Anxiety Therapy
A healthy, normal amount of anxiety serves an important purpose: it acts as an alarm signal for impending threats. For example, when there is an emergency, our body kicks into overdrive, giving us the energy and focus to help us deal with it.
When anxiety rises to unhealthy levels, your brain learns to see threats everywhere. It sounds the alarm bells, even when there's nothing to fear. In turn, you experience physical symptoms of the fight-or-flight response, such as heart palpitations, sweating, or shaking.
In order to overcome our body's anxiety response, we have to retrain our brains to view the world around us as if it is no longer a threat. One important way to do this is by identifying the distortions, or inaccuracies, in your thoughts.
Some thought distortions that are common among people with anxiety include:
✨ Catastrophizing (blowing things out of proportion -- ex: "My heart is beating really fast. I must be dying.")
✨ Personalizing (blaming ourselves for things that aren't our fault -- ex: "My partner seems angry today. I must have done something wrong.")
✨ Fortune Telling (predicting the future as if it were certain -- ex: "I know I'm going to fail all of my exams.")
✨ Mind Reading (assuming we know what other people are thinking -- ex: "My friend isn't texting me back. She probably thinks I'm annoying.")
With practice, we can learn to identify these types of thoughts and replace them with healthier, more adaptive ways of looking at a situation to reduce the number of "false alarms" we sense in the world around us.
Our holistic therapists at Life by Design Therapy are trained in guiding you through the process of reframing your thoughts and overcoming the body's fight-or-flight response. Contact us today to learn how we can help you take back control from your anxiety.
Comments
Post a Comment