Therapy Methods For Anxiety

It is tough to treat depression with treatment. Talking about problems can get a person to unleash their problems that are disturbing them, but if you think that a few counseling sessions are going to cause someone to make a life altering revelation and reveal all of the problems of the past, you have watched The Prince Of Tides one too many times.

For the most part, there are behavior therapies that are taught in therapy sessions that can teach you how to cope with depression and treat anxiety. Your therapist may give you the following ideas on how to cope with anxiety:

Write down the fear that you are having on a piece of paper. This makes the fear real, and not just a figment of your imagination. Read it and toss the fear in to the trash can. This is symbolic and an attempt to toss away your fears.

A more effective method is to allow you to face your fears. Take the example of Linda.

Linda was a 38 year old mother of two who was worried about breast cancer. A friend of hers had breast cancer she became convinced that she, too, probably had the disease. Instead of having her fears alleviated by going to the doctor, she decided to dwell on it. The worry took its toll on Linda, her job and her family.

After about three months of nearly constant worrying, Linda’s body could not take it anymore and she collapsed at work. Actually, Linda had a panic attack which caused her to feel dizzy and actually faint. The fact that she was not eating properly didn’t help. She was rushed to the hospital where she uttered her anxious fears. Although her physical tests came back fine, she was urged to admit herself to the psych ward so that they could help her.

In the psych ward, Linda had to undergo group counseling as well as meet with a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist ordered a mammogram for Linda and told her that she had to face this fear. She was trembling so bad when she had the mammogram that a nurse had to hold her hand. Finally, it was all over. The mammogram came back normal. Linda felt like a new person.

She stayed in the psych ward for three days and found out that perhaps the fact a good friend was facing a devastating illness forced Linda to confront her own mortality and the fact that she didn’t have enough money put aside for her kids, if something happened to her. She used the breast cancer as a cover for the real worry, which was her concern for her children if something happened to her.

In addition to learning to break down her anxiety and try to get to the root of the real problem, which was fear of the unknown, Linda also faced one of her greatest fears. Now she was no longer afraid of the mammogram. She goes every year for this potentially life saving test.

Therapy really helped Linda with her anxiety. Drugs might have masked the anxiety disorder by getting her to relax, but she really needed to get to the root of the problem.

The root of the problem of most people with anxiety is fear of the unknown. Fear of death, fear of losing their job, fear of what it going to happen in the future. Although we should be wise enough to realize that there is no guarantee for the future and that anything can happen on any given day, the idea that our lives are not totally under our control scares the living daylights out most people. So what do they do to gain control? They desperately look for some way that they can control their environment.

When we think of someone trying to control their environment, we might imagine someone who is either what is termed a control freak or someone with obsessive compulsive disorder who has to have everything in a certain order in their home. We often refer to people as anal retentive if they have to have things a specific way to keep them from freaking out. Just about everyone suffers, to a degree, of anxiety. Everyone fears the unknown. How we deal with the issue is what puts some people on anti anxiety medication and others in the church or the bar.

A good percentage of people with anxiety drink. This is an easy way to self medicate and relieve the anxiety. It does not cure the anxiety, it is just a mask. Like tranquilizers, booze can just make a person feel calm for a moment but is not a cure. In fact, it can be downright destructive.

Taking a drink at a social occasion is one thing. Having to have a drink because you are anxious and using booze as medication is another. When combined with sleeping pills or anxiety medication, it can be deadly.

Alcoholism has long since been recognized as a disease. Alcoholics Anonymous is a very effective support group that has helped millions of people get and stay sober over the years. Just about everyone is familiar with the prayer recited at the end of the meetings. Give me the strength to change what I can change and accept what I cannot change.

This gets right to the root of the problem that most alcoholics have. They are no different than anyone else suffering from anxiety and depression except that they are choosing a different method of medication. And long before there were tranquilizers, there was booze. People have been self medicating themselves for ions. Alcohol is the drug of choice when it comes to treating anxiety.

Alcoholics anonymous uses support and therapy to keep people sober. Drugs are not used as a replacement for the booze. The secret is to go to the meetings and continue getting the support of their fellow alcoholics. This is simple therapy. It is not performed by a therapist or counselor or anyone licensed in this field. It is performed by other people who have also been through the same problem and give their support to others so that they, too, can become sober and overcome their addiction to alcohol.

There is a line in the film Crocodile Dundee in which Paul Hogan’s character is confused because he is introduced to someone who is seeing a shrink. He immediately assumes that she must be insane. Coming from the outback in Australia to New York City, his character felt that anyone who had to resort to psychiatry was, in his words, a lunatic.

When it is explained to him that the woman was not crazy but just saw a therapist to talk over her problems, his response was doesn’t she have any mates?

And the answer was that we can all use more mates.

Freud went to his grave with one secret - that a psychiatrist was really just a paid friend. Most of us give more credit to the profession of counseling and therapy than that. While we do pay them to listen to our problems, unlike a friend who will always be on our side and is biased, a counselor will sometimes tell us things that we do not want to hear.

Therapy is much more effective at treating anxiety. Instead of just treating the problem with pills or self medicating with booze, we need to seek out treatment however we have to find it. Whether it is a support group, a friend or a counselor, we need to be able to let out our fears and not let them take over our lives. Otherwise, we are simply masking the problem with medication and booze.

If you suffer from anxiety, instead of reaching for the tranquilizers, reach for the phone and make an appointment to see a counselor. Most will work on a sliding scale where you can pay what you can afford. If you are in dire straits, call your local municipality and find out if there is a program that gives treatment for those suffering from anxiety disorders.

You are far from alone. There are millions of people who are already on medication and being treated for this disease. If you want to know how many are not being treated but are self medicated, take a look at your local tavern. Chances are you will find several people in the tavern who have been there awhile and are treating their anxiety with alcohol.