Anxiety Therapy: Empowering You to Manage Anxiety and Live a Fuller Life
It’s easy to brush anxiety off as a simple act of worrying too much. For every person who suffers from anxiety, there seems to be someone waiting in the wings waiting to tell them their anxiety is not real. As we work to bring more awareness and reduce the stigma surrounding anxiety, it’s important to continue to offer support and treatment options for people who are affected by such conditions.
What is Anxiety?
Anxiety is much more than just a problem with worrying. Anxiety is often not a stand-alone condition. It is often associated with other conditions, such as panic disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorders, and phobias. Many people who suffer from anxiety also suffer from depression, Obsessive Compulsive Disorders (OCD), and even substance abuse problems. In many cases, substance abuse comes about as a way to dull anxiety but only ends up making it worse.
The signs and symptoms of anxiety are varied and depending on the patient, can manifest in a number of ways. Some people don’t even realize they have anxiety until they have a full blown panic attack and then start to piece together the signs and symptoms they have been experiencing. These signs and symptoms often include:
A tightness in your chest
Difficulty breathing
Pain in your stomach, back, neck, or chest
Feelings of worry and overwhelming sense of impending doom
Overeating, undereating
Oversleeping or insomnia
Fearing the worst can happen
Guilt
Loss of someone close to you, change in job, loss of job
Negative thoughts
Feelings of loss or abandonment
Lack of interest in your life
These signs and symptoms might sound a lot like depression, don’t they? It can be difficult to diagnose anxiety disorders in people who suffer from other conditions, such as depression. Once we’re able to pinpoint the root cause(s) of your anxiety, you can start to feel some relief right away. After all, knowing is half the battle. Then we can put a plan in place to help you on the road to recovery.
What Causes Anxiety?
Before you suffered from anxiety yourself, you might have been inclined to think that the anxiety was “all in your head.” Anxiety is an actual condition that requires real treatment. It’s a condition that causes excessive worry and while it is easily brushed off, it is not something to be taken lightly. Anxiety can be caused by any number of things, including both internal and external factors. Some of the common causes of anxiety include:
Stress and confusion related to a job
Issues in an intimate relationship
Situations arising amongst family members
Fighting or physical abuse
Drug and alcohol abuse or use (self or loved one)
Anxiety can be brought on by other conditions such a depression, PTSD, and a chronic medical diagnosis, such as cancer
Side effects of a medication prescribed by a medical professional
Accident or injury; limitation of movement or body
Money, security, future thinking in general
And much more.
What Happens When Anxiety is Left Untreated?
At first, people who suffer from anxiety might only be impacted by anxiety in specific situations or during certain events; such as when you are boarding an airplane. However, if left untreated, generalized anxieties, such as worrying what happens if the airplane goes down, can permeate into other areas of your life. You might start to worry about driving down the road in your car – you can’t control the other drivers, after all. You might start to worry about getting on any form of public transportation. You might worry that the cruise ship you are set to board might sink. Anxiety can take many forms and impact people in many ways, but one thing is for sure: it can get worse as time goes on.
You don’t usually hear of people who recover from anxiety issues on their own. What you do hear about, however, is people retreating to their homes and isolating themselves from the life they should be living because they are too afraid to make decisions, face the world, and find out that it’s almost never as bad as we thought things were going to be. But, we know that you can’t simply tell that to someone.
At Genuine Health Alliance LLC, we help our patients come to the realization that one bad thing does not always lead to another. We help them gain control over their thoughts so they can enjoy life to the fullest.
Anxiety can cripple a person’s ability to get on with their life. They might even start to impart their anxiety on to other members of their family, particularly smaller children who are susceptible to what their parents pass on to them early in life. If mom is always worrying about money then children might grow up always worrying about money. It’s important to identify the source(s) of your anxiety so you can gain control and not impact others around you.
What are the Anxiety Treatment Options?
Our anxiety treatment plan includes cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which provides a very specific type of counseling to our patients. This type of counseling targets the individual’s thoughts and behaviors related to those thoughts, to gain control over them and their lives. With practice and support, patients can overcome issues and start on the road to recovery. When fear and worry hold you back from living your best life, we can help.
Cognitive behavior therapy is proven to be effective in helping patients overcome phobias, anxieties, panic disorders, and more. For some, relief is immediate, while for others it can take time to trust the process and overcome the underlying issues that are preventing them from letting go of their anxiety.
Whether you are anxious when you have to board a plane, you are constantly worried that you are going to lose your job, or you worry that you’ll develop cancer and die, our team of professional and certified anxiety therapists can help you face your fears, identify the source(s) of anxiety, and overcome them.
We teach you how to relax. It sounds easy, but you already know it’s not. When your brain is filled with negative thoughts and worrisome ideas, it can seem impossible to quiet your thoughts and get on with your life. We’ll teach you how to focus, meditate on your thoughts, reduce stress in your life, and monitor your diet and exercise routines – which can greatly impact your anxiety conditions in a positive way! We can even teach you to block out the things causing you anxiety with systematic desensitization. Our experience has been that tackling the problem head-on, while supporting other areas of a patient’s life, such as stress, diet, and exercise, provides a well-balanced approach to therapy and achieves the best results.
