Anxiety Therapy
Does It Seem Like Fear And Anxiety Control Your Life?
You may remember a time when you weren’t always worried about something, but lately, your anxieties seem to dominate your daily life. Is a constant fear of the unknown making you hesitant to engage in activities that once felt exciting and meaningful? Does worrying all the time impact your work, decision-making, and even relationships?
Do you find it challenging to connect with others in a way that feels safe and gratifying? Perhaps your anxiety is making you feel ashamed or embarrassed. You may have even decided that being anxious is your only way of life. Maybe you’re thinking about anxiety therapy because you’ve done all you can on your own, but some piece of the puzzle is still missing.
Anxiety Can Create Many Uncomfortable Symptoms
Day to day you probably feel robbed of peace and joy. Having anxiety might also create:
● Persistent worry and rumination over things you either have no control over or assume the worst-case scenarios about.
● Self-criticism and avoidance of important tasks due to a fear of failure.
● Low self-esteem, impatience, defensiveness, or even codependency that’s causing relationship problems.
● Sleep disturbances like insomnia, panic attacks, restlessness, and nightmares.
● Physical symptoms, such as nervous sweats, elevated heart rate, gastrointestinal issues, and either eating too much or too little.
While there are aspects of your life that cause you stress and may make you feel helpless or even powerless, it is possible to stop the cycle of anxiety. Through therapy at Cambridge Compassion and Mindfulness Psychology, you can learn the skills you need to manage your anxiety and make room for new experiences and relational partners that bring you joy and meaning.
Anxiety Disorders Are Very Common
In the US, 40 million adults (19.1 percent) have had an anxiety disorder. Additionally, about 7 percent of children ages 3 to 17 have anxiety issues every year, and most people develop symptoms of anxiety by the age of 21. (1) Many factors contribute to the development of anxiety, like living with consistent stress, and circumstances like our biological make-up and our home or work environments.
The Effects Of The Media On Anxiety
The way we consume media can also lead to continuous negative thoughts, stress, and anxiety. Social media gives us unrealistic and idealized expectations for what a normal life looks like in terms of our physical appearance, financial or professional success, and social importance.
Similarly, staying up to date with news stories can also instill fear and persistent worry in our thoughts. The news media reports on and sensationalizes events, making these things seem like real tangible threats in our own lives. Most of us are aware of the negative effects of the media, but we still may struggle to change our daily habits without help.
Often, anxiety persists because we believe it helps prevent us from making mistakes, forgetting important things, or doing things that will lead to embarrassment. At times, maybe it has, but it has also caused us a lot of pain and stopped us from pursuing things that bring us joy, or perhaps, even believing that joy is still possible.
Anxiety treatment will help you learn to support yourself without sacrificing your well-being, hopes, and dreams.
Therapy Can Help You Pursue Life With Ease, Confidence, And Joy
Everyone needs someone they can open up to in order to vent their frustrations, share their worries, and feel at ease just being themselves. It’s not always easy to find the right person or environment to be able to do that though.
Therapy can be a place to identify, process, and let go of self-criticism and fear. At Cambridge Compassion and Mindfulness Psychology, we will provide you with the tools to help process the experiences you’ve had with anxiety in a way that generates compassion toward and a deeper understanding of yourself.
We will rework the existing thought patterns that have kept you in a fearful way of thinking, working through them carefully and with kindness. Learning this new skill set takes practice, and that is what working with an anxiety counselor offers you a chance to do.
What Anxiety Counseling Sessions Look Like
At first, we will look at your present symptoms, what is triggering them, and apply tools to process them with mindfulness and self-compassion. This will help lighten the load of your current worries and build confidence that ease and well-being are possible.
Over time, we will look at deeper patterns, including long-standing behaviors and your sense of self, exploring ways to redefine these things through modalities like cognitive restructuring and narrative therapy.
Here Are Some Of The Tools We Use In Anxiety Treatment
Each person is different, which means our approach to treating anxiety should be too. That’s why I draw upon a broad range of therapeutic tools to create a comprehensive healing strategy that is unique to each individual.
Mindfulness is the ability to sit with and process difficult emotions, and externalize them skillfully. This may include activities like thought journals, biofeedback breathing, mindfulness visualizations, and even meditation. Mindfulness for anxiety does not have to be time-intensive to be impactful, as small efforts can build over time to help you during a moment of high stress.
Self-Compassion is the ability to transform a self-critical, obstructive voice into a kinder voice that helps you feel more empowered when facing your fears. Part of the goal is to recognize your negative self-talk, look at it objectively, and challenge that inner dialogue to be more considerate and speak to yourself as you would speak to a friend.
Cognitive Reframing involves changing your views and thoughts that make it hard to achieve your goals into views and thoughts that empower you. Often, people are anxious because they’re carrying anxiety for other people—on behalf of other people’s lives, needs, and worries. Together, we’ll work on skills to reframe that thinking so you don’t have to carry their anxiety as your own.
Redefining a marginalized narrative helps you redefine yourself as a survivor, a warrior, and one who perseveres. Too often, we see previous suffering as confirmation that we are an overall failure. This method helps you to recognize all of the empowering actions and achievements that you may have missed during your tough times and use them to build a sense of self strengthened by your past.
Courageous people are those who act and try despite their fear, not in the absence of fear. Simply having the wish to address what causes anxiety disorder symptoms through counseling is a courageous step and one that will open more doors than it closes. Everyone deserves a life that brings them ease, meaning, and joy, and therapy can help you achieve that.
You Might Still Have Concerns About Anxiety Therapy…
I worry that seeking therapy will make me feel broken, like a failure.
If I were to guess something about your life, it’s that you care a lot about your success and have ambitions you hope to achieve. Anxiety takes up a large part of your time, which isn’t helping you with your goals or living a joyful life. Successful people use resources to help them, and most successful people seek therapy because they want to maximize their potential and ensure nothing is holding them back.
By starting therapy, you are joining the ranks of people committed to their success. A therapist can help you manage your anxiety symptoms, work through the root causes, and start living fully again.
I’m interested in learning self-compassion but worry that I’m not a very compassionate person.
We live in a tough world that overvalues self-criticism and undervalues kindness. Secretly, this belief is burning out nearly all of us. While self-compassion sounds simple, it is not easy for most people. There is a very specific way to develop this practice, and we will work together to get you there. The process itself is built on kindness, so just practicing it will be a major step in the right direction.
I am afraid mindfulness techniques will make me feel awkward, especially in the workplace.
Mindfulness techniques are most helpful when they are appropriate for both work and social environments. Many people have sought counseling with previous mindfulness experience that was both unhelpful and may have even provoked more anxiety. I teach mindfulness for anxiety that focuses on things that work, that do not draw unnecessary attention to you, and that does not further increase your distress.
Take A Chance On Therapy To Help Control Your Anxiety
Reach out to my practice, Cambridge Compassion and Mindfulness Psychology, using my contact form for a free, 15-minute consultation to learn about how my therapy program can help you manage your anxiety. Therapy may seem daunting at first, but it has your success, joy, and well-being as the planned outcome.
https://www.nami.org/About-Mental-Illness/Mental-Health-Conditions/Anxiety-Disorders
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