How to Overcome Anxiety: Finding Expert Anxiety Treatment in Philadelphia For Better Mental Health

Are you suffering from anxiety that feels debilitating? Does it feel like you’re stressed out or depleted more than you’d like? Dealing with an anxiety disorder can create many challenges and be exhausting. It can be tiring to feel like your mind is a runaway worry train, filled with stressors, and all you want to do is make it stop.

It can be scary to feel like your body is surprising or betraying you with sensations that seem to come out of nowhere in certain situations, like a racing heart, blushing face, clammy hands, stomach pain, or the inability to sleep (insomnia). This range of symptoms of distress can deeply and negatively affect any person’s daily performance and well-being that lives with them. Over time, this can really impact one’s mood and may lead to mood disorders and bad habits like self-medication (like with alcohol) in order to cope. These issues can further lead to feelings of shame, guilt, and many other emotions.

If you or a loved one is struggling with anxiety, there’s no need to suffer unnecessarily. You have the ability to overcome your mental health difficulties and experience confidence and true well-being (instead of just coping), and realize your potential. In fact, many individuals are not aware of the strong research in the field showing that therapy for anxiety works! Your problems are real, but so are the solutions.

When looking for quality Philadelphia anxiety treatment near you, it’s important to find a personalized, empirically-supported approach, based on science. Our experienced psychologists specializing in anxiety treatments for individuals and families, and have expertise for evaluation, diagnosis, guidance, and in providing sessions that teach simple and effective strategies to help you learn how to overcome anxiety and to be content.

Reclaim your life (or your partner, teens, or child’s) today and schedule an appointment with one of our expert anxiety therapists to get access to unique treatment plans that will help with the management of your anxiety symptoms. Before you schedule, however, feel free to read here to find more information about our unique approach and to learn more about the different types of anxiety and how therapy for anxiety works.

Types of Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety can show up at different ages in adults, adolescents, and children in a multitude of ways, including:
•  Generalized anxiety, such as Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
•  Specific phobias, ranging from medical to animal phobias
•  Anxiety involving interpersonal interactions, such as Social Anxiety Disorder (SA)
•  Thought or behavior-based anxiety, such as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
•  Somatic, body-based manifestations of anxiety, such as panic attacks, which are a part of Panic Disorder (PD)
•  Anxiety that stems from a traumatic incident, such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Comprehensive Anxiety Treatment In Philadelphia

Anxiety can be present in a variety of forms – cognitive, affective, physiological, and social/relational – and all four areas are interrelated.

Cognitive/Thinking
Anxiety can involve general worry about a variety of issues, such as in the case of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Often worry is repetitive, such as in the case of obsessive or ruminative thinking. In other cases, worry is contextual, such as with specific phobias. People have anxiety about all kinds of issues, such as identity, family, relationships, work, illness or death. Cognitive anxiety treatment focuses on the ‘thinking’ piece of anxiety – with education on simple effective strategies to contain, challenge and change repetitive problematic thought patterns.

Affective/Feeling
Runaway emotions have a way of taking on a life of their own. In his 1996 book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman refers to this as “amygdala hijack.” When our feelings of worry take over our brain, everything gets sped up, including our bodies. Did you know that neurological signals from our emotional brain (e.g. amygdala) travel faster than our rational brain (e.g. frontal lobe)? For this reason, working with feelings and states – and their somatic or bodily expressions – are central to good therapeutic work. Affect-focused counseling for anxiety teaches clients how to overcome anxiety using strategies to identify, contain, regulate, and transform difficult anxious feelings.

Physiological
Some people primarily experience anxiety or stress in their bodies (or a certain area of their bodies). For example, a frequently known expression of physiological anxiety is a panic attack, which can often feel like it is coming out of nowhere. In reality, it isn’t, and part of our work is teaching clients to recognize anxiety cues earlier in the process.

We believe so strongly in the relationship between mind and body that we have created an entire section under ‘Psychosomatic Disorders’ to describe these types of issues and their presentations. We encourage you to read more there. It’s important to note, however, that just as the body can be an outlet of anxiety and stress, it can also be the first line of recovery. Creating positive sensation and experience in the body is an important way of building relaxation and emotional mastery.

Social/Relational
Social anxiety pertains to anxiety that manifests in a relational context. In this respect, anxiety responses manifest in an interpersonal context (whether with strangers, acquaintances, or friends). These cues become generalized and exacerbated over time. It’s like a negative ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’. Some people who struggle with social anxiety are naturally introverted and very shy. That is fine! Being shy does not cause or lead to social anxiety. In fact, there are many positive relational aspects of introversion. On the other hand, an individual who is not naturally comfortable with relational interactions may be more likely to repeat and generalize negative social experiences and responses.

Our Unique Approach to Treating Anxiety With Diverse Therapies

We draw upon several treatment philosophies in providing Philadelphia anxiety therapy services. Integrative therapy for anxiety is designed to give clients multiple tools so they can learn how to overcome anxiety.

Anxiety is often a symbolic expression of deeper ‘unconscious’ and/or existential psychological themes. Helping our patients understand through education and working through these themes can create progress and lasting change.

Change Your Relationship With Anxiety Through Mindfulness

People may choose to see a psychiatrist and get medication for their anxiety, but there are a couple problems with that choice. First, if taking something like an antidepressant for anxiety (less addictive than others), then it might take 4 to 6 weeks before it really takes effect. The other downside to taking medication for anxiety or depression is that you can build up a tolerance and potentially develop a physical dependency on them. Depending on the medication, it’s often not a long-term solution.

