Have you ever wondered how therapy helps anxiety? Anxiety can cause severe disruptions in your life. It can cause you to overthink everything, or to avoid situations that make you feel anxious. This can hurt your relationships with friends and family, or romantic partnerships. It can also cause irritability, anger, disordered eating patterns, perfectionism, and more. The stress that comes with anxiety can also impair your physical health. If you have any history of trauma then anxiety and stress are probably familiar to you since trauma can increase problems with both. Sometimes it is a viscous circle where the stress hormones increase the anxiety and the anxious thoughts tell your mind that it’s right to be stressing you out! I want to share a bit about how therapy can help you cope with anxiety or even make it go away entirely!
Therapy can help these issues in many different ways.
Feeling Heard and Understood
Therapy can offer a safe space for you to be you, and for you to feel accepted as you are. For some people, the therapy session is the only time they get this – which is a real tragedy on its own.
Understanding the impacts of your environment
Anxiety can be purely chemical, but in many cases the environment will have a major impact. This can be the influence of a loved one, life stressors, trauma history or a general lack of support. The environment could also involve physiological issues like medical conditions, poor diet or vitamin deficiencies.
Problem-Solving
Working with a therapist can help you figure out what you can change in your life that will reduce your suffering. This will be different for every individual. This benefit is especially nice for people who want therapy to give them concrete, practical solutions. Not every problem has a neat solution but many of them do, and therapy can help you figure out what solutions to try.
Immediate Relief
Depending on the therapist, some of us will offer solutions and tools you can use right there in the session that will help you feel calmer, more relaxed, more peaceful and less anxious or stressed. This is how I often support my own clients in helping with their anxiety. Many people think therapy is supposed to be uncomfortable, and sometimes that is true, but if you are feeling bad most of the time in your life, then I want to help your anxiety by teaching you techniques that will give you some relief!
Many people are anxious about seeking therapy. I am happy to see with the younger generations that there is much less stigma, but the stigma is still there. Anxiety causes a great deal of suffering. Therapy helps anxiety by helping you learn how to not let that anxiety take over your life. If you have had therapy for anxiety, did you find it helpful? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
