Therapy in Facing Various Types of Anxiety Disorders
In many cases, medications have played a large role in facing and treating all sorts of anxiety disorders. According to studies, and personal recommendations, therapy on its own or combined with specific medications is the best treatment. The reason behind this is that therapy is different from medications because it gives the patient the proper tools to manage anxiety on their own, even in the future. Various types of techniques were developed and implemented in order to treat anxiety disorders and they have continuously evolved over time. So if you plan to try anxiety counseling Houston, better read up on the kinds of therapy for your specific anxiety disorder;
Types of Therapies for Anxiety Disorders
The main goal of every therapeutic approach out there is to help the patient understand exactly how you feel and why you feel that way, what your triggers may be and how you may change your subsequent reaction to them. A handful of therapies even teach all sorts of practical techniques in helping reframe the negative thinking you have and change your behavior.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
One of the most commonly used therapy for all sorts of anxiety disorders is cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). Numerous research has stated that this therapy is effective in treating panic disorders, SAD, phobias, GAD among other conditions. CBT works on the premise that the person’s thoughts, and not the current situation, affects the way you feel and how they may behave. The main goal of CBT is understanding and identifying the person’s negative way of thinking alongside ineffective behavior patterns and effectively replacing them with more positive and realist thoughts, actions, and coping mechanisms.
During the entire process, the expert therapist will act as coaching to teach them effective strategies. Let’s say that a person does a lot of black-and-white thinking, where they assume that everything is only bad or good. Instead, they have to replace thoughts with the better and more realistic perception that they are also a gray area in between everything.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy
A highly effective kind of CBT, the dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) was originally developed to treat all sorts of borderline personality disorders but now it’s also effective for a wide variety of conditions like anxiety. DBT mainly focuses on helping the person develop what may seem like a “dialectical” outlook, chance, and acceptance; they’ll learn how to accept their anxiety why working to change it.
Exposure Therapy
Commonly used in treating PTSD, phobias, SAD, and other anxiety disorders, exposure therapy methods follow the thinking that if you’re afraid of something then the best way to face it is head-on. During the therapy, the therapist gradually introduces patients to objects and situations where their anxiety may be triggered. Oftentimes, it’s done with systematic desensitization that involves three steps:
1. Relax – therapists teach relaxation training to help the patient fight their anxiety.
2. List – patients will list down their anxiety-provoking triggers by intensity.
3. Expose – in the last step, patients will gradually work through their given list while making use of relaxation techniques.