Anxiety

Anxiety involves symptoms like worry, unpleasant bodily sensations, sleeplessness, and even panic attacks. It usually leads to some form of avoidance that can deprive you of fulfillment and pleasure. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy teaches people to think and act in ways that significantly reduce the emotional experience of anxiety, and just makes life easier and more pleasant.

All of us worry sometimes. We feel tense and uneasy. We want to avoid or to get out of certain situations. We don’t want to think about certain things. That kind of anxiety can be normal.

In fact, without any anxiety, we would say offensive things in front of others. We would walk into traffic without realizing it. We would waste even more money than we already do. We would be more likely to get into physical altercations, and to drink and drive, along with an endless list of other harmful behaviors. In other words, anxiety protects us.

But when worry keeps us up at night, or dominates our day – especially if it is worry that isn’t helping us solve problems – we consider it a problem. Anxiety becomes a disorder when it either 1) prevents us from doing things that we want or need to do (we call that impairment), or 2) causes so much distress that it it impairs our happiness.

So, if anxieyt is only a disorder if it is either highly distressing or impairing, you are considered cured if it does not get in your way and it doesn’t feel bad enough to impact your happiness. Even if any remaining anxieyt is a normal part of being human.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy feels a lot like traditional talk therapy. But it is informed by a hundred years of accumulated scientific knowledge about what causes anxiety, what keeps it going, and what to do about it. And study after study overwhelmingly supports that CBT is the best way to feel better and get anxiety out of your way.