Want to Beat Anxiety? Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Can Help

Nearly everyone experiences anxiety at some point in their lives, so everyone should have compassion for anyone who experiences more repetitive forms of anxiety that can be more chronic in nature. Anxiety can be crippling to those suffering from it and can lead to problems in every walk of life, from relationships to job performance. Those who suffer from chronic anxiety tend to create problems and unrealistic fears which can cause them to sabotage their own lives. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can help.

For those who consistently have obsessive thoughts, panic attacks, continual worrying, and other phobias this could be a sign that you are suffering from an anxiety disorder. Not only do you not have to continue living with these issues, but thanks to advances in neurological treatment methods such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, you don’t have to.

CBT can help alleviate many of the underlying problems that act as triggers and catalysts for your anxiety problems and panic attacks. By consulting with a professional you can learn to control your levels of anxiety and stop the excessive worrying that leads to anxiety and panic attacks.

Methods of Treating Anxiety with CBT

Prescription drugs are simply and ineffective approach to treating anxiety because they do not get to the root of the problem, which is how your deal with the issues causing the problem in the first place. All they do is put a band-aid on an open wound that will never heal without learning how to cope with the issues at hand. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can help you to learn to relax and look at these challenges in a different light and help you develop more effective ways of coping with them.

There are numerous types of anxiety disorders and different levels of intensity which vary from person to person, so you need a therapist who understands this. There is no one size fits all approach. If you have generalized anxiety your treatment will be much different from someone who gets crippling panic attacks or has a social anxiety disorder so acute that it causes them to never want to venture out of their own home. The number of sessions required to see positive improvement can vary greatly depending upon the disorder you have as well as the severity of it. Many anxiety sufferers see significant improvement in less than a dozen sessions.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the therapy of choice for the majority of anxiety disorders and has been proven effective in the treatment of many phobias, panic disorders, social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and others. CBT works by addressing negative patterns and distorted views sufferers have in the way they look at the world and themselves and consists of two primary components from which the name, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is derived.

First, Cognitive Therapy looks at how our negative thoughts or cognition help to trigger our anxiety. Secondly, Behavior Therapy is used to thoroughly examine why we behave the way we do and why we react to situations in certain ways that cause anxiety and panic attacks.