Anxiety therapy on the other hand, helps you manage your symptoms while also developing an understanding of what is causing your anxiety and understanding yourself at a deeper level. We help you with the navigation of your psychology and give you tools to overcome the symptoms of anxiety.

While many people come to therapy hoping to make their anxiety disappear completely, our goal is often to help you change your relationship with anxiety. This means learning to understand it, manage it more effectively, and not let it control your life, even if it doesn’t go away entirely.

Anxiety As A Secondary Reaction: Understanding The Response

A big realization that our clients get when working with us is that anxiety is actually a secondary reaction. Something else happens first to trigger your anxiety. Maybe it’s a feeling of confusion. Maybe it’s feeling helpless in a situation. Maybe anger. Or stress disorders. There’s usually a source that we can get to that is triggering anxiety. Our professional therapists’ methods help the client get to the center of what’s causing the anxiety in order to help alleviate it.

Sometimes with these tools, practices, and skills, a counselor can help initially reduce the severity of your anxiety symptoms to let you manage your day-to-day, but understanding what triggers your anxiety and how you personally are reacting to those triggers is what helps make therapy a long-lasting wellness solution that can lead to overcoming your anxiety through practice. You can take the tools and the understanding wherever you go for the rest of your life.

We Treat Mental Health With Multiple Techniques & Perspectives

So how do we get to that source? How do we help you understand yourself on a deeper level and get a sense of where your anxiety is coming from? And how do you use these insights to overcome your reactions?

Most clinics specialize in or favor one technique over another. We have training and experience treating anxiety in a number of ways that help inform you about your anxiety and help with the success of treatments. Our team of specialists have many options to choose from and can help provide a mixed treatment plan that works best for you.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) For Anxiety Disorders

Cognitive Behavior Therapy or CBT is a technique to help change maladaptive thoughts and behaviors. It involves using controlled exposure to the thing that someone is afraid of to extinguish the fear response. This can be combined with other approaches like imaginal exposure and hypnosis to help someone slowly “expose” themselves to a situation that causes great anxiety and to alleviate that anxiety enough for them to try exposure in the real world.

Psychodynamic Therapy: Exploring Emotions For Deeper Healing

Are you unsure about what may be causing your anxiety? Perhaps it was from an incident a long time ago (maybe back when you were a child) that still needs to be addressed.

An example could be that you’re a people pleaser – that you’re always worried that someone is going to get mad at you. Through a psychodynamic approach, we could explore your history and find out that you had instability in your household growing up or experienced trauma, and that environment created issues with self-esteem, changes to your attachment style, or your beliefs about yourself, the world, and how you act in it. All these things from your past could be connected to your anxiety that is playing out today.

Our psychodynamic approach explores through talk therapy how your experiences and relationships may contribute to current anxiety, providing deeper insight and understanding. It’s about building insight and recognizing that anxieties are being recreated from the past.

Hypnotherapy, Meditation & Mindfulness

Our clinic is unique in that we use hypnosis and meditation in conjunction to support the other therapies, because it can be difficult to do this type of mentally intensive work in a stimulated state.

Both mindfulness based meditation and hypnosis helps our clients build awareness of themselves and to the different sensory cues, create space, put them into a state of focused attention, and are really helpful at relaxing the body and nervous system.

Under our care, you’ll be utilizing imagery, breathing, and focused attention to build positive physiological calm in the body. From there, we introduce cognitive and behavioral methods to help our patients hierarchically face their fears using imaginative techniques in a way that feels manageable.

Patient & Therapist Fit: Building A Strong Relationship

We believe the biggest thing that makes therapy successful is your fit with your therapist – feeling comfortable with your psychologist is crucial. You want to feel like your therapist understands you and is being supportive.

You may have already had a bad experience with a therapist where they weren’t fulfilling their role, making you feel like you weren’t being heard or where they talk too much about themselves instead of diving deeper into your experience. Usually those relationships with those types of clinicians don’t last very long and fail to treat your anxiety.

When you have good rapport with your therapist, you’re able to move through the therapeutic process faster and feel better sooner.

This is why when you contact us either through a phone call or through our contact form, we connect you with a therapist right from the outset. The connection with your therapist begins the moment you reach out to us.

We offer a complementary 15 minute call with a therapist where you can ask some questions, talk about your background, concerns, goals, and what things you’d like to focus on, and get a feel for the fit with your therapist before you set up your first appointment. This will allow you to start on the right foot and make the process so much smoother.

Begin your journey today towards learning how to overcome anxiety by contacting us to set up an initial appointment with one of our therapy professionals on staff either at our office or conveniently online with virtual therapy.

Our Philadelphia anxiety treatment is more than strategies, tools, resources, and techniques. Anxiety therapy is an empathic partnership with a commitment to being with you every step of the way as you learn how to better understand and master your anxiety without judgment. It’s not a quick fix, but a process of growth and change that will tackle the complexities of dealing with anxiety disorder. Hope is around the corner, and you don’t have to feel this way anymore.

PREPARING FOR YOUR FIRST SESSION WITH YOUR THERAPIST

As you prepare for your first therapy session, remember that being open and forthcoming about your experiences, thoughts, and feelings will help us help you more effectively. Try to share as much with your psychotherapist about what you’re experiencing and your personal history. There will be no judgment of your situation. If you’re open to the therapist and the process, you’re likely to get a lot more out of the experience.

*Remember we offer telehealth services throughout Pennsylvania. If you prefer not to come into the office, you have teletherapy as an option!