How does counselling help with Anxiety?

It is normal to be stressed occasionally. Anxiousness is often a common reaction to a stressful event or a social situation. But for a person suffering from an anxiety disorder, these feelings can last forever and worsen in the long run. Anxiety Disorder can immensely affect their lifestyle by hindering them at school, work, and even social situations.

Counselling can help bring awareness to how anxiety lives in your body and you can learn the tools to use your body as a resource to help reduce anxiety. Once you identify the thoughts that worsen your anxiety, your therapist can then help you gain a new perspective and turn negative thoughts around.

Counselling can help you explore the cause of anxious feelings, understand them and suggest ways of dealing with the situation. A counsellor can help you learn how to cope with anxiety. 

Counselling helps Identify the Cause of Anxiety

Multiple causes can trigger anxiety in an individual. Identifying the actual cause of your anxiety is crucial to treat it as early as possible. Working with your therapists and attending counselling sessions can help you identify what triggers your anxiety. By identifying the cause, you are one step ahead in controlling it. 

Acceptance and Commitment 

As part of the counselling process, acceptance and commitment can aid in managing anxiety. Your counsellor may utilise different therapies to identify and address the root cause of your anxiety. After identifying the triggers that cause anxiety, you must commit to yourself and your therapist to work towards controlling it. Therapy sessions will help you understand your values and help you work on those values. 

Gain a Positive Perspective

The negative thoughts that you constantly have are based on perceptions and are not real. Regular counselling with therapists helps you let go of the negative thoughts clouding your mind. These counselling sessions will help you replace these disturbing thoughts with good ones and will help you realise how anxiety lives in your body. The therapists will help you identify thoughts that trigger your anxiety and help you give a new perspective to these thoughts. 

Practice Relaxation Techniques

Anxiety not only affects your emotions but also leads to stress, which causes physical symptoms such as hyperventilation, shortness of breath, and tension in your body. The counselling sessions will help you identify what is causing your anxiety and help you control it using some relaxation techniques like progressive muscle relaxation, meditation, deep breathing and many more. 

Adopt a New Lifestyle

After identifying the trigger of your anxiety and understanding how to avoid it with coping mechanisms, you need to adopt a healthy and happy lifestyle. Regular counselling sessions can help you adapt to a healthy lifestyle and a new routine involving physical activities, meditation, and giving up on habits like drugs, drinking and smoking which tend to worsen your anxiety. 

Cultivating your Relationships

Anxiety disorder can cause you to disconnect from everyone around you because loneliness and isolation are two symptoms of anxiety. But you can maintain healthy relationships with others through regular counselling sessions and talking to your friends and family about how you are feeling. In addition, you can participate in self-help groups where you share your experiences and foster a sense of connection

Medically reviewed by Dr Sunitha MBBS, DPM (NIMHANS), DNB

Dr Sunitha serves as the Chief Psychiatrist at Agan Health Trichy. She specialises in Adult Psychiatry, and her fields of interest include consultation liaison psychiatry and women's mental health. With over 15 years of experience in the field of mental healthcare, Dr Sunitha has been instrumental in positively transforming the lives of many in Tamil Nadu. She is also a consulting psychiatrist at some of the reputed mental health institutions in Tamil Nadu.