Anxiety - Counselling and Therapy

Anxiety is a normal feeling that everyone experiences.  At its core, anxiety’s job is to warn us when something may pose a threat to us physically or emotionally.  Sometimes the wiring in our brains results in misreading the world around us and our brain sees threats where none exist, or transforms uneasy situations into very scary and unwelcoming events.

This is because our anxiety comes from experience and instinct. Instinctual anxiety might be a visceral fear or snakes, or the dark, even though you have had no bad experiences with snakes, or being in the dark.  Experienced based anxiety is learned from prior experiences.   Experiential anxiety is a response an internal sense of unease, although you might not be totally sure why you are anxious.

Anxiety Symptoms - Physical

Anxiety Symptoms - Behaviours

Fidgeting

Pacing

Decreased ability to perform daily activities

Reassurance seeking

Codependence

Social withdrawal

Substance abuse

Anxiety Symptoms - Emotions

Scared or Fearful

Unsettles

Panicky

Irritable

Hopelessness 

Helplessness

Worthlessness

Anxiety Symptoms - Thoughts

What Anxiety Therapy or Counselling Can Look Like

Counselling for anxiety will be different from clinician to clinician, and client to client.  However, here is a general overview of what one can expect when receiving counselling for anxiety.

The challenge is to figure out what is reasonable anxiety, and what is not.  Sometimes, it can make sense for us to feel anxious: 

Ex. feeling anxious as we prepare for a presentation at work that means a lot to us.  

This is also why it sometimes doesn't make sense for us feel anxious 

Ex. Everything is going well, so then anxiety hits because that means something horrible will happen 

Regardless of whether it makes sense, anxiety will “talk” in three different ways: through Emotions, through Thoughts, and through the Body.  When these symptoms of anxiety are given proper attention and care, it can keep the intensity of the experience inside a person’s window of tolerance (experiencing the uncomfortable response and still feeling in control).  If anxiety symptoms are overanalyzed or completely ignored, this can cause these symptoms to increase and bring the experience outside of a person’s window of tolerance (feeling out of control).  

By getting to know their common symptoms of anxiety, clients at Firefly can learn to recognize when they are feeling anxious so they can begin to understand what the source is.  By healing anxiety at its source, clients can learn to manage anxiety, rather than being consumed by it. 

Anxiety Therapy - The Beginning

 The clinician will want to get to know you!  How you spend your time, what you enjoy, the people around you in life, etc.  They will ask about the good things as well as the hard things.  They will also ask you about your experience of anxiety:

●   When you started to notice it

●   How strong it is

●   What makes it worse

●   What makes it better

They might ask you about the thoughts, emotions, or physical sensations that are related to your anxiety, and when those tend to show up.

Anxiety Therapy - The Middle

You and the clinician will build an understanding of the pattern of your anxiety.  What it makes you feel, what behaviors you start to perform when you feel this way, and how that might affect different outcomes in your life.  By understanding the pattern of anxiety trigger(s) leading to emotional, physical, and psychological response, you and the clinician can develop strategies on how to break the cycle of response.  In this middle stage of therapy it is also where you might talk more about your past, and how it is informing the present.

 Anxiety Therapy - The End

The goal of counselling for anxiety is to eliminate unreasonable anxiety in your life, and learn to regulate reasonable anxiety more effectively. This is done by gaining insight into how anxiety works within you, having more tools at your disposal to manage anxiety, and knowing how to apply those tools to feel more in control.

Acute and Chronic Stress on Anxiety

 As it has already mentioned, anxiety is a normal feeling that all humans have.  Acute (short term) stress creates anxiety that helps people focus on important situations:

Ex. Running into a bear on a hike, doing a presentation in school, playing in a championship game 

These situations all have clear end points; when the stressful event is over, anxiety is too.  Anxiety becomes more problematic when stressful situations have no clear end.  This chronic stress leads to toxic anxiety.  Toxic anxiety from chronic stress can create subtle or large shifts in mood, behavior, and sleep.  Situations of chronic stress that can cause toxic anxiety may be:

-      Feeling stuck in a job that is not enjoyable or is high stress

-      Looking after kids or loved ones without time for ourselves

-      Living in a global pandemic, not knowing when “normal” will come back

-      Living with or supporting someone with a chronic illness

-      Feeling stuck or unsafe in an unhealthy relationship

-      Feeling there is not enough time to complete all the daily tasks

Learning to manage stressful situations in order to alleviate stress will aid in coping with anxiety. Learning to recognize, feel, and express our anxiety in a healthy manner will aid in coping with anxiety from chronic stress.   

Generalized Anxiety

Social Anxiety

A person with a perfectionist tendencies spends their time avoiding failure and mistakes.  Their lives become a series of checkboxes and accomplishments as they strive to become the ideal versions of themself.  They can be very driven and successful people.  However, some have such unattainable expectations of their performance, their accomplishments can never make them truly happy with themselves.  Others have gone through life believing that love is conditional, and the only way they can meet that condition is by being perfect.  A perfectionist might need constant reassurance. They might obsess over the smallest details.  Be patient with them, they only want to feel like they are enough.

Social Anxiety

A person with social anxiety believes others automatically think poorly of them.  This can happen in interpersonal situations: worrying about what others think when meeting new people, attending social events, asserting themselves, or they worry others will not want to spend time with them so they do not ask.  People with social anxiety can also feel anxious when they perform in front of others.  This could be anywhere from public speaking or participating in a meeting or classroom, to writing in front of others or entering a room when everyone is already seated.  These feelings of social judgement can lead individuals with social anxiety to avoid standing out from a group as much as possible.  Be patient with them, it's hard for them to not be constantly fearful of judgement.