How therapy helps anxiety?

Anxiety is a normal response to some situations and can even be a helpful and healthy response when we’re faced with a threat or danger. Anxiety can also become problematic when it is difficult to manage or when it begins to interfere with daily life. Anxiety is often treated with therapy, medication, and sometimes both.

When you experience troubling anxiety, you may initially talk with your family doctor, or you may be referred to your doctor by a therapist in order to rule out any underlying medical conditions that may be causing your symptoms or to evaluate whether or not medication may be helpful for the specific type of anxiety that you’re experiencing.

Therapy has advantages in treating anxiety. Therapy provides participants with the tools to manage anxiety in the present and in the future, which means that it outlasts any prescription. Therapy also has the power to help provide you with normalization of the difficulties you encounter with it, and validation, both of which can go a long way toward helping support you in recovering and managing anxiety. When anxiety becomes difficult it can feel like you’re the only one struggling with it, or that it’s “all in your head” – in therapy you gain support that dispels these myths in a profoundly helpful way.

Over the years different therapy modalities and interventions have been developed to treat anxiety. Because there are multiple types of anxiety and symptoms and presentations can be different, not all therapies are appropriate for every form of anxiety or for every person. Your therapist will work with you to determine the best treatment approach for you and your anxiety.

Some popular forms of therapy, with research support for their effectiveness, include:

• CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy
• Exposure therapy
• DBT or dialectical behavioral therapy
• Narrative therapy
• EMDR or eye movement and desensitization reprocessing therapy
• Interpersonal therapy

There are more therapies available, however. What works best for you and your anxiety will vary from what worked best for a friend or relative and their anxiety. Therapy is a process, and more important than the type of therapy is the relationship you and your therapist establish – a good therapeutic relationship is necessary for positive outcomes, and according to research more important than the modality used. Your commitment to attending, following through on new skills, and any “homework” from therapy is also a key component to the outcome you experience.