When Is It Time to Seriously Consider Anxiety Treatment?
One in five people deal with anxiety. This alarming statistic might not be that alarming to you, though. You could be one of those people that deal with anxiety. While there are so many great ways for you to potentially reduce your anxieties through recreation and activities, you might need more than fun activities to help reduce your stress. You might need professional help. Here are a few reasons why you might want to consider anxiety treatment.
Risky and Dangerous Behaviors
If you find yourself engaging in risky and dangerous behaviors to tackle your anxiety, meeting with a counselor can really help. Trained professionals can help mitigate the impact of anxiety on your life and help you learn anti-anxiety skills as an alternative to the behaviors you are using to cope with your anxiety.
Alcohol and drugs are common ways people will try to cope with their anxiety, but over time, they prove to be ineffective in dealing with anxiety. In fact, alcohol and drugs can make your anxiety worse. Anxiety treatment can help you determine coping strategies, and pinpoint exactly what works best with your specific needs. While drugs, alcohol, and impulsive decisions might make you feel better, or more alive, for a moment, at the end of the day, you will still be forced to face the issues that made you want to seek relief in the first place. Consider seeing a counselor or therapist to help you discover healthier ways to cope with your anxiety… skills that really work!
Bailing on Work and Work Issues
Sometimes anxiety can be so bad that you don’t want to go to work. Your work relationships can become strained, and you can have a hard time getting your work done. If this is the case for you, anxiety treatment can help you address your issues and protect your career.
Stress causes around one million Americans to miss work every day! If you are like those people that miss work because of anxiety, help is available. According to Uplift, a provider of anxiety treatment in San Jose, utilizing therapy can help you find a better work-life balance. This better work-life balance can, in turn, help you feel motivated to go to work again. Furthermore, by taking care of your mental health, your mood and well-being will improve. This means that work will be more pleasant because you will have more patience and energy to deal with stressful situations and people around you.
Absence of Family and Friends
If your anxiety is hindering your relationships with family and friends, counseling can help you understand and mitigate the impact of anxiety on your close relationships. Our family and friends can be one of our greatest resources for support. Anxiety treatment can help you develop skills to navigate relationship with your family and friends. And sometimes it even makes sense to involve your family and friends in your treatment. If you enter counseling, most therapists will help you arrange sessions with your loved ones to facilitate understanding, compassion, repair, and on-going relationship growth. We all need our family and friends.
Isolation and Other Mental Health Concerns
Guard against isolation. Although severe anxiety can make you feel like you would be best left alone, this is generally not the case. Isolation can make your anxiety become even worse. Oftentimes in isolation, we run the risk of worry-cycling; we get caught in a loop of worrying about our worries. Isolation works against emotional, psychological, and relational health.
Other mental health concerns can develop, too. Depression often results when our anxiety goes unaddressed. And if you have panic attacks, they can become debilitating. If any of these issues are impacting you, seek out anxiety treatment as soon as possible.
Prolonged Periods of Anxiety
While periods of anxiety can last for various spans of time, any extended periods of anxiety warrants the need for you to reach out for help. A few days of anxiety is different than anxiety that begins to pervade your daily life for weeks or months. At a more acute level, if you are having anxiety-related panic attacks, they may only last for minutes, but could extend to 30 minutes or longer. And these attacks are so scary.
If your panic attacks are becoming more frequent, or are lasting longer, and/or are becoming more severe, or if your general anxiety is lasting longer than usual, it is probably time to reach out to a counselor who can help you address the underlying struggles and teach you the anti-anxiety skills that work.
There are many great resources available to help you with your anxiety. And while you might be nervous about doing it, many will tell you that getting professional help was the best thing they ever did. If you are dealing with any of the issues covered here, consider reaching out for anxiety treatment today.
