Anxiety
We all feel anxious from time to time. It can even be beneficial by protecting us from harmful situations or spurring us on to meet a deadline. Our ancestors relied on the “fight or flight” response to stay alert and alive. However, anxiety can become problematic when you begin to feel anxious in everyday or non-threatening situations.
Typically, anxiety disorders are characterized by both emotional and physical sensations such as palpitations of the heart, feelings of tension, apprehension, or even fear.
Anxiety disorders can affect anyone of any age and are one of the most common mental health concerns.
Symptoms & signs of anxiety
Some of the symptoms of problematic anxiety and anxiety disorders are:
Emotional symptoms
- Inability to stop worrying about your concerns
- Feelings of never-ending stress
- Being easily startled and/or quick to panic
- Feeling socially isolated or alienated from others in your life
- Problems in your social relationships due to feelings of being vulnerable or elevated arousal.
Physical symptoms
- Fatigue, difficulty sleeping
- Trouble catching your breath
- Headaches
- Trembling, muscle tension
- Diarrhea
- Sweating
- Heart palpitations
When is it time to get help?
Anxiety is characterized by frequent, irrational, and uncontrollable worry. These worries are often about everyday subjects such as health, money, family, or work. When these worries cause you stress, negatively impact your daily life, or when you start to avoid situations in which you are fearful, it’s time to seek help and support.
Anxiety treatment methods
There are several effective treatment methods for dealing with anxiety. Your therapist will discuss with you the best options for your individual circumstance. Some treatment methods that are typically successful in treating anxiety include:
- Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is an evidence-based approach to treatment that focuses on how people’s thoughts, emotions, and beliefs influence their behaviour and how they perceive themselves.
- Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is an approach that works to help the brain process information, memories, sounds, and feelings in a way that makes them be seen in a new and less distressing way.
- Mindfulness therapy is an approach to treatment that focuses on how people’s thoughts, emotions, and beliefs influence their behaviour and how they perceive themselves, others, and the world. The ability to be in the moment, to acknowledge and regulate your emotions helps you to break free from negative thought patterns.
- Behaviour therapy tends to view human beings and behaviour with the assumption that humans are a product of their sociocultural conditioning and environment, looking at the current problems and the factors influencing them and emphasizes behaviour changes more than the underlying unconscious processes.
- Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) is an effective, research-backed, non-invasive process in which a focused magnetic field stimulates under-active brain cells, activates them to work more efficiently and transforms lives through symptom reduction. rTMS can be particularly effective when used to treat severe depression, anxiety, PTSD, ADHD, OCD, chronic pain, migraines, post concussion symptoms, and burnout that has not fully responded to conventional treatments (medication/therapy).
What will I get out of treatment with Insight Psychological?
If anxiety is affecting your life, please know that you’re not alone – anxiety is one of the most common mental health concerns in Canada. Our therapists at Insight can help you to alleviate the symptoms caused by anxiety. You do not have to live with the limiting effects of anxiety – we can help. Working together with your therapist, you will understand what is causing you stress and anxiety and discover ways of dealing with and reducing anxiety through a proven treatment method that works for you.
We have a team of therapists who can treat you in-person, through video online, or talk to you on the phone. Contact us to learn more.
