Treatment For Anxiety

Anxiety can be caused by a number of reasons: it can be generated by the environment (e.g such as that caused in the workplace); by unresolved issues from the past; by unresolved or on-going conflict from relationships; unhelpful beliefs and interpretations and of course by trauma (such as assaults, car crashes) and phobias.

Stress and anxiety are linked and in our increasingly stressful modern world, anxiety seems to be running rampant.

Good therapy for treatment of anxiety involves a holistic approach that is able to address the problem at source – at the level where it is occuring.

In general problems can be treated either at source (cause) or in terms of symptoms (sometimes the underlying cause of anxiety has been resolved but the worry remains, like a bad habit).

In the first therapy session a quick case history is taken to assess at what level the anxiety is ‘operating on’. It’s a bit like detective work to assess where to apply maximum leverage for treatment.

The good news is that anxiety, even long term chronic anxiety, can often be treated anywhere between 1-3 sessions (depending on individual variables). The reason why this is so quick is that believe it or not your body is ulitimately designed for health. Once the interferences (or spanners in the works) are removed, your body has the power to auto-correct very quickly.

Treating anxiety caused by a stressful or toxic environment will often entail stress management, which in turn may involve dealing with problematic relationships or straightfoward pragmatic coaching in terms of learning to prioritise, organise and manage one’s workload.

Treating anxiety caused by conflict in relationships can work at many levels: clearing hurt or grievances from the past, understanding the other person’s actions in different perspectives; overcoming blocks to communication or enhancing ways of conveying and expressing feelings, for instance.

A lot of anxiety is generated by unhelpful beliefs – fear of failure, fear of success, fear of a repeat of pain caused in the past. This will lead to behaviours such as dreading, worrying or perfectionism. Treatment on this level involves mostly working on the internal mind set. By the way, clinical hypnosis works very well with anxiety – working at both the level of causes and symptoms. Hypnosis is great for releasing unresolved emotions from the past, dealing with symptoms or focusing on more solution and helpful behaviour.

Felix Economakis