With rising stress and emotional disturbances in our life, it becomes challenging to stay mentally strong. Mental health has become a concern because most people cannot handle the day-to-day stress that life throws at them. When we cannot manage stress and daily life situations, we will end up in a loop of constant negative thoughts that may become serious and come into different forms. If we keep neglecting our emotional patterns, an individual can become stressed and develop mental health conditions. The emotional responses towards stress can be depicted in our lives in various ways and are usually seen in the form of anxiety.
When our mental health is at a loss, it can even take a toll on our physical health. Constant anxiety and obsessive thoughts can make us unable to concentrate on our daily lives if we can only have a very healthy response toward everything if we have a very positive outlook on our lives. However, when anxiety is persistent, we will not be able to function correctly, and this is where taking treatment from a professional mental health therapist becomes extremely important. In order to combat anxiety, CBT is one of the most practical treatments as it is the most useful action-based therapy.
The process of discovering the right therapist can also feel very overwhelming. Once you can figure out which therapist is best for you, you can always start with your cognitive behavioral therapy. In the CBT sessions, you are allowed by your therapist to sit with the thoughts without giving any kind of emotional response to them. It is said that thoughts always come before feelings, and CBT is an action-based treatment that helps us to reduce our negative emotions to all kinds of thoughts.
A good treatment plan for anxiety is always the one that doesn’t usually assure quick results. However, one can always combine medications and CBT Sessions to reduce their anxiety loop. The main goal of CBT is changing the way an individual thinks and breaking down his negative thought patterns. Once you are able to change your beliefs and attitudes, you will become neutral to situations that drain you. So, here are a few ways how CBT can help you defeat anxiety:
Identifying the negative patterns: It may take a lot of time to get neutral to the thoughts if you are facing them for a longer time. One of the best ways is to open up to your therapist. Once they are able to find out the root cause, they will target each and every thought pattern in order to reduce the anxiety that comes along.
Challenging the thoughts: Keeping in mind the reality test, your therapist will show you how these thoughts don’t hold any power, and you can actually give no response to these thoughts. Most of the time, you might feel that anxiety is never based on reality. Some facts are coming to us and disturbing us, which is why we get so anxious.
Replacing your negative thoughts with reality: If you are just giving the exact opposite explanation to your negative thoughts, you will see that these thoughts won’t stay for a long time. One of the best ways to question your negative thought patterns is to identify the negative thoughts and see what can be accurate in this situation. So, if you can get rid of these cognitive distortions, eventually, things will fall into place, and you will get rid of your anxiety.
