How to deal with anxiety?
Anxiety is one of the most common mental health issues in the world today.
People of all ages and backgrounds can experience anxiety, and it can be debilitating. Experiencing anxiety can make it difficult to concentrate, sleep, and perform daily tasks. However, cognitive therapy has shown to be an effective treatment for anxiety.
How Does Cognitive Therapy Work for Anxiety?
Cognitive therapy is an evidence-based treatment for anxiety. It is often used in conjunction with exposure therapy, a type of therapy that gradually exposes you to anxiety-provoking situations in a controlled and safe environment. During our sessions we will work together to identify negative thoughts or beliefs about anxiety-provoking situations.
Once identified, those thoughts will be challenged by asking questions like “is this thought based on facts, or is it an assumption?”, “what is the worst that could happen?”, and “what is the best outcome that could happen?”.
Through this process, you will be able to replace negative thought patterns with more positive and realistic ones.
Mere replacement of negative thoughts ea. “I am a failure” with more cheering ones “I am a great person” doesn’t usually work in the long run. It can cheer you up at the moment but since those two sentences are now intertwined in your mind, one will inevitably bring up the other.
This is why you need to break them down and unlearn the negative thought patterns and learn new ways of studying the situations or issues that bring you anxiety. This will help reduce anxiety symptoms and improve overall functioning.
For example, if you experience anxiety when giving presentations at work, you might have a negative thought like “I'm going to fail”. We will then break it down and challenge it with questions like “have you ever given a successful presentation before?”, “have you prepared enough?”, or “what is the best that could happen?”.
Many Forms Of Anxiety
Anxiety can cause multiple different symptoms that present themselves physically hot/cold waves, nausea, dizziness, heart palpitations or even diarrhea/constipation. Tension of muscles often presented on shoulders, neck or jawline. Increased sweating or experiencing dry mouth.
But just as there are many ways for anxiety to present itself there are multiple ways of treating it.
Cognitive therapy is the most effective but there are multiple ways you can make a difference in every day life.
Eat regularly and nurture yourself with fresh fruits and veggies, exercise, do yoga, and take care of your mental health.
Check out also these resources:
If you want guidance on how, and when to implement these to your life feel free to reach out to me.
