Anxiety doesn’t have to take over your life. Let us help.
Anxiety Treatment
Does Your Anxiety Interfere With Your Daily Life?
Do you experience work-related stress and struggle with perfectionism? Or are you a student facing intense academic stress and pressure?
Maybe you deal with constant worry about various aspects of your life like work, relationships, or health. Or perhaps you are struggling with the distress of social anxiety that interferes with your ability to interact with others in social situations.
If this is the case, you probably wonder if treatment could help you manage your overwhelming anxiety.
Anxiety Can Look Different For Everyone, But You May Share These Common Symptoms
Living with anxiety can bring about a wide range of emotional, physical, and relational
challenges. Having racing thoughts or overthinking are very common. You may have difficulty concentrating or deal with other disruptive feelings like irritability, restlessness, and mood swings. You might fear or anticipate future events and ruminate endlessly and what-if scenarios that keep you in a fight-or-flight state.
You might even isolate yourself from the world and keep withdrawn to avoid what you fear. This can impact your relationships and ability to form new connections. Or you might latch onto certain relationships like a crutch due to a fear of abandonment. Physically, these emotions and fearful thoughts can bring on a rapid heartbeat and shortness of breath, chest pain, and excessive sweating and can cause fatigue and sleep disturbances.
Anxiety treatment with Hope Speaks Counseling can help you gain a sense of control over your thoughts and emotions while offering you relief from constant worry. Having peace of mind and a sense of calm is possible, even though it may seem far away at the moment.
Millions Of People Have Anxiety Disorders but Not Everyone Seeks Help
Anxiety is a normal reaction to stress, and mild levels of anxiety can even be beneficial in some situations like keeping ourselves safe in the face of real danger. However, disordered anxiety differs from normal feelings of nervousness in that it is not actually helping us in the moment, even though the mind can convince us that intense fears and worries keep us safe.
Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health concern in the United States, impacting over 19 percent of adults in the U.S. About 7 percent of youth up to the age of 17 have anxiety as well, with most people developing symptoms before the age of 21. (1) Anxiety disorders are highly treatable, yet only 37 percent of those suffering receive treatment. (2)
Sometimes Certain Habits and Circumstances Can Cause Or Worsen Anxiety
In today’s world, having constant access to social media can create a sense of comparison and competition leading to anxiety and self-doubt. This fear of missing out can creep in and cause isolation and loneliness in people of all ages. Furthermore, many people feel immense pressure to achieve at school or work to be on the same level as those around them, often leading to an extreme fear of failure.
It's not always easy to reach out for help. In some cultural backgrounds, mental health issues can be seen as a sign of weakness which can impact the willingness to seek help out of fear of stigma or discrimination.
While strategies such as meditation, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and limiting stress can alleviate symptoms, at times, anxiety is connected to underlying issues that need to be addressed by a professional utilizing evidence-based techniques like CBT to effectively treat symptoms.
Anxiety Treatment Can Help You Get Back to Living Your Life
Therapy with Hope Speaks Counseling offers you the opportunity to express your fears and share your experiences with anxiety in a way that helps you understand yourself better and feel hope for your future. We offer both in-person and online therapy depending on your needs and circumstances. Online therapy could be the right choice for you if you experience anxiety about seeing a therapist in person.
What to Expect From Anxiety Treatment?
Treatment for anxiety is not one-size-fits-all. Every client is unique. Treatment may include individual counseling, group counseling or both. Our first step is to work collaboratively to establish a safe space without judgement. Our main goal is to identify issues that have contributed to your current symptoms to help you manage them. We will also provide you with exercises that can help you better deal with your anxiety outside of therapy sessions, customizing a thorough treatment plan that can help you feel confident to take on your day and excited about the possibilities in your life.
We Practice Trusted Methodologies for Anxiety Relief
During sessions, you could expect us to incorporate several researched-based treatments for anxiety.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) involves becoming an expert at tracking our feelings,
thoughts, and behaviors during times of anxiety, as well as recognizing patterns of distorted
thinking. We’ll work on challenging your anxious thoughts through mindfulness, which involves learning how to observe our thoughts without judgment.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) encourages you to accept thoughts and
feelings—as uncomfortable as they may be during times of anxiety—as appropriate responses to your circumstances. In ACT, you can learn skills to keep these thoughts and feelings from holding you back. This involves learning tools to let go of the shame surrounding those emotions.
Exposure therapy is all about facing your fears related to your anxiety. With this method, we purposefully enter the situations that make us anxious (as long as they’re safe) and cope with them directly rather than avoiding them.
Interpersonal Therapy can help you improve your interpersonal relationships to lessen social anxiety. Looking at how your relationships may impact your anxiety symptoms is important, including those in the workplace. You will also work on how you communicate your thoughts, the way you resolve conflicts, and how you manage distress.
Psychodynamic therapy involves identifying unconscious feelings and desires that may be the root cause of your anxiety. With psychotherapy, we will dig deeper into the subconscious to figure out what shapes your issues with anxiety, for example, are your symptoms a learned response to certain things, or are they a defense mechanism?
Anxiety is a manageable condition, and with treatment, it’s possible to gain relief from your
symptoms. Let Hope Speaks Counseling be your partner on your path to a life without anxiety dictating your day-to-day behavior and holding you back from living with joy.
You May Still Have Concerns About Anxiety Treatment…
“I just don’t feel like I have enough time for therapy.”
While life is hectic and time may feel like it’s too limited to add anything else to your plate, consider this: it probably takes a lot of time every day to fight against your anxiety—time that you could otherwise be spending elsewhere. What would you do with the extra time you saved by managing your anxiety in the moment? Anxiety counseling can help you get to this level of functioning and while it takes time at the forefront, the benefits will save you time in the long run.
“I’ve done therapy before, and nothing has changed—how will this be any different?”
Anxiety is often a long-term issue, but that is nothing to be afraid of, as it is both very common and manageable. During therapy, we do a thorough assessment of your anxiety symptoms and previous counseling experiences to look at the different areas of what drives the issue including social, physical, and spiritual aspects. What you are likely missing are individualized approaches to treatment for your needs and the right exercises to self-manage outside of therapy. We can provide those missing pieces for you.
“How long does anxiety therapy take?”
There is no definitive answer to how long therapy takes because it depends on many factors, including the type and severity of your anxiety disorder, your motivation, your relationship with your therapist, and the treatment modality used.
We are not here to be your therapist indefinitely—we want to help you understand your symptoms and get you self-managing your anxiety in a time frame that gives you hope for your future, not dread for the journey to get there.
Let’s Get Your Anxiety Treatment Started
There’s no time like the present to make the effort toward managing your anxiety, and Hope Speaks Counseling is available to help. Reach out to us to discuss which one of our anxiety counselors is the right fit for you at (860) 479-6400 for a free, 15-minute phone consultation, or by sending us your information through our online form
1. https://www.nami.org/About-Mental-Illness/Mental-Health-Conditions/Anxiety-Disorders.