Expert Anxiety Therapist: You Don’t Have to Live With Your Fears
Anxiety can be treated through different types of therapy. They can be used alone or combined and conducted individually or with a group of people with similar anxiety problems by an expert anxiety therapist. So if you want to resolve your anxiety issues, Dr. Tomassetti provides expert treatment for anxiety. The only goal for anxiety therapy is to lower your anxiety levels, calm your mind, and overcome your fears.
Understanding Anxiety Disorders
When people are in stressful situations, it is normal to feel anxious. However, this feeling often goes away at the moment the situation is cleared. An anxiety disorder happens when this feeling of fear, worry, nervousness persists, and gets worse over time.
The National Institute of Mental Health reported that 18{2f17427fd8d14b96404d6ef87364a17728f61fb136c23dd9d1a68703fe6eba46} of U.S. adults and 25{2f17427fd8d14b96404d6ef87364a17728f61fb136c23dd9d1a68703fe6eba46} of adolescents ages 13 to 18 experience anxiety. In addition, 4{2f17427fd8d14b96404d6ef87364a17728f61fb136c23dd9d1a68703fe6eba46} of adults and nearly 6{2f17427fd8d14b96404d6ef87364a17728f61fb136c23dd9d1a68703fe6eba46} of teens experience severe anxiety disorders. These anxiety disorders come in these forms:
- Generalized anxiety disorder
- Panic disorder
- Phobias
- Social anxiety disorder
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder
- Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
What Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) Can Do For Anxiety
A large amount of research has shown that cognitive behavioral therapy is the most effective and widely-used therapy for treating anxiety disorders. Its techniques and methods consider how changing a person’s perception of the situation can lead to changing the way you feel.
A dialogue in clinical neuroscience also approves of the role of CBT and its efficacy and effectiveness for anxiety disorders. CBT is generally a short-term, skills-focused treatment that aims to change a person’s maladaptive emotional response through changing the person’s thoughts, behaviors, or both. It uses exposure therapy and cognitive therapy methods in dealing with specific anxiety conditions.
Here are CBT methods that an expert anxiety therapist can do to help people with anxiety disorder:
Thought Challenging or Cognitive Therapy
This is also known as thought restructuring. An anxiety therapist challenges a person’s negative thinking pattern and turns them into a more positive and realistic thought. This is accomplished in three steps:
- Identifying negative thoughts – an expert anxiety therapist helps a person identify what he or she was thinking when the feeling of anxiety started.
- Challenging negative thoughts – the therapist helps the person evaluate anxiety-provoking thoughts which involve:
- Questioning the evidence for the frightening thoughts
- Analyzing unhelpful beliefs
- Testing out the reality of negative predictions
- Replacing negative thoughts with realistic thoughts – the anxiety therapist helps a person come up with realistic and calming statements that he or she can say to himself or herself when in the face or anticipating a situation that would normally increase his or her anxiety levels.
Exposure Therapy
Expert anxiety therapists can help people with anxiety disorders deal with situations that make them feel anxious. They do this through:
- Systematic desensitization – therapists gradually challenge the fears of a person with an anxiety disorder to build confidence and master skills for controlling panic.
- Relaxation skills – progressive muscle relaxation or deep breathing to reduce physical anxiety response like trembling and hyperventilating.
Choosing an Expert Anxiety Therapist
When a person is easily overwhelmed by his or her emotions, and think or act negatively towards their situation because of their emotions, they tend to have an anxiety disorder. Some people try to avoid the situation to cope with how they feel. However, this is not a solution. In fact, it can even increase a person’s anxiety levels.
An expert anxiety therapist who is trained in diagnosing anxiety disorders and teaching patients effective and healthy ways to cope with their anxiety can help in identifying and managing the factors that are causing the disorder.
To be able to help you determine if you feel comfortable with an anxiety therapist, you can talk to more than one and consider asking these questions recommended by the Anxiety and Depression Association of America:
- What is your treatment approach?
- Do you provide telemental health therapy?
- How will you help me overcome my problem?
- How long will it take before I can expect to feel better?
- What do you do if I do not start feeling better in the typical time frame?
- How can I help in my recovery?
Dealing With Your Worries and Fears With an Anxiety Therapist
You can prevent the crippling effect of anxiety disorders on your mental, social, and physical well-being by seeking the help of an expert anxiety therapist. They are highly trained to tailor an anxiety therapy plan for you to meet your unique needs. Take the first step in dealing with your worries and fears by contacting an expert anxiety therapist today!