When you persist with worrying and fearful thoughts, it can be physically and emotionally draining if left to go on too long. It can be difficult to know when it is time to reach out for professional support.
When to Know it’s Time to Get Help
There are three significant signals which will provide a good indication that professional counseling or therapy is a logical next step:
- Your Anxiety Levels are Getting Worse
When you have more days than not where you can’t seem to get anything done because of your high level of disquiet and worrying thoughts, it’s time to take some affirmative action.
It can be challenging to admit that anxiety is getting the best of you, but that denial about your condition can be a threat to seeking help. There are also plenty of external forces that can hold anxiety sufferers back from getting help, such as worries about cost, self-perception, stigmas, and uninformed but well-intentioned opinions. However, you don’t need to let these things become a barrier to improving your mental health.
Anxiety is a real issue and deserves some attention. Without intervention, your condition could worsen and create even more disruptive chaos in your life, health, relationships, and career.
Remember, you don’t have to tough it out or go it alone when help and support are so easy to access.
How an Anxiety Counselor will Assist
Once you accept your condition and stop denying or avoiding it, you will find that therapy can provide a great deal of relief. An experienced and understanding sympathetic ear provided by your counselor can do wonders for putting you on a path to recovery.
Counseling can provide you with tools to give your anxiety less control over your life. Where once the overwhelm would stop you in your tracks with worrying thoughts, you will learn strategies to calm your anxious thoughts and think more positively.
- Fear and Fatigue Keep You Sick with Worry
When anxiety is left to run unfettered through your mind, it creates physiological reactions that can take their toll on your body. Maybe you are fully aware of your anxiety and understand it to be the source of your migraines and insomnia. Perhaps you have never considered that your anxiety and fear are responsible for your irritable bowel syndrome, or your predisposition to indigestion.
Regardless, it’s time you recognized that your recovery from anxiety would also eliminate many of the frustrating physical symptoms you have so far endured.
What physical changes manifest in your body when your thoughts are overrun with fear and worry? Does your heart feel like it will burst from your chest, does your jaw lock, and your stomach churn? These are physical signs that your body is storing the excess tension. If you don’t develop coping mechanisms that allow you to release it, you will continue having sleepless nights, headaches, and loss of appetite.
How an Anxiety Counselor Can Assist
When you seek treatment from a counselor who specializes in treating anxiety, you will learn methods to break anxiety’s stranglehold over your physical health. Knowing how to focus on your bodily sensations and what they are trying to tell you is incredibly freeing.
Understanding how your body is responding to the anxious thoughts flooding your mind is a powerful mechanism for learning control and breaking the cycle.
Strategies like deep breathing exercises, relaxation techniques, and even mindfulness will all become part of your coping toolkit to finally take control of your life with a newfound level of confidence.
- You Find Yourself Always Second Guessing Every Thought and Idea
There are useful forms of anxiety. In normal circumstances, anxiety sharpens the mind, hones the reflexes, and physiologically prepares the body for making a hasty exit, or gives you a fighting chance in a physical confrontation.
When anxiety reaches extreme levels, rational thought flies out the window.
Are your thoughts always racing, or do you find yourself unable to think productively? Maybe you always find yourself revisiting the past and criticizing every little past decision. When left to run amok, anxiety will create a rapid jumble of chaotic thoughts, which only lead to worry and fear about not being able to cover all your bases or settle on a solution.
Eventually, you find yourself unable to move forward, because your mind is mired in the thick molasses of fear and indecision.
How an Anxiety Counselor Can Assist
Therapy provides a guiding light on the automatic thought processes you find most challenging. Therapists are trained in the art of helping you heal yourself by giving you the skills to recognize anxious thoughts, and the tools you need to channel them into more positive outlooks.
Through support and counseling, you will learn to go easy on yourself, so you find release from the shame and anxiety which has kept you trapped for so long. Over time, you will become an expert at calming the mental chaos and focusing on more productive thought processes.
You can learn to put anxiety in its place and lead a more productive life. If you are interested in learning more about getting support to cope with your anxiety, read more here: Anxiety Treatment