Most people experience anxiety at some times in their lives. However, if your anxiety feels more like a constant companion than an occasional visitor, anxiety treatment can provide significant relief from your symptoms. If you’re suffering from anxiety on a regular basis, consider the following advice from Dr. Jane Rubin, a Berkeley-based clinician, on how anxiety treatment can help you.
What Expectations Do People Have About Anxiety Treatment?
Broadly speaking, people who are thinking about anxiety treatment oscillate between hope and fear—hope that treatment will alleviate their suffering and fear that it won’t, or that it might even make their anxiety worse. I think everyone should expect that anxiety treatment will significantly reduce their anxiety. If it doesn’t, you need to speak with your therapist about why that isn’t happening.On the other hand, for most people, anxiety symptoms aren’t going to disappear completely. So, another very important part of anxiety treatment is helping people find ways of living comfortably with the anxiety that remains.
How Do You Help People Do This?
I try to do two things. First, I try to help people learn to identify anxiety when they’re actually experiencing it. What are they feeling in their bodies? Where are their thoughts going? Can they let themselves experience those feelings and thoughts without trying to push them away? There’s a saying in Buddhist circles that “what we resist persists”. The more we try to push anxiety away, the more it digs in its heels. Learning to sit with some amount of anxiety can actually help reduce anxiety over time.But there’s another, equally important way of helping people with their anxiety that, I think, often doesn’t get the attention it deserves. As strange as it may sound, anxiety can have positive functions. The more people can recognize and appreciate the positive role their remaining anxiety plays, the easier it is for them to live with it.For example, I’ve worked with many people who suffer from social anxiety. They avoid social situations as much as they can and when they have to interact with other people, they feel very self-conscious. They constantly worry that other people are critical of them.As painful as this experience is, I’ve found that there’s often a positive side to it. Because people with social anxiety are so sensitive to the possibility of being treated poorly themselves, they’re often very sensitive to other people’s feelings and go out of their way to treat people well. As a result, once they’ve experienced a significant reduction in their anxiety, they often have better relationships with other people than many of their peers.Similarly, people with performance anxiety often over-prepare for performance situations like tests, interviews, or public speaking. When the over-preparation is motivated by anxiety, people often prepare much, much more than they need to. However, once they’re feeling less anxious, they’re able to recognize that a certain amount of over-preparation actually helps them excel. They’re then able to use their need to over-prepare to their advantage.
How Do You Teach Clients to Manage Their Anxiety?
I do a number of things. One thing I do is help people to understand the sources of their anxiety. Social anxiety, for example, usually has its roots in early experiences of being ridiculed, shunned, or otherwise treated badly by other people. Even more importantly, it has its roots in how the significant adults in our lives responded to these experiences. If they were understanding and supportive, it’s more likely that people’s social anxiety will be less intense than if the adults in their lives blamed them for their mistreatment.I try to help people understand that their anxiety is not a character flaw. It’s not their fault. And I work hard to create a relationship that feels safe to them. This way, over time, our understanding, supportive relationship will, itself, help reduce their anxiety.Click to learn more about anxiety therapy and treatment with Dr. Jane Rubin.Jane Rubin, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in Berkeley, California. She works with individuals in Berkeley, Oakland, the East Bay and the greater San Francisco Bay Area who are struggling with depression and anxiety. She also specializes in working with people who are trying to find meaning and direction in their lives.