If you are suffering from anxiety, you are not alone. An estimated 3 million Canadians report experiencing a mood or anxiety disorder. That is 3 million people, living, and coping with the uncomfortable symptoms that anxiety can induce.
However, it is important to know that you do not have to live with these symptoms. Therapy is a safe, effective way to untangle your anxiety, and, unlike medication, provides coping strategies that you can use long term. Therapy can get to the underlying cause of your fear, helping you identify and address your anxiety. It can help you understand and unpack your fears and arm you with tools to face challenging situations on your own.
Here are some effective ways counselling can help you manage your anxiety:
Sharing the Load
Therapy is great for treating anxiety because it gives you a platform to share your thoughts and feelings. Sometimes, having a safe space for communication often helps people feel lighter simply by sharing. A therapist, many times, is on the journey with you and can help talk you through identifying, understanding, and tackling your fears.
Ruminating, experiencing negative or defeating thoughts, worrying about the future or focusing on the past are all symptoms of anxiety manifesting itself. Counselling can offer techniques that help you be mindful in the present, helping to identify these thoughts as they are happening. Being present will allow you to identify your negative thought patterns, and not be controlled by them.
Gain a New Perspective
Anxiety is often fuelled by negative thought patterns that are based on perspective and not always on reality.
Counselling can walk you through identifying these negative thought patterns and help replace them with more feel-good thoughts. Counselling can also help you to bring awareness to how anxiety lives in your body and you can learn the tools to use your body as a resource to help reduce anxiety.
Once you can identify the thoughts that worsen your anxiety, your therapist can then help you gain a new perspective and turn negative thoughts around. Adjusting your dialogue so that it is more in line with reality is a tool that you can implement when you experience a stressful situation or anxiety trigger.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is the most commonly used therapy to treat anxiety. It has shown great results in treating panic disorders, phobias, social anxiety disorder, and generalized anxiety. CBT works through the belief that it is not the situation that affects the way you feel but your perception of the situation.
For example, say, you’ve been invited to a party. If your leading thought about the party is negative ie: “I don’t know how to socialize with people. I’ll make a fool of myself ” then your feelings towards the party will of course be worry, fear and ultimately, avoidance.
CBT believes that negative thinking is a breeding ground for fear and worry and thus, works to disarm those thoughts and replace them with positive, feel-good thoughts.
CBT helps individuals with anxiety understand the way we look at ourselves and the world. It does this by breaking up anxiety into two parts.
Cognitive Therapy: examines negative thoughts and how they contribute to anxiety
Behaviour Therapy: examines your behaviour and reactions to situations that cause anxiety
For people with anxiety disorders, negative thinking is the fuel that ignites a sometimes very big fire. Changing these thought patterns can change the way you feel.
Identify The Cause
With anxiety, situations are perceived as more dangerous or threatening than they really are. Identifying what triggers your anxiety is a helpful first step to beginning treatment. Some things that may trigger anxiety are specific phobias, caffeine, skipping meals, social events or parties, negative thinking, financial concerns, conflict, stress, public events or performances, personal triggers such as songs, smells or specific places. Working with a counsellor can help you identify your triggers and arm you with the tools to talk through them.
Utilize Relaxation Techniques
Anxiety produces a lot of physical symptoms, stress and tension in the body. This can include hyperventilating, trembling, shortness of breath and more. Learning how to relax is helpful in calming your nervous system and helping you ease some physical symptoms that go hand in hand with anxiety. Counselling can help teach you relaxation techniques such as progressive muscle relaxation, meditation or deep breathing that can help regulate and stabilize physical symptoms and increase feelings of well-being.
Adopt Lifestyle Changes
Armed with new coping mechanisms to fight anxiety at the core, counselling can also incorporate lifestyle changes that are healthy for both your mind and body.
Not only do these new healthy habits include a new, sunny perspective, but can also include a new physical activity routine, meditation, quitting drugs, alcohol, and smoking - all habits that can make anxiety worse.
Cultivate Better Relationships
Connection and community create a stable foundation for happiness. Loneliness and isolation set the stage for anxiety. Counselling can help identify whether or not you have any isolating behaviours or your anxiety is being fuelled by loneliness and isolation. Know that anxiety is a very common experience and reaching out to friends and family can help cultivate feelings of connection and community. Make it a priority to see friends, join a self-help group, or share your experience with family and friends.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Acceptance and commitment therapy is another form of counselling that has been shown to be effective in treating a variety of anxiety disorders. This approach helps you identify your own life values, then act in accordance with those values.
Emotional Regulation
Emotional regulation is one symptom that people with anxiety have trouble with. Anxiety causes an enormous amount of stress and tension in the body. When individuals are on high alert constantly, as with anxiety, their reactions and emotions may be heightened or hard to control. Counselling can help reduce the tension in your body, which in turn can help lessen heightened emotions.
Anxiety is classified as a disorder when it interrupts your day to day function. This means that if you are experiencing an overwhelming sense of fear or dread that interrupts you from doing things like seeing people, leaving your house, focusing on your daily tasks or interfering with your relationships, you want to consider counselling to help you manage your symptoms.
Anxiety also may show up as:
Interferes with your ability to operate
You often overreact when situations trigger your emotions
Inability to control your reactions to situations
Final Thoughts
Although anxiety is experienced by millions of Canadians, there are very effective treatment options, curated for each individual, that can help curb your symptoms and arm you with the tools necessary to face your challenges head-on.
Contact us today for a free consultation. We look forward to hearing from you and joining you on your journey to healing.