Anxiety disorders are one of the most common mental illnesses in the United States, impacting over 40 million individuals of all ages and ethnicities. These disorders fall into a category of conditions called stress-related illnesses, which cause physical symptoms that range from mild to debilitating. Anxiety disorder can lead to difficulties in your life if you let it go untreated and escalate.
However, there are many anxiety disorder treatment options out there, and finding the one that works best for you can make all the difference in your mental health. Whether you’re dealing with general anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, or another type of anxiety-related issue, this article can help you understand how the right anxiety disorder treatment in Houston can help you live a better life.
The Dangers of Anxiety
Though many people think of anxiety as a less extreme form of fear, it is a unique problem that causes stress and sometimes immobilizing fear. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that between 12 percent and 18 percent of adults in America have an anxiety disorder at any given time. While occasional nervousness is normal, if these worries or fears become excessive or interfere with your daily life or relationships, you should talk to your doctor about an anxiety disorder diagnosis. Learn about how such treatments can help with your recovery and get your life back on track after treatment for an anxiety disorder.
Therapy as a Way to Overcome Anxieties
Therapy is a proven way to overcome anxiety disorders and move on with your life. With therapy, you can learn how to regain control of your life and stop living it in fear. A therapist will work with you to set goals for your anxiety treatment in Kingwood, Houston and help you understand the process of anxiety disorder. They may teach you coping skills, do cognitive behavioral therapy, or provide exposure therapy.
Exposure Therapy – It is a type of psychotherapy that gradually exposes you to what makes you anxious in a safe environment until it no longer causes anxiety.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy – Most people with depression or anxiety disorders choose cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a type of counseling that helps them identify and change problematic thoughts and behaviors associated with their symptoms.
Exposure Therapy to Fight Anxieties
Research has revealed that exposure therapy is extremely effective in treating anxiety disorders. The goal of treatment is to help you confront your fears, manage your reactions, and eventually tolerate what you previously feared. These techniques are essential to learning because they can be used outside therapy to help you cope with real-life situations that trigger anxious feelings. Exposure therapy aims to desensitize you to whatever has caused your anxiety disorder by slowly building up a sense of comfort about what’s causing anxiety, whether through a series of imaginable or real-life interceptive exposures.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to Fight Anxieties
There are lots of people who benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. This involves learning to change negative thought patterns that exacerbate your feelings of anxiety. Therapy will teach you to be a more positive thinker—in essence, it retrains your brain to react differently to stressful situations. CBT can help you take control of negative thoughts, for example, by making you more aware of them and teaching you different ways to handle them when they come up. This technique is especially useful for treating phobias such as social anxiety disorder and PTSD.
Family Counseling When Dealing with Anxious Feelings
People with anxiety disorders need to come to terms with their feelings, and family counseling is an excellent way for them to do that. By engaging in positive dialogue about your feelings and emotions, you’ll be able to identify and tackle potential problems head-on. Of course, it can be hard for family members not living with an anxiety disorder to understand what they’re going through – but family counseling sessions can help with that too. Talking through these issues together allows you to make sense of your experiences and understand each other better – resulting in a healthier relationship overall. Counseling also allows you all to challenge any stigmas or negative attitudes surrounding mental health issues.
Medication Can Also Treat Anxieties
Anxiety disorders are typically treated with psychotherapy, medications, or both. Research shows that psychotherapy combined with medication works best. People who receive drug treatment for an anxiety disorder do as well as those who receive psychotherapy plus medication. However, if you’re not willing to take medication and/or talk with a therapist about your condition, any effort to control your anxiety disorder is likely to be challenging. The key is developing an effective strategy for managing symptoms using one or more of these options—because no single approach works for everyone.
Choosing the Right Kind of Counselor or Therapist in Houston!
An anxiety disorder can be so all-consuming that it can seem impossible to think about anything else. But with treatment, you’ll regain your focus on life and its many options. Choosing a counselor is essential in treating anxiety disorder, so it’s best to get professional advice from a mental health care provider in Houston. At Inner Acceptance Therapy, we have licensed mental health therapists and counselors to help people improve their quality of life and find true happiness! So, whether you need anxiety disorder treatment, family counseling, or anger management classes in Houston, we can help!
