Therapy is therapy, right? Wrong. Just like going to your family physician to perform brain surgery, not every therapist can walk you through how to get the most effective anxiety treatment. They’re all licensed but specializing makes a world of difference.
Yet many people don’t realize this difference until after they’re six months into ineffective treatment believing that all therapists should be equipped to provide anxiety treatment services. After all, isn’t that what therapists do? Unfortunately, no. While some therapists are trained specifically for anxiety, many are not and they provide more general styles of treatment that may not apply.
What Is General Treatment?
General treatment, often called ‘talk therapy’ or ‘counseling’, is focused on feelings, emotions, insights, reflections, and learning from what brought someone to a therapist’s office in the first place. For small issues, that works. The therapist asks questions, poses points for exploration, and over time, the client develops a better understanding of themselves and their situation with the goal of helping.
Where this becomes tough with anxiety is that anxiety is not an issue often based on past trauma or present emotional conflict. Sometimes it is (there is always a root cause), but often it’s been abstracted to being a habit that’s controlled by thought patterns and actions that keep fueling its fire. There’s only so much talking about how to feel anxious that can help calm someone down when they’ve become overwhelmed by symptoms.
General treatment consists of filling the therapist in on the week, how it made one feel, and a discussion to explore why one feels that way. It’s interesting work that promotes insight. But for someone who’s anxious, gaining insight into their feelings may not help quell panic symptoms in the moment. It’s like knowing precisely why someone gets motion sickness from anxiety-provoking situations, yet they still cannot go on the ferris wheel.
How Treatment For Anxiety is Different
Anxiety therapy approaches are skills-based instead of feelings-based. They motivate clients to understand what patterns of thinking and actions are keeping anxiety alive and seek to change those habits. Thus, the therapist is more like a facilitator than someone who merely listens. While therapists listen in anxiety treatment approaches, they prompt new methodologies.
The most common type of anxiety therapist technique is CBT, or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. CBT determines whether thoughts are accurate. For example, if someone thinks they’re going to pass out from being anxious on a roller coaster, they might be right, but only because of anxiety. Understanding the complication between experienced physical responses versus evaluative responses helps guide treatment toward examining thought patterns in the first place.
From CBT, there’s exposure therapy, which involves tackling the situations avoided most head-on. Exposure therapy is incredibly difficult for someone riddled with anxiety, for who’s comfortable facing their biggest fears? However, it’s one of the most effective means of providing anxiety treatment. No one is plunged into immediate overwhelming situations; it’s done gradually, but it is done.
Differentiated approaches include Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACCEPTANCE over avoidance) and mindfulness (which teaches one how to observe without being engulfed). These are more structured approaches that are applicable between sessions from a mindfulness perspective.
Why Does It Matter?
Research speaks for itself: people with anxiety who seek out specific anxiety treatment approaches significantly reduce time-to-improvement over extensive therapy treatment for years without effective results. For example, CBT and exposure techniques have been found effective within weeks instead of months (sometimes even years) when trying more generalized approaches.
It’s vital to acknowledge how treating anxiety as part of a larger problem can help highlight its intersectionality, yet if that’s all there is to it without directing treatment implications and providing resourceful support, the anxiety will remain.
Generalized treatment makes someone feel better about their situation but does nothing for symptoms themselves. Treatment changes occur when someone realizes after weeks they’ve avoided X amount of triggers or the intensity of symptoms has dissipated, or at least less recovery time has needed up since the last session now approaching four weeks than one week.
For anyone struggling with pervasive anxiety or wants to get straight to the point because prior therapy hasn’t helped much or therapeutic goals aren’t further achievable via generalized practices, choosing to talk to a therapist for anxiety who specializes in these proven methods can lead to significantly better outcomes. Working with someone trained in anxiety-specific approaches often means faster relief and more effective long-term results.
Who Is a ‘Good’ Anxiety Therapist?
Not every therapist who says they treat anxiety has specialized training in it. Most good therapists will take on clients presenting with anxiety because it’s such a common occurrence but not everyone in licensed practice knows how best to incorporate the proven methods based on research results.
Good anxiety therapists will have specialized training beyond their initial licensing. They’ve gained certification in recognizing symptoms, proven interventions between sessions, collaborative goal-setting for implementing change and learning how to take resources seriously enough so clients can find validation when back home. There’s a process, an established series of steps, that a non-trained therapist might understand but lack the successful implementation needed.
For example, there are certain systematic steps that could promote how best to expose situations or challenge one’s thoughts, but unless someone knows them from experience and trials under supervision with feedback in a controlled setting without personal stakes invested, treatment won’t be as effective as it could be.
Is Your Therapy Working?
If you’re currently in therapy for anxiety and want to know if it’s working, note whether you’re taught specific skills (not just reflection) and have actionable items between sessions; whether you’re feeling less symptomatic or at least have quicker recoveries; whether you’re giving examples each week of new techniques or situations encountered (or learned from).
Ideally after 2 to 4 months work there’s progress. Progress doesn’t come overnight but looking back over successive sessions should inform next steps forward, and that should work.
If this isn’t working after several months and you have no psychoeducation outside of engaged sessions, consider other avenues; this doesn’t mean your therapist is bad, it just means your therapist is good at what they do but that might not be applicable in this scenario.
Finding an ‘Anxiety’ Therapist
Google is your friend! Looking for legitimate sources talking about this research will help find therapists who specialize in anxiety treatment based on proximity and availability; those who canvas their specializations on online websites or directory profiles without vague mentions should be interviewed on phone calls before formal meetings begin.
Ask your therapist: what’s your approach? Are you certified? How long does it usually take to see results? Will you take insurance?
While often your insurance plan will dictate who’s relevant, many therapists work with insurance and some offer sliding scale fees for those who demonstrate need. It’s worth finding someone with trained success because it’ll minimize time effectiveness later on, even if it’ll be frustrating in hindsight.
When General Anxiety Treatment Still Works
This isn’t necessarily saying that treating anxiety as part of a greater whole never works or any less reputable. It can, but sometimes generalized treatment paves the way for better implementation among other factors before specialized efforts come into play.
If someone suffers from multiple issues where one is anxiously sullied by this reality but only one aspect is presenting then general therapy makes sense. If anxiety is consuming enough of someone’s life despite other problems thriving in negative dysfunctions, anxiety-specific treatment makes sense.
Whatever works best for presenting qualities to mediate what’s stopping someone from getting through life is what’s most important. Not what makes a symptom feel better about itself without any real change getting through life better honestly isn’t helping someone with anxiety constantly feeling controlled by it feel any better about their lives outside of sporadic touchpoints with their feelings.
Treatment should help people live the lives they want, not just live subpar lives with slight intentionality bumping them up along the way through no fault of their own when they’re still at risk from anxiety centrally controlling every urge they do and don’t satisfy unless specialized insight helps.