Anxiety Treatment

All therapy procedures are designed to assist you with comprehending why you feel the way you do, identifying your triggers, and determining how you can alter your response to them. Certain forms of therapy even provide practical ways to support you in reframing your negative thoughts and altering your habits.

Related: Co-Occurring Disorder Inpatient Treatment

Due to the wide variety of anxiety disorders, therapy is customized to your unique clinical manifestations. It can be performed alone, in a household, in a relationship, or in a community. How frequently and for how long you see your therapist is determined by your unique symptomatology.

Psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health specialists employ a variety of anxiety treatment techniques. Additionally, the treatment option is determined by your diagnosis and the intensity of your symptoms.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

The most often utilized type of therapy for anxiety problems is cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). It has been shown to be beneficial in treating a variety of illnesses, including GAD, phobias, SAD, and panic disorders.

CBT is based on the notion that it is your thinking processes, not your current circumstances, that determine how you feel and consequently behave. Thus, the purpose of CBT is to uncover and understand your anxious thoughts and inefficient behavioral patterns in order to rebuild them with more practical thinking, behaviors, and coping skills.

Throughout this process, your therapist will act as a coach, instructing you on effective coping mechanisms. For instance, you may engage in a great deal of “black-and-white” thinking, in which you presume that everything is either good or bad. Rather than that, you would embrace the more realistic idea that there are numerous grey areas in between.

The application of these tactics requires practice. Once you begin to recognize your anxieties and stressors, you can begin to use the coping mechanisms taught in CBT to control your dread, panic, and concern.

Exposure Therapy

Exposure therapy is a very frequent type of cognitive-behavioral therapy that is used to treat a range of anxiety and depression disorders, including social phobias, seasonal affective disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Exposure therapy’s fundamental assumption is that the greatest approach to overcome fear is to face it head-on.

Your therapist will gradually expose you to anxiety-inducing things or circumstances during exposure treatment. This is frequently accomplished by the application of a technique called “systematic desensitization,” which consists of three steps:

Relaxation training: Your psychotherapist can teach you relaxation techniques to assist you in combating your stress. Progressive muscular relaxation, taking deep breaths, mindfulness, and guided visualization all fall under the category of relaxation techniques.

List: Make a list of the anxiety-inducing stimuli in your environment, ranking them according to their intensity.

Expose: In this final stage, you will progressively make your way through the anxiety-inducing things or scenarios you’ve listed, utilizing the relaxation techniques as needed.

Your therapists can expose you to anxiety-provoking situations in a variety of ways. The most frequently occurring are as follows:

Imaginal exposure: You will be advised to clearly visualize the situation or object that is causing you anxiety during this sort of exposure.

In vivo exposure: This strategy involves confronting your anxiety-inducing object or circumstance in real life. Thus, a person suffering from social anxiety may be encouraged to deliver a speech before an audience following this type of exposure.

Virtual reality exposure: When in vivo exposure is not possible, virtual reality exposure may be employed. Virtual reality therapy combines aspects of in vivo and imaginal exposure through the utilization of technology. This approach has been found to be particularly beneficial for soldiers and those who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Behavioral Dialectical Therapy

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is a remarkably effective form of cognitive-behavioral therapy. DBT was initially used to manage borderline personality disorder (BPD) but has now been adapted to treat a number of disorders, particularly anxiety.

DBT is geared toward assisting you in developing what appears to be a “dialectical” (opposite) perspective, tolerance, and transformation. You will learn to embrace your anxiety while actively attempting to alter it during DBT treatment. It is comparable to the concept of accepting oneself as you are while attempting to improve yourself.

DBT teaches four critical skills:

• Mindfulness: Relating with the current moment and observing fleeting ideas (such as anxiousness) without succumbing to them
• Tolerance for distress: Handling your uneasiness in the face of a challenging scenario
• Interpersonal effectiveness: Developing the ability to say no or to request what you require
• Emotional regulation: Preventing anxiety from getting out of control

Therapy of Acceptance and Commitment

Another type of therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), has been demonstrated to be useful for a number of anxiety problems. ACT is recognizing your personal values and then taking actions that reflect those ideals.

Therapy Through Art

Art therapy is a non-verbal, experience-based form of psychotherapy. It entails either expressing and processing emotion through visual art (like drawing, painting, or sculpture) or practicing mindfulness and relaxation through art. While it can be used alone, it is frequently used in conjunction with other treatment modalities such as CBT.

Due to the fact that this is a relatively new form of therapy, additional research is needed to validate its efficacy in lowering anxiety symptoms.

Psychoanalytic Therapy

Anxiety symptoms, as per the Freudian concept, represent cognitive dissonance. Psychoanalytic therapy’s objective is to reconcile them. Psychoanalysis is a process in which you and your therapist analyze your thoughts, worries, and desires in order to gain a better understanding of yourself and to alleviate your anxiety. This is one of the most demanding methods of therapy; identifying patterns in your frame of mind might take years.

Although the terms “psychodynamic treatment” or “psychoanalysis”  are sometimes used synonymously, psychoanalysis is a subset of psychodynamic therapy.

Interpersonal Therapy

Interpersonal therapy (IPT) is a type of psychotherapy that deals with social relations. In IPT, you will engage with your psychotherapist to address any interpersonal conflicts you may be experiencing, like unresolved sorrow, disputes with friends or family, changes in jobs or roles in society, and relationship difficulties. You will then discover appropriate ways to communicate your feelings and how to enhance your interpersonal communication.

Although IPT was first created to treat serious depression, it may be used if your anxiety is largely focused on your interpersonal connections, as is the case with SAD.