By Dr. Stephen Antony, MD (Psychiatry)
There are many forms of therapy available for anxiety disorders, but the most effective forms of therapy for anxiety disorders are cognitive behavior therapy and exposure therapy.
The effective forms of therapy for anxiety disorders:
Cognitive behavior therapy:
Cognitive behavior therapy deals with the thoughts, feelings and behavior of the patient. It’s been noted that many patients suffering from anxiety disorders have a negative and distorted interpretation of life events.
Such distorted thinking puts additional stress on the individual’s coping mechanisms and makes them vulnerable to anxiety attacks and anxiety disorders.
The CBT therapist works closely with the patient and helps him/her identify the negative and faulty patterns of thinking and offers them alternative ways of coping and thinking.
Over a period of 10-12 sessions the patient is taught to identify and take control over their negative thoughts and replace them with effective and realistic thoughts.
Exposure therapy:
It is a form of cognitive behavioral therapy. It is used to treat many forms of anxiety disorders including phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder. Exposure therapy can have long lasting results but the patient needs to be mentally tough to co-operate with the therapists suggestions.
In exposure therapy the therapist repeatedly exposes the person to events, fears and anxieties that (s)he may suffer from, for long periods of time. The idea is that after being exposed to these situations on a regular basis, and seeing that they pose no real threat the patient will eventually get desensitized to them.
If you are suffering from Panic/Anxiety attacks, Agorophobia or OCD, Watch this video
This process can be challenging to the patient and as it is natural for human beings to avoid thoughts, feelings, objects and activities that cause negative feelings and anxiety. Through exposure therapy the person learns to face the fear, one step at a time with the help of the therapist and his/her body gets adapted to facing the situation independently over time.
Other forms of therapy for anxiety disorders:
Mindfulness Meditation Therapy (MMT)
When we become mindful, we are fully awake and aware of what is happening as it is happening, without any attachment, without any thinking about the experience or any emotional reaction to the experience. We simply “sit” with the experience and tend to observe it with a keen interest as if we are listening to our favorite piece of music but without any attachment. Mindfulness brings with it a quality of engagement which allows us to go deep into the experience. All mindfulness involves moving beyond the superficial and initial appearance of experience and uncovering the finer and more subtle inner structure of experience.
THE PROCESS OF MMT
The first phase of MMT is primarily about learning to recognize reactions as and when they arise and replace ignorance with awareness. This is the first function of mindfulness, the factor of RECOGNITION. Recognition is the beginning of the transformational process and often this skill alone is sufficient to totally change the whole reactive dynamic between two people.
The next phase of MMT involves changing how we view the reaction and associated emotional energy. This is called REFRAMING and is one of a number of skills that is taught in the psychological science of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and which is another chief modality used in MMT.
The goal of MMT is to move the mind from a reactive state to an awareness state where the person is able to become aware of their feelings and emotions and is able to develop control over them instead of reacting to them.
If you’re suffering from anxiety and would like to know the most effective therapy for anxiety disorders, then take a minute and check this resource out which will provide you with all the information you need on the various treatments for anxiety disorders.
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