How can Therapy Help me with Anxiety?

For many people who are working to manage their anxiety, therapy can hugely change their lives for the better. There’s plenty of evidence that it can be an effective way of treating and managing anxiety, but people may sometimes feel uncertain about how therapy actually helps with anxiety. This article might help to clear some of these questions up, and help you to decide whether therapy is a good option for you.

A good place to start is to consider how therapy actually works. Although there are many different types of effective therapies (some more effective for certain mental health conditions), most of them rest on the idea that addressing something like anxiety requires an assessment to understand:

• how it arises (e.g. when it started for you, how long it has been happening, specific situations that it might be worse in, family history or health issues)
• learning about the condition (e.g. what some common symptoms of anxiety might be, how it works in our bodies)
• developing skills to manage it (e.g. relaxation, mindfulness, challenging thoughts, tolerating strong emotions)

Most therapies also involve some emotional support, where you can talk through the things that have been causing you stress or that have been impacting you. Depending on the therapy you choose, you may be spending a lot of time talking about the things that are impacting you, and evidence shows that this process (called ‘catharsis’) can be incredibly helpful for anxiety symptoms – since you’re processing things that are happening and sharing them with a trusted person. 

It is important to note that the ‘therapeutic relationship’ – or the connection you have with your therapist – has been shown to account for a lot of improvement in anxiety symptoms – and often therapy isn’t effective if you don’t trust or respect your therapist. Generally we do need to feel comfortable with someone before we tell them personal things about our lives, and allow them to teach us new skills – so if you are not feeling comfortable with your therapist, it might be a good idea to look for another one. 

Here’s an overview of many of the processes that might occur in therapy, that have been shown to be important to the process:

Psychoeducation about anxiety

One of the most important parts of therapy is learning some of the reasons for the anxiety symptoms – whether this is talking about events that have happened in the past, or even discussing the symptoms that you’ve noticed coming up for you. Therapists are trained in the theory and practice of mental health, so it is likely that they will have an explanation for whatever is happening for you, and can offer suggestions for how to address it. 

Emotional support for anxiety

As mentioned, a large part of therapy is often emotional support, from a trained person – it is your space to talk about your worries and concerns, ask for advice and share your victories. Therapists are trained to be good listeners and ask the ‘right questions’ to get you thinking. Research into therapy shows that, even if it seems straightforward, this part of therapy is perhaps the most important – having someone you can trust and who is interested in your wellbeing. 

Skills building for anxiety

Most therapy also involves learning new skills and strategies to manage anxiety – this might be things like learning relaxation techniques or doing a role play for how to have a difficult conversation – or it might be talking through strategies to help your wellbeing in general. You might work on a plan for getting better sleep, or talk through how you’ll manage difficult times during the week. This is a very practical part of therapy, but can be enormously helpful in tackling those day to day things like exercise and self care. 

Integration 

For many therapies, the overall aim is around integration – where you gain an understanding of where your anxiety might have originated, the reasons for this, how it affects you, and how you can manage it. For some people, it might be necessary to talk through things that have happened or difficult situations from the past, in order to process and understand how these might have impacted them. Once you have processed these events, and talked them through, it is likely that you’ll understand these difficult events better and so they will be ‘integrated’ into your world view – and they may no longer cause you distress.

This could be discussing an experience of being bullied at school, a difficult family relationship, traumatic events or even something like a relationship breakdown. Often we don’t take the time to process things when they happen, so we are unaware of the impact they have had on us until we start to unpack them. Talking through these experiences often leads to ‘aha’ moments that help us to see things differently – for example, an experience of being bullied at school can really impact self esteem through life, and make it hard to form stable relationships – but understanding this and looking back at what happened, we can start to undo some of that damage. 

Next steps

This has been a brief overview of some of the processes of therapy – there are many other things that contribute to therapy being a useful treatment for anxiety. If you’re interested in knowing more, we’d recommend visiting your GP to discuss a referral, or do a google search of therapists in your area. Most therapists have websites you can visit to see if you are a good match. We also have some other short guides we hope will be helpful for you:

What types of therapy work best for anxiety?

If you’d like reliable relief from anxiety, you can install Mind Ease for free here.