Is it necessary to go to psychotherapy to manage anxiety?

How do you know if anxiety discomfort is a reason to go to therapy? Let's look at it.

Practically everyone, at some point in their lives, suffers from excessive anxiety.

Sometimes it is more of a stress that appears before a specific challenge that we must face at home or at work, such as reaching a productivity goal at the office or coordinating a series of household tasks to be completed during the day. In other cases it is an anxiety that keeps us in a state of alert without us knowing very well why, a malaise with diffuse causes and that seems to use any excuse to make us worried and with an accelerated pulse.

However, although all that class of experiences are relatively common, the most frequent thing is that who suffers them in their day to day life does not look for psychotherapeutic help.Is this a problem? Let's take a look.

• Article related: "Types of Anxiety Disorders and their characteristics".

Is it necessary to go to the psychologist in the seasons in which we suffer anxiety?

First of all it is necessary to clarify that the anxiety in yes is not something necessarily badnor an experience that should worry us when it affects us directly. In fact all healthy people are prone to feel anxiety relatively often: it is a phenomenon that is part of the basic emotional states of human beings, and if it exists is because it has helped us to survive for millions of years.

Thanks to it, we can be highly sensitive to risks and dangers and react in time to avoid direct or indirect damage.It is part of an adaptive mechanism so relevant that it appeared long ago in the evolutionary line that reaches us, and in fact is present in virtually all vertebrate animals (and possibly in many invertebrates as well).

Thus, it is more useful to understand that anxiety problems are so in a relative sense: it is the excess anxiety and the way we manage it that needs to be corrected, not the presence of anxiety. In fact, if we try to "eliminate" the anxiety we feel, we will become frustrated and thus feel even more anxiety.

This already gives clues as to whether it is always a problem not to go to a psychologist when we notice that we have a level of anxiety that remains relatively stable over a period of time. The key is not to identify the presence of anxiety in us, but to determine if it is damaging our quality of life in a significant way. in a significant way.

In other words, the criterion for deciding to go to therapy should be based not on the qualitative, knowing whether we experience anxiety or not, but on the quantitative: is it intense or constant enough to keep us away from real wellbeing? Think that psychotherapy lasts several weeks and is usually designed as a way to overcome problems that if not addressed by specialists can continue to affect you in the medium and long term.

If you think this is not your case, you can always learn some guidelines to manage anxiety on your own.

What about anxiety disorders?

It's true that it's not all about having little or a lot of anxiety. At the end of the day there are what are known as anxiety disorders, which are psychopathologies in which anxiety and stress compromise the mental health of the person who suffers from them (and by extension, their physical health as well).

However, from the point of view of someone who is considering whether or not to go to psychotherapy and who has no training in psychotherapy or psychiatry, it is best not to become obsessed with these concepts. It is mental health professionals who diagnose psychological disorders, and in general it is best not to become obsessed with these concepts.In general, it is advisable not to become obsessed with these "labels" used in clinical psychology and to limit ourselves to assessing our own satisfaction with life and the way in which anxiety influences it or not.

Establishing the degree of anxiety distress

Look at these guidelines to determine whether you need psychological help to anxiety:

• Does the way you try to relieve anxiety (binge eating, hair pulling, smoking...) harm you?
• Does anxiety remain quite high for several hours at a time?
• Do anxiety peaks lead you to notice that you lose control over your body?
• Does anxiety go hand in hand with disturbing thoughts or even suicidal ideation?
• Does anxiety cause you to have problems by trying to avoid certain normal day-to-day situations?
• Does anxiety generate very intense physical symptoms?

What can I do if it doesn't pay to go to therapy yet?

If you think that anxiety does not harm you enough to go to psychotherapy, you can always try to apply on your own some psychological keys that, although they are clearly less effective than professional support in a psychologist's office, they can help you. Here are some examples of those recommended habits and behavioral guidelines.

1. Lead a healthy life

The better you are physically, the less likely you are to suffer from high levels of anxiety easily.. Above all, make it a point to get enough sleep, and also eat a healthy diet that provides you with all the vitamins and macronutrients you need.

2. Do not try to block the discomfort

As I advanced before, trying to avoid the entry of anxiety in our mind is totally counterproductive. It is better that you practice acceptance and give up having total and absolute control over what is happening in your consciousness, and focus instead on directing your attention towards things that bring you satisfaction or that you find stimulating..

3. Do aerobic exercise

Aerobic exercise is a great help to prevent and combat anxiety, both for the release of hormones linked to physical activity and for the fact that it induces you to a mental state in which you must focus your attention to immediate goals and body sensations associated with this, so that intrusive thoughts that were worrying you will be weakening and you can "disconnect".

4. Plan your schedule well

The tendency to waste time and postpone responsibilities is a great source of anxiety, and in times when the digital world exposes us to distractions constantly, it is very common to fall into this kind of mistakes. To prevent situations like this create detailed schedules that include rest breaks, so that you can comply with them andso that you can stick to them and they are realistic (so that you can commit to them more).

5. Train yourself

There are more elaborate techniques and strategies that can help you combat moderately high levels of anxiety in your daily life, and in this sense courses and workshops focused on this area of emotional management can help you.