If you live with anxiety, it can be debilitating. When left untreated, anxiety has the potential to impact productivity, damage relationships, and cause physical health issues.
Anxiety disorders affect 40 million American adults. Yet less than 40 percent of those impacted will seek treatment.
Conditions of anxiety are fairly easy to treat with therapy. There are several approaches to therapy for anxiety. But for those who suffer from the condition, treatment is often life-changing.
If you’re considering seeking treatment, here are seven amazing benefits of therapy for anxiety you should know about.
1. Develop Self-Awareness
Therapy helps patients gain a better sense of self.
Without realizing it, patients have taken a step towards healing before they even find a therapist by acknowledging they need help.
Long-term therapy helps patients understand how their anxiety works. Initially, patients learn to recognize when they feel anxious. They will also learn how to cope with that anxiety.
Eventually, patients may begin to understand what triggers their anxiety. They will also begin to address the root cause of their anxious thoughts. Then, patients can work to set healthy boundaries in their life.
Self-awareness helps patients make sense of their feelings, and learn to cope with them in a healthier way.
2. Gain a New Perspective
The best therapist isn’t afraid to be honest with their patient. Family and friends don’t always understand what patients are experiencing. But a therapist isn’t afraid to tell it like it is.
Common therapy approaches like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focus on identifying negative thoughts that breed anxiety, and understanding how the body reacts to anxiety-inducing situations.
Such therapy for anxiety teaches patients to reframe their negative thoughts. For example, a patient may worry, “if I get caught in the rain, everyone will think I look ridiculous”, they will reframe their thought as, “everyone is more likely to ask if I’m all right.”
It allows patients to confront their anxiety and negative thoughts. By challenging these unhealthy thoughts, eventually patients will have fewer negative thoughts.
3. Share in Confidence as One of the Benefits of Therapy
Therapy is a safe place to share the most intimate feelings and worries. Often, patients who suffer from an anxiety disorder feel vulnerable sharing their struggles with family or friends.
Speaking out loud allows patients to work through their emotions in an intentional way.
Understanding how negative thoughts trigger anxiety gives patients space to examine themselves. They may begin to identify trends in their thoughts.
A therapist is a neutral, unbiased person who will allow patients to unload and share their feelings in a confidential space. Sometimes, simply sharing how patients feel lightens the burden of anxiety they’re experiencing.
4. Learn Healthy Coping Mechanisms
One of the benefits of therapy is being able to recognize and cut unhealthy coping mechanisms and replace them with healthy coping mechanisms.
Therapists will teach patients effective relaxation and breathing techniques. Patients may also try techniques like meditation or hypnosis.
Relaxation aims to eliminate symptoms of anxiety in the body. It works to cut down stress, and tension. These techniques prevent hyperventilation, trembling, and rapid heartbeat.
Learning to relax helps patients calm their nervous system and focus on healthy breathing.
The techniques help patients confront their anxiety.
5. Adopt a Healthy Lifestyle
Part of therapy for anxiety is recognizing how anxious feelings live in the body. It is also important to recognize how our behavior is impacted by anxious thoughts.
Whether a patient is seeing a therapist or psychologist, treatment will encourage them to develop a healthier lifestyle.
This means adopting a healthy diet and getting better sleep. It also means engaging in regular exercise.
Patients are often encouraged to cut down on substances like drugs, alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine. The substances have a tendency to increase anxious thoughts.
A healthier lifestyle will make patients feel more energetic and positive. It will help them avoid feelings of anxiety.
6. Strengthen Relationships
Those who live with anxiety are more at risk of experiencing loneliness and depression. Anxiety causes many patients to isolate themselves from family and friends.
Therapy for anxiety helps to improve relationships.
Patients will learn healthy ways to communicate their feelings to loved ones in a constructive way. Therapists will also encourage patients to spend time with family and friends.
Those who seek therapy begin connecting with their community again. They may also cultivate new relationships with like-minded people in support groups.
Relationships make patients feel supported. Support helps patients cope with the fear and dread of anxiety. So they can get back to living a fulfilling life.
7. Regulate Emotions
Anxiety causes the body to hold tension. It also leads to fight-or-flight feelings, rapid heartbeat, and high blood pressure.
That tension makes it more difficult to control emotions. Often, those uncontrolled emotions cause disruptions to the lives of patients. It can interfere with daily operations, at work, and in relationships.
Long-term therapy teaches patients how to reduce the tension that creates heightened anxiety.
Being able to manage emotions and eliminate that tension has the potential to be life-changing for patients. It causes patients to be more productive, build stronger connections and live uninterrupted lives.
Therapy for Anxiety Is Life-Changing
Experiencing anxiety is challenging and exhausting. But anxiety disorders are treatable with the proper therapy.
There is a long list of benefits of therapy for anxiety. Patients learn to understand and cope with negative thoughts and reframe their thinking. Long-term therapy can be life-changing.
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