety. We do this by deeply examining the situations that currently make you anxious. Oftentimes, there are many layers underlying what triggers you. Perhaps an unresolved event from your past is making you anxious without you realizing it.
Once you understand its origins, anxiety begins to lose its hold on you. We can help you change the nature of your relationship with anxious thoughts so that they no longer manifest into the physical symptoms you’re experiencing
The Modalities We Use
Our therapists utilize effective, evidence-based treatments for anxiety disorders, including Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Brainspotting, and Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT). Each approach offers unique benefits that can help you better manage anxiety.
Because we often avoid discomfort, we don’t connect with our emotions. CBT brings awareness to the thoughts and feelings you’re experiencing, encouraging you to confront them. Once the negative self-talk and harsh criticisms that fuel anxiety subside, you can move beyond them and build resiliency and self-confidence.
EMDR allows us to get to the root of our anxiety—perhaps a past unresolved event—and process it so it is no longer “stuck” and causing symptoms of anxiety. Brainspotting is a process that can help you identify and heal trauma that remains within your brain and may contribute to anxiety. And ACT will help you live life more consistently with your values rather than allowing anxiety to be in the driver's seat and influence your choices and relationships.
With counseling, it’s possible to have a clear understanding of where your anxiety is coming from. When you identify the source of your anxiety you can heal it entirely or learn to work with it rather than against it. In this way, you can experience a greater sense of calm, ease, and confidence in your life.
But Maybe You Still Wonder Whether Anxiety Therapy Will Be Right For You…
Do I have to trudge through my past in counseling sessions to heal my anxiety?
You don’t always have to relive memories during treatment to address anxiety. For example, solution-focused or exposure-based approaches won’t require exploration into your past. However, to experience true freedom from anxiety, you may find it helpful to explore its root cause. Your anxiety therapist will work with you to make a treatment plan that is suitable to your specific situation.
Will my counselor prescribe me medication for my anxiety?
Find Your Shine does not prescribe medication. However, if you are interested in pursuing medication to help manage your anxiety, your therapist can refer you to a trusted colleague in the community to do an evaluation and prescribe medication as a supplement to therapy.
How do I know if my anxiety is normal or if I need therapy for it?
Therapy can help anyone at any stage of life. Your anxiety doesn't have to be completely out of control for you to benefit from therapy. If you could use an unbiased therapist to help you make sense of your anxiety and find better ways to manage it, counseling is a great option. And if you feel like you're managing it fine on your own, perhaps you aren't ready for therapy right now.
Embracing Your Anxiety Isn’t As Scary As It Sounds
We want you to be in control of your anxiety so that it’s no longer in control of you. To find out more about anxiety therapy with us, please visit our contact page or call (480) 815-3211 to schedule a free 10-minute consultation with one of our therapists.
Recent Blog Posts
