Anxiety Disorders are the most common type of mental health issue in the United States. The National Institute of Health estimates that over 19% of adults in the U.S. are affected by an anxiety disorder. Fortunately, anxiety disorders are highly treatable.
What is Anxiety & How Do I Know If I Have Anxiety?
These are common questions people ask when they have been struggling with stress, nervousness, or worry and are wondering if they would benefit from therapy. Anxiety is a diagnosable condition that includes a range of physical and psychological symptoms. There are different types of anxiety disorders that include panic disorders, phobias, social anxiety, and generalized anxiety. A medical or mental health professional should diagnose anxiety to ensure an accurate diagnosis and recommend the best treatment option.
Click here to learn more about the difference between feeling nervous, worrying and anxiety.
Common Symptoms of Anxiety
If you are wondering if you may have anxiety and would benefit from formal help, ask yourself if any of the following sound familiar:
Does it feel as if you are constantly nervous or on edge?
Have you always considered yourself a worrier but have been worrying more than usual lately?
Does it feel as if you often feel stressed for no reason?
Do you:
Overthink?
Struggle with setting boundaries?
Struggle with maintaining your boundaries?
Set unrealistic expectations?
Feel driven by a fear of failure?
Regularly worry about past mistakes that you may have made?
Need constant reassurance?
Have difficulty slowing down?
Feel compelled to plan everything excessively?
Worry about losing control?
Struggle with chronic self-doubt?
Regularly perceive situations as more catastrophic than they are in reality?
Does it feel like you can't control these feelings or do you need to take extensive measures to manage these feelings?
Anxiety Disorder Treatment
Fortunately, there is hope! There are a lot of effective treatment options to help with overthinking, stress, and anxiety disorders. These options include:
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
- Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
- Mindfulness Therapies
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy
You Can Recover From Anxiety
Therapy can you to identify when and why you are feeling anxious, give you tools to help you relax, help you feel more confident in setting boundaries, and help you uncover the underlying causes of your anxiety so that you can find practical and sustainable ways to manage it and prevent it from overwhelming you in the future.
I recognize that anxiety is uncomfortable. When I work with clients struggling with anxiety, I like to focus on getting immediate symptom relief. Together, we will first focus on building techniques that you can use to recognize your anxiety and manage it in the moment. Once you are comfortable managing your symptoms, we will focus on getting to the root causes of your anxiety so that you don't have to use the management techniques as often and can ultimately get to a place where you are no longer as affected by the issues that are causing your anxiety.
You don't need to settle with living with chronic anxiety! Contact me today for a consultation to learn more about how therapy can help you.