Anxiety Management
If you have ever struggled with anxiety, you’ve probably experienced worries that start off small that slowly but surely snowball into much larger, sometimes, debilitating thoughts. These are the thoughts that keep you up at night, trying to figure out how you will get through the next day or the next time that you are in a certain situation.
For some people, anxiety comes in the form of discomfort or awkwardness in social, intimate, workplace or family situations, while for others, it can stem from feeling out of control of their situations or even knowing that something needs to change but not knowing where to start. For those of you out there who are struggling with anxiety-related digestive disorders, the levels of frustrations can be compounded by the well-meaning but unhelpful advice to “just relax” or “you need to find a way to be less stressed, it’s that simple”. That simple? Yeah, right!
The constant “what ifs” and self-doubt that come with anxious thoughts are often a source of sleep deprivation because night time are when these thoughts are most active in your mind. As these thoughts, worries and fears keep you up at night, your concentration and focus are also affected. Your body’s ability to re-energize and regenerate itself decreases.
You may find yourself in an on-going battle with your anxiety, never quite knowing what tools you have – if any- to come out on the winning side of it. No matter how hard you try to stay calm or tell yourself “it’s going to be okay”, your mind and body disagree, making it almost impossible for you to manage those anxious feelings. If any of this sounds all too familiar, then let me just tell you that you are not alone.
Is Therapy For Anxiety Effective?
The best way to learn to do something is through practice. Therapy to treat anxiety can not only be a rewarding experience for you, the results can be life-changing. Psychotherapy, and in particular, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is the gold standard of treatment for anxiety because it actually works by teaching you how to:
- Understand your cycle of avoidance and disrupt the pattern
- Gain new insight and perspective
- Change unhelpful ways of thinking
- Feel at ease in social situations
- Accept life’s uncontrollable stressors
- Enhance interpersonal and social skills
- Discover new aspects of your personality
- Regain a sense of control and confidence
- Use personally-tailored coping strategies that actually work
In essence, you will learn how to understand your triggers, confront your fears with confidence and be able to tell if you are focusing on helpful worries vs. unhelpful worries so that you can shift your focus if necessary.
Together, we will work to identify the specifics of what is causing you the greatest distress and then move towards achieving your goals. You deserve to have a better quality of life and I want to be there to see you through it.