Grand Rapids – Anxiety

Treatment For Anxiety By Trusted Therapists and Counselors

Understanding Anxiety

Anxiety is a condition that plagues many people yet goes unnoticed. People who worry excessively, are constantly tense, restless, have trouble concentrating and have feelings of dread about the future often suffer from Generalized Anxiety. Sometimes people have physical symptoms that go along with or are experienced instead of excessive worry such as pounding heart, sweating, shortness of breath, shakiness, headaches, muscle tension and insomnia. When physical symptoms such as dizziness, feeling like you may pass out, feelings like you are going to die or are crazy flood you, you may be suffering from panic disorder or a specific panic attack.

Anxiety and Panic Attacks

Anxiety and panic disorders make life miserable much of the time. These conditions are a good reason to seek the help of a psychotherapist. There are many types of treatments that can be helpful and can be tailored to each individual’s unique needs. Cognitive Behavioral therapy focuses on underlying irrational beliefs that create anxiety and helps transform the beliefs, thus reducing the anxiety. Behavioral and exposure therapy supports gradually challenging fears and worries through successive minimal exposure in life in a way that is manageable thus reducing the fears, feelings of dread and worries. Psychodynamic approaches examine deeper internal conflicts in the personality that create suffering and worry and work toward resolution of these conflicts. Finally, medication support can be helpful. This usually involves the use of antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications and sometimes more exotic powerful medications. Your psychotherapist will often make a referral for medication support if you as a client are open to it. If you are not, most cases of anxiety can be treated with psychotherapy alone over time.

Treatment Options For Anxiety

When you first visit a psychotherapist he or she will often refer you back to your family physician or consult with him or her to rule out underlying physical conditions such as, hyperthyroidism, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma and hypothyroidism. This consultation or referral is often necessary to prevent wasted time paddling the canoe up the river when anxiety is complicated or caused by a physical condition. At times both the physical and psychological tracks can be addressed together.

There are many anxiety disorders related to generalized anxiety and panic disorder. Separation anxiety is a common problem when a child, adolescent or adult becomes extremely worried tense or afraid when out of contact with a loved one. Agoraphobia is the fear of leaving home or fear of crowds. This can cause someone to feel housebound and afraid to go to external events without support. Social phobia is the fear of being around larger groups of people and especially having to speak to a large group of people. This can be especially crippling to those who need to socialize to perform effectively at work. Finally, many phobias such as fear of heights, claustrophobia, fear of flying and others have anxiety as an underlying cause, which can be treated by psychotherapy with or without the support of medication.

Finding an anxiety treatment program near you

Sollars and Associates in Grand Rapids has many practitioners able to design an effective treatment plan and counseling relationship to help those in need achieve relief from their anxiety.