Anxiety, like all emotions, exists to tell us something important. We need to slow down, take a breath, and evaluate what is happening around us. Are we safe? Do our loved ones need help? Do we need a break? While anxiety has negative connotations, it serves a purpose, and it’s important for us to always pay attention to why we feel anxious and respond appropriately. While anxiety is a completely natural emotional response in numerous situations, chronic, prolonged, or severe anxiety may cease to be beneficial and begin detracting from our ability to live a healthy and fulfilling life. When this happens, you may benefit from therapy to develop coping skills and strategies to manage overwhelming feelings of anxiety. On this page, you can learn more about what anxiety is and how therapy helps.
Is It Anxiety or Am I Worried?
Many people put off visiting me for therapy to improve their anxiety symptoms because they tell themselves they’re just worried, and maybe they have plenty of good reasons to feel worried or afraid or stressed. Life certainly throws a lot at us, and it’s completely natural and healthy to feel a little anxious. In fact, anxiety can help us perform better. Think about when you first learned to drive a car. You probably felt a little anxious getting behind the wheel for lessons. This anxiety helped you to be more alert and focused on the road and the people and objects around you. Anxiety at times like this heightens our senses and keeps us safe. That’s what anxiety is designed to do. There really is no such thing as a bad emotion. They all serve a purpose.
However, the same anxiety that keeps us safe and pushes us to do our best can become disordered. Think back to learning to drive a car. You likely got used to driving and became increasingly comfortable and confident the longer you spent behind the wheel. Now, imagine you didn’t ever experience any relief from this heightened anxiety. Every time you get behind the wheel, you are hypervigilant, your heart is racing, and you feel overwhelmed. Maybe the feelings of anxiety actually increase rather than decreasing over time. There is never any sense of relief or diminished symptoms. Behind the wheel, you are always as worried as you were the first day, or maybe you are more worried. This is a strong indication that you are experiencing disordered anxiety that may benefit from therapy.
Can Therapy Help with Anxiety?
Therapy at Image & Likeness Counseling is often extremely beneficial in diminishing the adverse effects of anxiety disorders. When you work with one of our counselors, you begin to develop skills and strategies to manage the ways that anxiety is negatively impacting your day-to-day life. As trained therapists, we can help you develop self-awareness and recognize when anxiety is increasing and what triggers the feelings of anxiety. From there, you can begin learning new ways of managing this anxiety. You’ll partner with your therapy starting at your very first session to set achievable goals, practice new skills outside of the office, and discuss how things are going between sessions and continually adjust your plan to make progress.
What Do I Do to Get Started?
The Image & Likeness Counseling team works regularly with people who are struggling with the adverse effects of anxiety on their daily life. If you’re having a tough time managing anxiety, please don’t hesitate to reach out to learn more about how therapy alleviates the impact of anxiety on your life and schedule an appointment at Image & Likeness Counseling. We look forward to being part of your therapy journey.