Sometimes Anxiety is this manageable feeling appearing before a job interview or an important exam. However, if you are feeling mentally paralysed, and you cannot manage your worries and fears, then anxiety means something else. Luckily, with some help, you can free yourself from it.
What is Anxiety?
Anxiety, especially severe anxiety, is not just a feeling of unease, and it doesn’t happen randomly. Tragic or traumatising events can cause excessive anxiety. If you avoid the sadness or the traumatizing emotion that naturally follows a traumatizing event, short-term you may think you will feel better. But, these emotions will not disappear unless you process and learn to live with them.
When you bury the feelings you don’t know how to manage, anxiety will surely follow. Combine with that the fact that we don’t live in a safe world, and you have a recipe for an uneasy future. The world may appear safe, but for our mind, it is not.
Imagine you are already carrying a burden deep inside, and then your boss has a bad day and takes it out on you. The reasons for stress can come from anywhere and at any time, but when you are already resisting a heavy emotion, your mind cannot defend against the outside stressors, and you start to develop severe anxiety. This usually results in you becoming paralyzed in difficult situations, so you avoid them completely, crippling your ability to live.
Anxiety often comes from a buried burden, but it can also have a different source. And in this case, the cause is less obvious. For example, if you recently went through a promotion or a different outside change, that may require an inner, mental adjustment. But you don’t realise this and you don’t make the mental change. The result can be anxiety.
Reality Therapy and CBT for Anxiety
Cognitive behavioural therapy is a clear and logical way for you to break down your overwhelming problems into manageable pieces. Especially if you have severe anxiety, we have to focus on your current problems and their causes in the present.
Through reality therapy and CBT, I can help you realize the causes behind your problems. Once you know what they are, together we can work on how to change or accept them. The goal is for you to learn how to cope with the daily stressors, to become more self-aware, and reach a deeper understanding of yourself.
If you want to live a better, anxiety-free life, you first have to stop the negative cycles or thought patterns. The only way you can do this is to first realise how your thoughts and feelings influence your actions. Or in other words, which thoughts and feelings give you anxiety. We will do this using Reality Therapy
Once you have a deeper understanding of your actions, using CBT, we break the problems into something you can manage. The final step is to change those thoughts and emotions and help you find a way to live your life at a higher quality.
CBT can be extremely successful when treating anxiety. And if you feel this is something you need, you can contact me here.