Our Favorite Types of Anxiety Therapy
If you’re reading this post (written by an actual anxiety therapist!), you’re probably wondering how to deal with anxiety.
Having anxiety feels UNCOMFORTABLE. Physically, it makes your body tense up. It makes your heart pound and your breathing come fast - or feel like it’s going to totally stop. Anxiety tells your body that you’re in DANGER, and so your body naturally responds by getting you ready for a fight, flight, or freeze response.
In addition to a physical reaction, anxiety can cause big behavioral reactions.
Because anxiety is tripping the wire for your fight/flight/freeze response, you’re going to want to explode, or run away, or totally clam up - all due to that anxiety. Kids and teens with anxiety might seem like they get really mad and angry (which is why our therapists love to work with anxiety-driven anger!) Or they might run out of the classroom, or be so shy that they can’t even talk to friends and family members.
Anxiety therapy and your thoughts:
Cognitions-wise, your anxious thoughts can be all over the map. Anxiety can cause you to have thought spirals, where one small problem spirals into you thinking that your life is ruined. Or, your thoughts get so loud that you can’t push them away.
Anxiety impacts our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, in some pretty big ways. So what can we do about it?
Treatment for Anxiety Disorders
The best way to treat anxiety is to meet with a therapist, and ideally, a therapist who loves to work with anxiety and allllll the ways it can show up. Our therapists at Compassionate Counseling St. Louis work with anxious kids, teens, and college students from age 4 on up, and because they all have their own specialized training in addition to their anxiety work, they can bring in different types of anxiety therapy to inform their treatment.
Types of Therapy for Anxiety
There are lots of ways to approach anxiety work. Here’s a brief overview of three of our favorites: CBT skills, mindfulness/meditation, and art therapy.
Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Anxiety
CBT is the type of therapy I most often incorporate as an anxiety therapist.
CBT is all about breaking down your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (just like we did above) and figuring out how to impact each one. What’s something more helpful you can tell yourself in the anxiety-provoking moment? What’s a way to lower the level of your emotions so that you’re not so overwhelmed? What are some healthy behaviors you can use to help manage the level of your anxiety, and react differently than how that fight/flight/freeze response is telling you to react.
In fact, my self-help book for teens, “When Anxiety Makes You Angry,” uses a CBT framework throughout. It’s a great type of anxiety therapy - and it’s easy to stack other interventions on top of it.
Mindfulness Therapies for Anxiety
In addition to building CBT skills, our anxiety therapists love to incorporate mindfulness and meditation. Meditation and mindfulness train your brain to take a step back and OBSERVE what’s happening, instead of feeling all swirled up in a terrible, anxious current.
Meditation focuses on quieting the mind, and when our therapists use guided meditation, we walk you through an image or scene to visualize releasing anxiety, stress, building in a deep feeling of calm.
Meditations to check out:
Art Therapy for Anxiety
Our art therapist on staff, Susie, is a licensed art therapist and uses art as a way to explore your anxiety, build resiliency, and deepen your empathy for yourself. Art is such an individual thing and can be deeply meaningful, so using art in therapy can really be tailored to you and your goals, and your deeper symbolic needs.
Here’s how art therapist Susie McGaughey incorporates art into her first session:
Art therapist Susie McGaughey
In a typical first session my main goal is to start building a good rapport with my client, to help them to feel relaxed and comfortable in the space and for them to leave the session feeling like they are going to have a strong say in what therapy is going to look like for them.
I always start with sharing the limits of confidentiality and sharing a little about myself--my experience as a therapist and my approach with working with kids (what art therapy is for example if they have come specifically for that). I ask if they would share with me a little about themselves, one small thing or a fun fact, why they think their parent or guardian wants them to come to therapy and how they feel about it. I'll ask them if they have any goals or hopes in mind for our work together and share my goal/hope for our first sessions which is to get to know them and work on building their trust.
In the art therapy room, I like to show them all the possible materials they could use and give them some ideas of art directives we could try. I typically end with a very simple, low pressure art therapy activity or an interactive art exercise that we do together as a way to start of connecting with the idea of using art to express and to have a visual representation of the start of our connection with each other.
Anxiety therapy for teens, college students, and young children in St. Louis
Our therapists biggest job is making sure that we’re managing the anxiety that you or your child experiences, tailoring our approach to your needs. We’re never going to take a “one size fits all” approach, which is why we make sure to elicit feedback every. single. session.
If you or your child/teen is experiencing anxiety, and you feel like anxiety therapy is the best next step, reach out to schedule a call.
We’ll be happy to discuss what’s going on, your concerns, and figure out the best next steps - like booking you for CBT skills, or getting you on Susie’s schedule.
Further reading:
Kelsey Torgerson Dunn, MSW, LCSW is the owner of Compassionate Counseling St. Louis and the author of “When Anxiety Makes You Angry.” Compassionate Counseling St. Louis provides anxiety therapy for anxious and angry kids, teens, and college students, from age 4 on up. We provide anxiety counseling for families throughout St. Louis and surrounding areas.
