How therapy and coaching can help with anxiety

Why would you want to reduce or get rid of your anxiety?

Usually, because it is keeping you from doing the things you want to do, it is uncomfortable, it is decreasing the quality of life, it takes over what your mind thinks about, and it creates disease, illness, or discomfort in the body.

You want to reduce the anxiety in your life to gain control, feel better physically, have confidence, and create a life you actually enjoy and doesn't seem so hard.

(this is going to be a longer article, with tons of info, so save it for reference so you can come back to it!)

Let's start with what is anxiety: I define general anxiety to be a feeling of discomfort, unease, or anticipation of future concern. This can look and feel like a ton of different experiences, but for me, it's an unwanted energy of uncertainty, agitation, and discomfort. Anxiety for me is usually created because I don't have enough energy or capacity to handle everything that's going on in my life or in my mind.

Anxiety can look like a generalized anxiety disorder, panic or panic attacks, phobias, social anxiety, OCD, and PTSD. It can also look like overwhelm or discomfort that leads to a lack of action, stuckness, or confusion. But you get to say what it looks like and feels like to you.

The things that tend to create anxiety can be vast but here are some great examples from the Mayo Clinic:

Underlying medical conditions: some medical conditions may be linked to a possible increase in anxiety like heart disease, chronic pain, tumors, thyroid problems, and diabetes. These chronic problems can add to the level of mental and emotional capacity to handle any additional life stressors that may come up, adding to more anxiety.

Trauma: I come from a school of understanding that there are two different kinds of trauma - big T and little T. Little T is the smaller moments in your life where you consistently don't get your needs met, you are betrayed, bullied, or put down, or circumstances where your relationships are not fulfilling. Big T trauma tends to be big/catastrophic events like car accidents, family deaths, or being laid off. Overall, trauma is an emotional response to experiencing a distressing event, so it can come from tons of different experiences.

Mental Health Disorders: If you've been diagnosed with something regarding your mental or emotional health can increase your levels of anxiety. Things like major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, PTSD, or even traumatic brain injuries and their complications can change your level of capacity to deal with anxiety.

Drugs and alcohol: struggles with the consumption, overuse, or withdrawal from any kind of drugs and alcohol can increase levels of anxiety. Consumption of substances that change your neural capacity will change your ability to deal with any additional stimulus you take on in life.

Direct family members with an anxiety diagnosis: If you have a family history of people who have been professionally diagnosed with a disorder may have genes passed on that could make you struggle in dealing with anxiety and difficult experiences.

Now the important stuff: HOW therapy, coaching, and deep mental and emotional work can decrease or even get rid of your anxiety.

To solve a problem, you have to know what the problem is and where you want to go. Therapeutic work can help identify the causes of your anxiety and how you usually deal (or not deal) with it.

There are a handful of medications that can be prescribed for anxiety, usually determined by a psychologist. There are also many ways to work with anxiety through talk therapy and mental and emotional skills.

If you're already battling some anxiety that is affecting what you're doing, coping strategies can be super useful. It can be helpful to have a professional who has tried and experienced a ton of different ones to help find the ones that will best work for you. Breathing and breathwork can be an incredible tool, but may not work in every circumstance. The same with other mindfulness and stress reduction strategies like meditation, journaling, calling a friend, tracking stress and mood, or building habits like exercise that are great at reducing stress. Coping strategies are incredibly useful and may change based on what kind of stress you're in and what resources you have at the time.

Therapy and coaching can also help build stress resilience. What this means is that you can get to a point where stress does not have an automatic "takeover" in your life and as it comes up - you can deal with it quickly and effectively. Making stress just something that happens in life and you feel confident in dealing with it (because there will absolutely be circumstances where stress just happens - you don't necessarily choose it). You'll build confidence in your capabilities in handling the crazy life situations and the overwhelm, confusion, or discomfort of them.

Therapeutic work can also create a treatment plan - a policy, set of medications, or set of steps to follow when you do feel anxiety coming up. A treatment plan will look different depending on which professional you choose to make it with - but each modality or treatment will be unique to you and it may take a bit of time to find the plan that really gets you to a place of resilience and effective stress management.

If you work with a professional to change how you work with and experience stress, they may also help you change patterns in your life (that likely were useful many years ago, or when you were a child), that are no longer useful in your current life circumstances. They may also help you become a master with problem-solving skills, - being able to quickly and efficiently solve problems (big or small) can really help reduce stress overall. Some professional studies have recommended that it takes 6 months of consistent sessions with a professional to become more confident in handling your anxiety and stressors and to reduce your symptoms.

If you're looking to reduce the intensity of your anxiety and think that one or more of the options above would be helpful for you - reach out to a professional and do an "interview" with them. With their expertise, ask them about different ways to help you, specifically, with the type and frequency of anxiety you experience.

I've tried to just ignore stress and anxiety before, and unfortunately, it doesn't go away on its own. Let me know what your biggest struggle is with your anxiety. Maybe there's a solution that's a little closer than you think.