Anxiety is a normal, healthy emotion. Its purpose is to signal an alert that something dangerous might happen, allowing you to take action. However, sometimes, anxiety gets out of control and stops being a useful warning signal and becomes a hindrance to living a normal life. For example, occasionally being worried about whether you did turn the stove off is a legitimate concern because your house could burn down, but if you stop leaving the house because you have to keep checking and rechecking the stove, your anxiety has morphed from normal into a disorder. Anxiety disorders are extremely common, estimated to affect close to 20% of the adult population.
1. Therapy Treats the Cause, Not the Symptoms
Many people suffering from anxiety try self-medicating to suppress the symptoms. A variety of relaxing substances are available that can help you feel a lot less tense. Prescription anti-anxiety medications are also quite effective in blocking the unpleasant symptoms of excessive anxiety. However, none of these chemical modalities do anything to address the cause of your symptoms; they just treat the symptoms.
Therapy focuses on identifying and treating the reasons why you are suffering from excessive anxiety rather than just suppressing and covering up the problem. Therapy can lead to a cure, freeing you from the need to medicate. Your therapist will work closely with you to discover what is making you anxious and why your anxiety has gotten worse recently.
2. Therapy Teaches a New Way of Looking at the World
Therapy will help you learn how to think of frightening situations in a new way. Instead of being terrified of a situation, you learn how to reframe the situation as a more tolerable, everyday event. Perhaps you set out every morning, dreading the worst, and think of every random event as part of your life’s burden. A therapist can help you change your attitude, allowing you to see things in a more upbeat way, possibly even welcoming random events as new opportunities.
3. Therapy Provides Individuals With Coping Skills
No one can completely avoid all unpleasant, anxiety-provoking situations. Therefore, each person needs to learn how to cope with and defuse the anxiety set off by their personal triggers. A therapist can teach you coping skills, providing you with an arsenal of healthy ways to manage anxiety. Knowing what to do in any given situation to defuse your anxiety can be anxiety-defusing in and of itself.
4. Therapy Teaches Individuals How to Relax
Many people in our society are never taught how to relax. You are always supposed to be on the go, producing, working, doing chores, connecting, and completing that to-do list. If you aren’t, you are labeled as “lazy” or an “underachiever.” A skilled therapist can help you overcome this early programming and learn how to relax, take time to rest, and take care of yourself. Being calm and relaxed is completely contrary to being worried and anxious. Learning how to relax on cue can be added to your arsenal of healthy ways to manage anxiety.
If anxiety has been taking over your life, don’t hesitate to seek help.