How Therapy Can Help With Anxiety
So you’ve tried reading the books. You have researched, studied and memorized all that there is to read online. You ordered the motivational CD/ DVD package. You even went to the self-help seminars at the community college. Maybe they helped a little. They did give you some tips and options to make things better, but here you are looking for more information.
Anxiety is a part of your life. Over recent months, it probably feels like it is becoming an even bigger part of your life despite all of your efforts to reverse its progress. Now you are left confused, concerned and without another direction to take. What can you do? What should you do now?
It’s funny that the simplest, most obvious options are the ones that seem to elude us. The clear choice for you, and others like you, is therapy. Therapy can mean a lot of different things to different people, pet therapy is even known to be beneficial for those with anxiety, but for the sake of this piece, therapy is face-to-face, individual counseling sessions with a professional counselor, social worker or psychologist. Some psychiatrists in your area may do on-going therapy, but this is becoming rarer and your insurance company might not be willing to pay for it.
Group therapies are definitely beneficial in many ways but differ in too many ways from individual sessions to be put in the same category. Similarly, there is a strong movement towards distance therapy that is completed via video chat or instant message. That is a different beast as well.
Therapy Basics
In individual therapy, you and your therapist will meet for between 45 minutes and an hour at a prescribed frequency for some amount of time. Sometimes you may need years of therapy. Sometimes you will only need a handful of sessions. It is all part of the process and the process works, especially for anxiety.
Therapy will help before your first appointment because it will allow you concede that anxiety is a problem that you cannot solve on your own. This may seem like a negative, but admitting that you have a problem really moves the process forward.
Hopefully, along the way, you can reduce the stigma that still accompanies mental health issues by telling people in your life that you are seeking treatment. Their acceptance of you will foster self-acceptance, which is needed to find improvement regardless of your situation.
