Therapy for Anxiety
What you may be experiencing:
It comes in many shapes and sizes: social anxiety, phobias, OCD, health anxiety, panic attacks, or generalized anxiety. Although they are all quite unique in their own right, they have one common thread: the consistent and persistent fear of a perceived threat.
When you experience a high level of anxiety, your brain’s alarm system gets triggered. This triggers your nervous system to go into a state of fight or flight leaving you with a plethora of physical symptoms: racing heartbeat, hyperventilating, a buildup of energy, a state of panic. Does this state sound familiar? Imagine if your body would be reacting this way if you were being chased by a wild animal. Your brain’s alarm system cannot tell the difference between a perceived threat (the social gathering at work that you’re not wanting to go to) or a real threat (the animal chasing you) so it reacts the same.
As many mental health conditions, it keeps itself sustained through keeping you stuck in vicious cycles. You feel anxious about that work event so you avoid it. As a result, you feel short term relief. Yet long term your anxiety grows as your system gets the message that indeed that event was a threat, and must be avoided, and that avoidance does provide relief. Hence, avoidance is more likely the solution next time and the cycle repeats.
How we can help:
Truth is, nobody dives head first into pain. However, anxiety isn’t always a bad thing. As humans, it is a necessary part of our survival. We need it. It is what tells us to run when we see that wild animal, when we hear the rustling of the leaves behind us, or the honking of the horn as we cross the street with our earbuds on. It is only a problem when it no longer serves us, when it’s too much, and it takes over our lives.
In therapy, you may be asked to notice how it presents itself in your body. What physical symptoms show up first before you ever know on a conscious level that you’re feeling anxious. Those symptoms are always present first, even if we’re not currently aware of them. With this awareness, you can begin to implement grounding strategies, and learn tools that bring you back into your body, and back into the present moment, as anxiety is always something that lives in our head.
Using CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) you may be asked to challenge your thoughts or see which thinking traps your thoughts get stuck on. You may analyze the probability of a feared event or explore those worries deeper.
Exposure therapy occurs gradually and always at a pace that is set collaboratively between you and your therapist. You are never forced to proceed any quicker than what you’re comfortable with.
After working with us:
Individual therapy results always vary as do individual client goals. Throughout the course of therapy you can notice yourself beginning to tolerate uncertainty. You learn to take control over your own anxiousness by learning to challenge your thoughts. You are able to reframe your thinking and create more balanced expectations. You begin to look at the future and not only see the worry, but also see the possibility, see the good outcome that can potentially also be a result.
You gain control over your worries by gaining control over your body. You calm down the threat centre of your brain by calming down nervous system. Whatever tools resonated with you best, you use them often and with mastery; they work and they serve you well.
You are not free of all worry, because as a human being, that wouldn’t be safe, but you live with a healthy level of it; you tolerate it, as you understand that some anxiousness is actually productive and healthy; you manage it; you harness it to your benefit. You live the life you deserve.
If anxiety has taken control over your life,
take the first step to get that control back:
