Overcoming Anxiety
The simple fact for most people who have an anxiety disorder is that it doesn’t have to rule your life. In fact more than 90% of the people who do suffer from an anxiety disorder will get better (some completely better) with therapy and medication alone. The are only really two problems. One there is that troubling little 10% of people who do not seem to improve much even with therapy and medication. The other problem is that many people are not aware that they can get better if they would just get help.
Let’s look at the ten percent first. Some psychiatrists and therapists say that, though nearly all of their patients respond to treatment, there are usually about 10% who do not get better. Typically these are the more esoteric cases involving schizo-affective patients. Nearly all of patients with more “normal” diagnosis will get much better with cognitive behavioral therapy. And for the other 10%, hope is not lost.
The key to overcoming anxiety is going the extra mile. In some cases your therapist or psychiatrist will not be of much use. So what do you do then? You do everything in your power to get better. In most cases you will need to hit the internet anxiety forums and begin to ask advice. You will find hundreds of people just like you. People who the therapists said couldn’t be helped. And you will see that nearly all of them have overcome their anxiety! How did they do it? It wasn’t magic. The main thing that they did was read internet websites, forums and blogs and learn from people who had already done the experimenting. These pioneers showed them techniques to reduce anxiety as well as alternative therapies that their therapists hadn’t known about. You see the little dirty secret of the profession is that therapists do not know everything. In fact, they know a very small bit. There is a whole larger world, made up of the actual anxiety sufferers themselves and they share with each other the things that they have found that work.
Even if you are seeing a therapist and not getting better, do not give up hope. You will need to work a little bit on your own, but you absolutely can learn how to overcome anxiety just like the rest of us.
So, back to our original example. If 90% of people can better with treatment (and even the other 10% can get better too) how come there are so many people with anxiety disorders. The simple fact is that many do not know about the help or think that they can’t afford it. The reason that people do not know about it is that there is no education in our public schools about mental illness. If you haven’t been to a therapist there is really no way for you to know what is out treatment wise. The other part, about paying for it, is simply a myth. There are many programs in every state where you can get free counseling from therapists who will work for you. Some of therapists donate their time as a community service, others are compensated by the state. So you can afford the help, you just didn’t know it.
The secret to overcoming anxiety is taking action. You do not get better by sitting on your couch watching TV. You do get better by seeking help and putting into practice the things that you learn during counseling. I know that everyone out there can learn how to overcome their anxiety if they are just willing to put a little work into it. And that’s one of the reasons that I started this blog – to give others the motivation to make a change in their lives.
