Anxiety – what to expect from therapy

Increasingly, anxiety therapy is coming back into fashion. After years of SSRI anti-depressants and CBT ruling the roost, good old-fashioned therapy is being accepted again. Many people that suffer from anxiety fear what will happen when they start therapy. Will they have to completely open up to the therapist? Will they become attached to the therapist? Will the therapist have some hold or power over them? Will it cost thousands?

I can only give my own experiences of therapy, and a bit of what others have told me. Importantly, no two patients are alike and no two therapists are alike. And of course no two instances of anxiety are alike.

Firstly, you have nothing to fear from a therapists if you follow a few simple rules. Wherever you are in the world your country will have an official organisation that certifies therapists. More than likely they have a website where you can search for a local therapist and check that they specialise in anxiety (or whatever else you want to speak to them for).

 

You should then, on contacting them, be invited for a chat to discuss how your treatment might work. It is an opportunity for you to meet the therapist and for the therapist to meet you. You should also discuss price and payment schedule. This introductory session should be free and although it may well end with you booking a session for the future, there should obviously be no pressure on you to do so.

You will of course want to know how long the therapy will take before you are cured. I would advise against any therapist that thinks they can give you a timescale, especially early on in treatment. Improvements can be slow and gradual, or rapid, or a mixture of both. Good, experienced therapists know this and don’t make rash promises. They will have seen anxiety disorders before and will know that Rome wasn’t built in a day.

No therapist is perfect and anxiety disorders can be extremely complicated. When you start therapy you should not expect infallibility. They can go wrong, make mistakes, or fail to help you. Some people are not helped by therapy and there are several reasons why this may be. Maybe it is a problem with the sufferer, maybe the therapist took the wrong approach, or may the original cause of the anxiety was not conducive to being dealt with by therapy.

You need to approach therapy with an open mind, and be ready to do or discuss things which might not seem relevant to your anxiety. This is especially true if your therapist uses art to although for communication beyond the conscious level (a process I recommend).

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