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Anxiety / Depression Counseling
Everyone feels nervous or worries from time to time. Basically, anxiety is a normal human reaction to stressful situations but for a person with anxiety disorder, the worries and fears are not temporary. The anxiety persists and can even get worse with time.
Depressive and anxiety disorder can severely impact a person’s ability to function in school, at work and in social situations. It also interferes with a person’s relationship with friends and family. Fortunately though, there is an effective treatment for depression and anxiety.
Unlike medication, depression/ anxiety therapy treats more than just the symptoms of the problem. It helps you to uncover the underlying cause of your fears and worries, teaches you how to relax, look at situations in a new and less frightening way as well as develop a better problem solving and coping skills. Therapy will give you the tools to overcome depression and anxiety and it teaches you how to use them.
«L’homme ne s’inquiète pas tant des problèmes réels que de ses angoisses imaginaires sur les vrais problèmes».― Epictetus
(“Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems”)
Counseling Made Easy…
Counseling sessions are tailored to deal with specific symptoms and concerns. If you have obsessive compulsive disorder, your treatment will certainly be different from another person seeking help for anxiety attacks.
From my experience, the leading approaches to treat depression and anxiety are exposure therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. Each type of therapy can be used alone but some situations call for a combination of different types for more effective results.
During a therapy session, I take my time to help you identify the thoughts and behavior patterns that are making you anxious. Once we have identified an unhelpful pattern that contributes to the anxiety, we can make changes to replace with new ones that will improve your coping skills and hence lead to reduced anxiety.
For example, you might always find yourself stuck in catastrophizing thinking pattern. This means you believe that things are far worse than they actually are and you anticipate that things will go wrong. Depression/anxiety therapy will teach you to think more realistically and focus on solving the existing problem. If you often avoid things or situations that make to anxious or depressed, therapy will help you face your fears and approach your worries more rationally.
You should also know…
I use a range of techniques with my patients. Examples include:
Encouraging you to recognize the difference between productive and unproductive worries
Teach you how to solve problems and let go of your worries
Teach you how to relax when you feel anxious.
Teach you breathing techniques such as muscle relaxation to help you control the physical symptoms of tension.
You can choose to either take therapy session alone or in groups of people with similar problems or even online. The length of your treatment session will depend on the severity and type of depressive and/or anxiety disorder. Many depressive and/or anxious moods can be resolved in short term therapies.
Online counseling has several advantages including:
Ease of access
You can get help from the comfort of your home
Telehealth is especially convenient for people in remote and rural areas as it can be provided without having to visit the therapist.
For more information, you can contact me via email or call me and I will teach you how to handle situations by being more relaxed and less anxious.
