Anxiety disorders are a common factor found in both adults and children. About 18 percent of adults and 25 percent of adolescents are likely to experience anxiety, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. My anxiety was more than usual and it kept me under many circumstances where I experienced panic attacks, heart palpitations, sweating, trembling, shortness of breath or a feeling of choking, a pounding heart, and feelings of dread. Such attacks often happen suddenly, and I did not have any reason or warning.
How My Therapist Helped Relieve My Anxiety?
Psychotherapy is a collaborative process, where your therapist will work together with you as a team to identify specific concerns and develop concrete skills and techniques for coping with anxiety. Patients can expect to practice their new skills apart from the session to manage anxiety in situations that might make them uncomfortable. My therapist helped me using the CBT approach i.e Cognitive Behavioural Therapy where she aimed at improving my mental health focusing on challenging and changing unhelpful cognitive distortions and behaviours along with improving emotional regulation, and the development of personal coping strategies that target solving current problems.
Anxiety disorders are easily treatable these days simply indulging for months of psychotherapy, and many patients notice improvement after just a few sessions. My case was lucky that way, I only had to take 10 sessions to be fine.
Another approach which helped me in the long run was, apart from my therapy sessions, she asked me to have regular exercising schedule and meditation.
I gave 10 minutes from my busy schedule everyday for Meditation, which was actually proven to be beneficial in keeping me calm thereby relaxing my nerves.
I used to go for an everyday walk in the morning to divert myself from things that create tension and unwanted thoughts in my mind. My walk-routine was followed by jogging and a bit of lifting at home only. The Best Fitness Watches and Tracker for Women helped me calculate my burnt calories at the end of my workout session, which prompted and motivated me to work out more. This did not only help to alleviate my anxiety symptoms but also helped me burn unnecessary fat, resulting in staying fit.
Another session namely “Group psychotherapy” was also utterly beneficial. It typically involves several people who all have anxiety disorders, can be effective for both treating anxiety and providing patients with support with patients having familiar problems.
Through this cognitive therapy and it’s an undying potential of therapy that involves the cognitive component, made me understand and learn more about how my thoughts contribute to their anxiety symptoms. By learning to change those thought patterns, my intensity of panic attacks and symptoms of anxiety have reduced from 5 times a month to 2 times a month.
Things I Learned After Having A Course of CBT:
CBT can have a positive impact on how people feel and it exactly helped me that way. It acted and equipped in such a way that now i have properly learnt about the coping strategies that help me deal with challenges such as:
- I am more able to identify problems now that i used to
- A sense of awareness of automatic thoughts has been developed
- Assumptions and reality, are two different things which every person should know, that is distinguishing between facts and irrational thoughts
- Have lesser stress to understand how past experience can affect present feelings and beliefs. Nothing can now let me dwell into my past
- I am able to look at a situation and analyze from a different perspective
- Better understand other people’s actions and motivations
- Feeling of positivity that has changed my way of thinking and seeing situations
- Have avoided generalizations and all-or-nothing thinking
- I hardly think about blaming myself for everything
- It feels great to learn, accept, and understand rather than judge themselves or others