Are Anxiety Attacks Keeping You From Fully Living Your Life?
Have you been struggling with anxious thoughts due to a recent trauma, your workplace environment, or some other cause you can’t name? No matter how well you may function at work or at home, symptoms of panic attacks may affect you on a regular basis. Perhaps nothing has worked to alleviate these symptoms, and your overall quality of life has been negatively impacted. But the harder you try to squash your anxiousness, the worse you feel, making it more and more difficult to concentrate or fall asleep at night.
Maybe you have read about anxiety disorder and understand that it is real. But realizing that you could be suffering from this mental health issue and have become paralyzed by it may make you feel ashamed that you can’t just feel better on your own. Your mind may be preoccupied with thoughts about the worst things that could happen, and you don’t know how to relax or feel happy anymore. Even when the worst doesn’t happen, it doesn’t stop you from feeling like you need to be mentally prepared for it all the time. As this state of panic may interrupt your life more and more, you know you can’t go on like this much longer.
Are you ready to talk with someone who can help you better manage your symptoms and improve your mental health?
Many Adults Struggle With Anxiety Disorder
Your family, your job, and the burdens of life can generate increasing stress, which may even lead to the occasional panic attack. If you find yourself feeling anxious or panicky for no obvious reason, or constantly imagine the worst-case scenario, that could be a sign that you have anxiety disorder. At the same time, sometimes a little anxiety can be helpful if it helps you steer clear of dangerous situations.
Fortunately, working with an anxiety therapist can help you manage your symptoms so they don’t end up taking over your life. Therapy not only validates and normalizes your feelings, but it also holds a mirror up to your thinking. It can show you that the worst-case scenarios you imagined don’t logically follow in real life.
Analyzing your own thinking requires guidance and skill. Verbally processing your thoughts with friends and family isn’t always effective because they can be too involved emotionally to see the scenario clearly.
A skilled, licensed anxiety therapist, in contrast, can provide an unbiased outside perspective on your thinking patterns. They can help you improve your mental health and have a healthier attitude about life.
Anxiety Therapy Can Help You Deal Effectively With Your Symptoms
Therapy can help you move from potentially irrational thinking to more logical thinking. You can learn how to orient yourself to a situation from a more realistic point of view.
For example, say you feel anxiety about going to work, and you constantly imagine everything that could go wrong during the day. Rather than thinking about the tasks you need to complete, you instead focus all your attention on everything you don’t like about your job. And thinking those thoughts leads to feeling those thoughts. The thing is—the day hasn’t happened yet! You don’t know what awaits you, but you already feel afraid. And so, you aren’t allowing yourself to be surprised by any of the good things that can happen or that the day may turn out better than you think it will.
Anxiety therapy can give you a better understanding of how you think and feel. I can help you identify how these anxious feelings came to be. Additionally, I can help you remember that feelings aren’t facts. You can change your feelings even if you can’t change your circumstances. And you can deal with anxiety without being paralyzed by it, as you learn to be better engaged with your present and your future.
My approach is to instruct you to focus your responses on stress during the week. Take mental notes on how you feel. You don’t have to note every concern or worry that crosses your mind. But if anxiety does occur, we can process it during our sessions together. And we can analyze what thoughts are driving these feelings.
Depending on the severity of your symptoms, I may recommend medication. If your anxiety attacks are so bad that you can’t leave the house, for example, you may benefit from medication and therapy together. But if your anxiety is situational (perhaps confined to your job), then therapy alone may be the best course.
Change is possible for everybody. You deserve a mentally healthy life, and therapy can help you get there.
You May Have Some Concerns About Anxiety Therapy…
I’m not sure anxiety therapy can help me. I’m too broken.
I completely understand this feeling, and I promise you that you’re not broken. It seems impossible right now, but your symptoms can be managed. Learning to manage anxiety may come with some difficulty, but it can be done. You may feel like your thoughts are on some kind of racetrack going in circles. Therapy can help redirect this track.
I’m not sure about sharing my problems with a stranger.
As an anxiety therapist, I have no judgment or bias. The difference between talking to a licensed professional versus a friend or family member who knows you well is that I have more knowledge and insight about anxiety than they may have. Learning about your anxiety can help alleviate some of your fear.
What if anxiety therapy digs up something that I don’t want to remember?
For most people, the problem isn’t that they can’t remember something—it’s that they remember it all the time. So, if it can’t be remembered, then it probably didn’t happen. Uncovering repressed memories is a lot rarer than TV shows want you to believe.
Anxiety Therapy Can Help You Live A Healthier, More Positive Life
If you are ready to schedule an appointment with an anxiety therapist, I offer a free 15-minute phone consultation to see if we are a good fit. You can reach me at 917-697-2407 or through the contact page on my website. I look forward to hearing from you.
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