Facts on Anxiety Therapy

1. Know Your Disorder

Each of the several kinds of anxiety attacks benefits from different therapies, so it's important to understand your own anxiety disorder. If you suffer from generalized anxiety, there's no specific reason for your anxiety, but you still feel constant worry and general states of uneasiness. Panic disorder takes the fear one step further. If you have this disorder, you worry that you'll have a panic attack. Specific phobias may be based on an event that you once experienced, but now the scope of your worry has broadened to anything to do with a specific object or situation from that prior experience. If you have obsessive compulsive disorder, you experience anxiety about not fulfilling a task, such as hand washing, so you have to do that task over and over. Post-traumatic stress anxiety originates from an unbearable event that you've experienced.

2. Get Educated

Cognitive behavior therapy, a way of changing your response to stimuli by changing your own internal reaction to it, can help you get over many anxiety disorders. When a therapist uses cognitive behavior therapy to treat anxiety, she teaches the patient to recognize the symptoms of excess worry, both mental and physical. When you can recognize excess worry, you can start to see which of your worries is realistic and which are just your own perception. You can then sort out the difference between useful worry, such as "I need to transfer funds or my check will bounce," and useless worry, "If I go to the bank to transfer funds, a bank robber might shoot me."

3. Find the Triggers

Whether your anxiety is generalized, a panic disorder or a specific phobia, you'll find that some things consistently trigger attacks. Something as seemingly minor as a cat walking across the street or a pounding heart beat can set off your attack. Once you notice what your triggers are, write them down. Also, record what your symptoms were and how long you experienced them.

4. Breathe Deeply

You can use deep breathing and relaxation techniques during attacks to calm your mind and change focus. Once your body is more relaxed, the next step is to face the trigger and realize that it cannot harm you. People with specific phobias do best with this as a form of desensitization. Those with generalized anxiety must look to their thoughts and find why they need to worry. Those with obsessive compulsive behavior need to question whether their actions actually have any effect on the outcome of their life.

5. Visualization and Drugs

If you have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), your doctor may start your treatment by giving you medication that can relax you and help you sleep. Just as with general anxiety, you'll then have other treatments in combination with your medication. Visualization is one technique to face fear without the fear of harm. Psychologists and counselors often use this form of treatment after you've discovered your trigger mechanisms. For the PTSD patient, reliving the incident in a safe environment may aid in recovery.