Five Myths About Anxiety Therapy in maryland: Myth #5: It’s Just me
Anxiety myths and facts WIth AN Anxiety treatment Maryland specialist
Feeling alone about anxiety? I promise, it’s not just you. Effective anxiety therapy in Maryland is available.
We’ve made it to the final installment in this Five Myths About Anxiety series! As a therapist that specializes in anxiety disorders, I am always hoping that more and more people are getting the message that anxiety disorders are very common and respond well to treatment. But not everyone has gotten the word on that yet, so, one more time, louder, for all the people in the back:
Myth 5: Anxiety means there’s something uniquely wrong with me.
Before we get into all the fancy stats and facts: Just no. Anxiety does not mean there is something uniquely wrong with you. You are marvelously you. Anxiety is something you are dealing with, not who you are. And many, many people deal with anxiety. You are most definitely not alone in that boat.
“You’re gonna need a bigger boat”——Chief Brody in “Jaws”
Anxiety disorders are incredibly common. In fact, they are the most common mental illnesses in the United States. The National Institute of Mental Health reported in the early 200o’s that 19.1% of adults in the United States had an anxiety disorder in the past year and that 31.1% of adults would experience an anxiety disorder in their lifetime. And that was an entire pandemic ago! In case you haven’t turned on the news in the past few years, cases of anxiety and depression have risen dramatically. We don’t have great data about the most up to date numbers on how many folks are dealing with anxiety right now, but you can bet that it’s not smaller than 19% of the population, which is millions of people in the United States alone. It is absolutely not just you.
But Why Me?
There’s not a quick and easy answer to this one. Anxiety disorders can develop from a complex set of factors. Those factors can include things largely outside our own control like genetics, brain biology, exposure to traumatic life events, plus environmental and psychological factors. But the great news is that treatment for anxiety can be very effective. You don’t actually need to pinpoint The Answer to why you’ve got anxiety in order to make progress in the here and now to address it and create a different future for yourself.
Anxiety treatment In MARYLAND—not one size fits all
Some people worry about what anxiety treatment means: Will I have to take medication? What kind of treatment is right for me? There’s a whole alphabet soup of treatment modalities out there—CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), ACT (acceptance & commitment therapy), MBSR (mindfulness based stress reduction), DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy), and on and on… How do you know what to pick? Well, first things first. If you have been struggling with anxiety and are thinking about treatment, it’s not a bad idea to start with a conversation with your primary care physician. There are a number of medications and medical conditions that can cause or exacerbate anxiety symptoms. It can save a good deal of time to clear those decks first. After that, an intake with a mental health professional can provide some recommendations about options for moving forward. As for all of those treatment modalities listed out above—they all have some great data about their use to successfully treat anxiety. But one of the biggest factors in treatment efficacy over all is the fit between the client and the therapist. Is there a sense of respect and trust? Do you agree on the goals of treatment? Therapy is such an intensely personal process that you want to feel good about who is on your team for this journey. It can be hard to pick up on whether someone is a good fit for you just from information on a website, so it can be helpful to ask if you can have a brief phone call with someone first to see if you can feel out that fit a little more before making an appointment to try it out in person.
Anxiety therapy Maryland
I hope that this series about Five Myths About Anxiety has been helpful to you. If you want to know more about how I work with people online throughout Maryland, and in-person in College Park, who want to reduce or manage their anxiety, you can read more about that on my anxiety treatment Maryland page.
