How anxiety counselling can help

Based on my experience both as a previous anxiety sufferer and now as an anxiety counsellor, the most effective way to treat anxiety is with the combination of good self-help information and personal counselling. This combination produces a much higher rate of success when compared to other recovery strategies. It is also a combination that ensures lasting results.

While many can achieve some form of anxiety and symptom reduction on their own, the results may be incomplete or temporary. The addition of personal counselling makes sure that the underlying factors associated with anxiety are properly addressed, thereby eliminating the problems that can cause anxiety to resurface at a later time.

Unless the underlying causes of anxiety are addressed, anxiety has the potential to return again and again. Addressing the underlying factors ensures that health is achieved and maintained.

Based on my many years of experience with anxiety, anxiety is not a biological disease we inherit or contract. Anxiety is something we cause. We cause ourselves anxiety because we’ve learned to live more fearfully and stressfully than others.

At the root of anxiety lies unhealthy beliefs, thoughts, actions, and behaviours: the underlying factors that cause us to produce anxiety. Unless these underlying factors are addressed, they will continue to cause anxiety, and consequently, cause anxiety conditions to persist or return again and again.

Yes, most people can achieve a certain level of symptom relief on their own, and maybe even complete symptom relief for a while. But if the underlying factors aren’t successfully addressed, the potential remains for anxiety as a condition to return.

Working with an anxiety counsellor ensures that these underlying factors are successfully identified and addressed. Without the help of an experienced and accredited counsellor, most often these underlying factors remain undetected, and therefore, unaddressed.

Working with an anxiety counsellor ensures that these underlying factors are successfully identified and addressed. While there may be a negative stigma attached to therapy, anxiety therapists specialise in this area and therefore can provide great insight into problems that are generally invisible to the untrained eye. Without the help of an experienced therapist, most often these underlying factors remain undetected, and therefore, unaddressed.

Since knowledge is power, and especially as it pertains to anxiety recovery, a therapist’s personal and professional insight can be a vital component to lasting recovery.

There are many advantages to working with a good therapist. A therapist can:

• Help you understand your condition, based on your unique situation and circumstances. Since anxiety affects each person differently, a therapist can help you understand your anxiety condition as it pertains to you specifically, and not generally.
• Help you to better understand your symptoms.
• Help you understand why your condition developed.
• Identify the underlying factors associated with your condition (the core issues and causes).
• Help you to understand how they developed and where they came from.
• Formulate a personalised recovery plan specifically for your unique situation and circumstances.
• Provide you with tools and strategies to bring about healthy change.
• Help you to remain on track with your recovery goals.
• Provide ongoing question and answer support.
• Provide ongoing emotional support and reassurance.
• Provide ongoing evaluation.
• Spot potential obstacles or barriers to recovery. 
• Provide personalised assistance and insight based on their training and personal experience with anxiety.
• Help spouses, family members, and friends understand the validity of an anxiety condition and offer them practical tips on how they can best help you during your recovery.
• Make sure that all troublesome areas are addressed so that your recovery is complete.
• Support you through the rough spots on the way to lasting recovery.
• Mentor you through to lasting recovery.

If you are struggling with anxiety, consider working with a counsellor. They are experienced and equipped to help you resolve your anxiety so that you can return to normal and lasting health.