Day to day life is filled with stressors that can become triggering for anxiety. The hustle and bustle of work life. Balancing work with personal life. Social gatherings. Personal relationships with friends, family, and significant others.

When you are living in a constant state of stress, fear, and worry, it can start to impact your quality of life. Over time, this can develop into a full-fledged anxiety disorder.

This is where cognitive behavioral therapy, otherwise known as CBT, can become quite helpful. Here, we examine how CBT can help with anxiety management.

How Does CBT Help With Anxiety?

The thought process behind CBT is that a person’s actions and feelings are influenced by their attitudes and beliefs. CBT helps to develop an understanding of how these different parts are all connected.

Reframing Negative Thought Patterns

A main focus of CBT is to identify and challenge negative thought patterns. Anxiety often results in noisy and chaotic thinking, where you get stuck thinking worst-case scenarios about future issues.

The use of CBT with anxiety can help you sift through those racing thoughts and learn to realize what is irrational thinking and what is more realistic. CBT provides structure and guidance. Once you have an awareness of negative thought patterns, you can start to challenge them and reframe them into something more positive. Learning to manipulate your own thoughts can lessen the intensity of your anxiety.

Learning Healthy Coping Strategies

If you’ve been dealing with anxiety for some time, you may have noticed triggering factors, which can lead to avoidance of specific people, places, or situations. Another benefit of CBT is learning healthy coping strategies for real time anxiety management.

Avoidance takes away the immediate stress response, but it doesn’t do you any favors in the long run. Through CBT, you will learn how to tackle anxiety head on. In the safety of a therapy session, you will work through varying levels of anxiety-inducing situations, mastering coping strategies for each level. From there, you can take those out in the real world and apply them as needed.

Problem Solving

CBT involves elements of goal-setting and problem solving. The framework emphasizes breaking down big issues into smaller, more conquerable ones. Achieving the small stepping stones can instill a sense of control and promote motivation, reducing the effect that anxiety has on cognitive processing.

During your time working with a CBT therapist, you will be able to track progress and learn how to make necessary modifications. By incorporating problem-solving approaches, you will learn practical skills that will be empowering when faced with challenges rather than induce fear.

Improving Self-Awareness

CBT has become an effective approach for improving your self-awareness and learning about your deeper beliefs and values. It teaches you how these factors impact your behavior and how they affect others around you.

CBT will help with your self-awareness by:

Identifying thought patterns
Understanding emotions
Exploring behaviors
Challenging cognitive distortions
Enhancing self-reflection
Goal setting
Introducing mindfulness techniques
Incorporate collaboration and feedback

Finding Support

CBT is not a new therapy method and has undergone research to support its usage with mental health conditions, especially with alleviating anxiety. Digging deep within yourself and working to uncover the root of the anxiety can be an effective means for overcoming it.

If you’re struggling with anxiety and are not sure where to start in your healing journey, CBT may be worth exploring. As with any therapy technique, results may vary, but this can provide a framework as a basis for starting.

To learn more about CBT and whether it is right for you, schedule a consultation for anxiety counseling with us today.

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CBT: How Does It Help Anxiety?