Is it Anxiety or an Anxiety Disorder?
All humans experience the emotion of anxiety from time to time, but how do you know if you are beginning to develop an anxiety disorder? Can therapy help with anxiety? What types of therapy should you look for to learn how to calm your anxiety? Let’s hear from Licensed Psychologist, Anxiety Specialist, and Founder of Embrace Now Psychotherapy and Wellness, Dr. Sandra Ostroff.
What’s the difference between Anxiety and an Anxiety Disorder?
Anxiety is a cognitive and emotional experience prompted by not knowing what’s to come or what’s next. Anxiety is often experienced as feeling nervous, fearful, worried, unsettled, and/or overwhelmed. The emotion/sensation of anxiety is normative and not indicative of a mental disorder. However, when the experience of anxiety results in significant distress and/or impairment of day-to-day functioning, it begins to enter the realm of potentially meeting DSM-5 criteria for an anxiety disorder.
There are several different types of anxiety disorders, and each disorder has a specific set of diagnostic criteria to determine whether or not someone is experiencing the given disorder. It is very important to seek consultation with a licensed mental health provider if you feel that your experience of anxiety is getting in the way of your daily functioning or causing you significant distress.
Can therapy help calm anxiety?
Evaluation and therapeutic treatment with a licensed mental health provider is an essential step on the journey of calming your anxiety. Research demonstrates strong evidence for the effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) in treating anxiety. These therapeutic approaches help individuals learn tangible coping mechanisms and ways to reframe their experience of anxious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
When looking for a therapist, try using a search platform such as www.psychologytoday.com, which allows you to filter for providers that meet your individualized needs. You can adjust the filters to narrow down your search to anxiety specialists, specific identity preferences for your therapist, insurances accepted, and therapeutic approaches used (i.e., Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) , Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
How to Calm Anxiety?
There are many strategies and tools to cope with the experience of anxiety. Effective strategies include cognitive reframing, mindfulness, self-care, and decreasing avoidance behaviors. Check out our blog post here on how to calm anxiety.
Additional Resource for Learning Strategies to Calm Anxiety
Embrace Now offers a variety of online coping courses for anxiety in general and more specific types of anxiety. Courses include Anxiety Skills, Mindfulness Skills, Navigating Uncertainty/Intrusive Thoughts, Social Anxiety Skills, Skills for Avoidance, and more! You can learn more about our online learning community at https://community.embrace-now.org/c/considering-joining/.
