Are anxiety symptoms taking over your life?
Do you feel overwhelmed by uncontrollable worry? Stressed out about what other people think? Does it always seem as if something bad is about to happen, even if your rational mind says things are okay?
It could be that your anxiety symptoms include fear, worry about many different things at once, or feeling constantly restless, nervous, and wound tight. Maybe you tell yourself that you just can’t rise to the multiple demands placed on your life and work. Perhaps you’re waiting for the worst to happen, envisioning all kinds of what-ifs and bad outcomes.
Anxiety disrupts eating and sleeping. It can keep you from meeting deadlines and fulfilling responsibilities. It prevents you from being present in the moment, from enjoying relationships with the people you care about, and from doing the things you love to do.
Physical symptoms of anxiety can be terrifying. You may experience sweating, shaking, dizzy spells, a racing pulse, or tightness in your chest. If this is the case, it’s essential to stop searching the internet and go get a full physical to rule out a medical condition.
Struggling with symptoms is frustrating, debilitating, and exhausting. But if you’re here, maybe you’re ready to consider getting therapy for anxiety.
Anxiety is becoming increasingly common.
It’s estimated that almost 20 percent of adults suffer from some kind of anxiety disorder, making it the single most common mental health diagnosis in the U.S. Recent research shows that the more intense symptoms of anxiety are, the more barriers to treatment there tend to be.
A certain amount of anxiety is normal and actually healthy. It’s wired into us as a means of survival, to make sure we adapt to the demands of our everyday. A little bit protects us from harm, so we steer clear of risky situations. A modest measure ensures that we succeed by propelling us to prepare adequately for an upcoming exam, presentation, or performance.
But for many of us, anxiety can be paralyzing and more than just an occasional thing. If this is what you’ve been struggling with, anxiety treatment can help.
Anxiety treatment robs symptoms of their power.
Many believe that talking about anxiety will only serve to make it worse. In my experience, the opposite is true: Naming your suffering helps lessen its sting. Strange as it sounds, giving words to your pain reduces its power to overcome you.
I work with anxiety in a number of ways. By addressing the circumstances that prompt symptoms and by exploring links to recent and past life events, as well as family history, you and I can gain awareness of the roots of your distress. Identifying automatic thoughts, unraveling their spiral, and replacing them with useful ones will help us get a handle on negative beliefs that are prompting symptoms. Mastering grounding skills and learning mindfulness techniques will help equip you with simple and reliable ways to address the physical manifestations of anxiety and gain control over the dread and panic that has you tied in knots.
If this is your first time seeking anxiety treatment, you might indeed feel anxious about asking for help. Maybe you believe you’re supposed to go it alone, grit your teeth, and push harder. Again, talk therapy helps because naming your suffering helps take away its sharpness. The freedom to talk about symptoms of anxiety usually makes it seem as if a weight has been lifted from your shoulders.
Sometimes those who come for anxiety treatment express a fear of depending too much on a therapist. My observation is that increased independence is a common result of psychotherapy.
A yoga teacher I know says, “The real yoga is off the mat.” What he means is that it’s great you come to class, but the ultimate goal is to move more comfortably the rest of the time. In working on anxiety with a therapist you feel connected to, you learn to carry therapy with you after session, throughout treatment, and long after treatment is over.
Therapy is an intimate relationship and like any good relationship, trust is crucial in order to feel safe. That safety is encouraged and supported by specific boundaries that can be puzzling because they don’t exist with other close connections.
It might seem counterintuitive, but those boundaries are actually what help make therapy a secure and healing place. The relationship that you and I will form is hugely important to treatment—in and of itself, it’s an agent of change.
Together, you and I can push against your anxiety symptoms by focusing on giving you increased awareness, sensible strategies, and even enjoyable ways to help keep anxiety at bay.
Maybe you still have some concerns about treatment for anxiety…
Therapy is an additional expense.
That’s true. I make every effort to keep my fees reasonable and reserve spots for sliding-scale patients, though those spots are often full. If your tooth were hurting or your back went out, you’d consult a healthcare professional. So it is with the care of your mind and your emotional life.
I’m not sure therapy for anxiety will work.
There are no guarantees in life. But psychotherapy is sound health care, and the investment can pay off now and for years to come. Anxiety treatment can help you start to move through the world with more ease and genuineness. This, in turn, will allow you to be more present in your life and to make wiser choices in love, work, friendship, and family.
Every person in my family is a worrier. Isn’t this just how it is?
There are hereditary, environmental, and situational components to anxiety, which can indeed run in families. But treatment for anxiety offers multiple ways to help you get a handle on the symptoms that are keeping you from living the life you want.
Therapy for anxiety offers relief from debilitating symptoms.
If anxiety is taking a toll on your life, work, and relationships, call me at 213-807-6021 for a free, 20-minute phone consultation. Let’s talk about how I can help.
