I don't know if i believe in "talking things out" for anxiety issues.

just checking if anyone has experience in this and what was your experience

thanks

 

anxiety ... may i ask: do you drink alcohol?

 

i'm pro therapy in general, even though therapists are hit and miss imo. i've had shitty useless therapists and good ones, but i'm an outlier on the crazy scale. for anxiety i'm guessing a therapist would first determine if you were doing all the basics like exercise, eating decent, not doing meth everyday etc so maybe consider doing those things if you aren't already.

 

I've been a therapist for 33 years. Despite the general image on this forum of therapists being phonies practicing phony science who put you on drugs for no reason at all while laughing all the way to the bank, I would have left this job a very frustrated man long ago if I didn't think it did people more good than damage. Therapy is not just "talking it out", you could use a blank wall or your next door neighbor to do that. The first question you might want to ask yourself is if learning to control your anxiety is worth the process of opening up, doing some hard mental work and going through change to you.

 

You don't "talk things out" with a psychotherapist.
They help you determine the areas where you're big-time wrong about your life and figure out if you can do something about it.
These big mistakes in judgement often happen due to some childhood trauma that make your brain afraid of processing certain kinds of life situations and run away to the most self-affirming (for the traumatized part) conclusions.

 

i don't drink alcohol

 

CBT has proven to be a successful form of therapy for anxiety issues

 

yes i just don't know how "opening up" would solve an anxiety issue. Its still like talking things out.

also what do you mean hard mental work

 

i tried reading a book on that.....couldn't even go past first few pages...

i can't see the value

 

You are better off talking to a trained therapist, there is little benefit in self-therapy in any respect.

 

can you give an example?

i know where i shouldn't feel so anxious, but doesn't mean that if anyone says hey this is not normal why you think like this, or tell me to take deep breaths, that that will solve it

 

There are a lot of different approachs to mental health therapy, not all of them are "talking out". Inform yourself of the options you have. Some therapist can put you on a white noise generator to deal with insomnia and night anxiety and work wonders, so there are a lot of more practical approaches to deal with brain chemical inbalances, especially for the ones that don't believe in talking out things.

Take care!

 

i am trying to understand the benefit

did anyone solve an anxiety issue through a therapist just by talking to them?

 

i am trying to see the value of talking things out first before looking into further things

but i can't see it currently

 

there are so many books, with scientific methodes, that shows psychotherapy really works, not only for anxiety, but to mental health issues in general, in special the traumas.

I am mental health professional since 2010 and I've worked on the main program to assist people with mental issues in my country.

The problem, I think, it's the numerous charlatans in this area

 

Yes, I did

 

However, there are certainly bad therapists who don't take their profession seriously or who only think about money.
Bad therapists can ruin a lot of things, but definitely the reputation of therapists as a profession.

I also think it's nonsense for one patient to recommend something to another, because the problems can simply be too different. And self-treatment or advice from people with dangerous half-knowledge can end up badly or deadly.

The problem is that the performance of a therapist is not easily measurable and patients have problems finding the right therapist for their specific area of application.

Are there any useful tips on how to go about finding a good therapist?

 

Last edited: Mar 25, 2024

Yes, by breaking down the reasons for anxiety into smaller component parts. This helps the patient understand the reasons for anxiety and to help them change the way they feel about certain emotions and environments. So yes, talking does help and has proven to be successful

 

Do the work. Which means: exhaust all options. Everything has a cause, and a different potential fix. What is the cause of your anxiety? Would reading & meditation make you mindfully enough to slowly get rid of it? Or would a psychologist be needed with a specialized kind of therapy like EMDR? Or even drugs?

Do the work or you'll never know.

 

Therapist can help you do stuff efficiently. YOU are the one that ultimately solves the 'problem,' therapist is the tool.

You could also look at the way you react to things. What types of events / experiences cause you anxiety?

More accurately, what types of events / experiences do you react with anxiety to?

Because if there wasn't an event / experience prior to 'new' experiences that cause you anxiety, you simply wouldn't know how to react to them. Right now, you "know" that anxiety is the reaction. Because you learned it somehow, or decided / agreed that was the way you were going to respond to experiences like that.

You should be able to figure those out without too much trouble. You must first decide that you want to change. Then, you can ask yourself "why do i react this way to this?" or something along those lines.

Ask yourself that until there are no more answers. There's likely a specific first event or experience (i.e. something went a certain way, somebody said something to you once, etc.) that you interpreted a certain way, it caused you pain, and then you now react with anxiety to any experience that's like it b/c you don't want to experience that pain again (even though your original pain was based on an interpretation or misinterpretation). Anxiety is a symptom of that IMO. Anxiety is designed to make you avoid a situation that might cause pain of some sort. And I don't mean just physical pain, I mean any sort of emotional pain as well, suffering, shame, embarrassment, unworthiness, etc.

So, let's say a girl you were in love with dumped you. First girlfriend. Broke your heart. AND she says something that implies she doesn't want to date you because you lack something she wants. AKA "you're not good enough." Or maybe a parent says something like that when you're 5 years old or something. Or maybe even before you've ever had the experience, a person you love/trust says "crowds are scary and bad, never go near them, you might get robbed" And so you develop agoraphobia or something; you end up avoiding crowds because "they make you anxious." Because someone said something about crowds one time, before you knew better.

Anyway, for the love example, you might avoid relationships like that - even if it's a relationship you deep down crave - because you feel you're not good enough (not true). You might feel like you have to measure your self worth against some bizarre and/or arbitrary metric (a symptom of the pain caused by the experience). Etc. Situations that remind you of the original pain might cause you to react with anxiety; it becomes just an ingrained "automatic" response rather than something you process lucidly and consciously. And, over time, you can begin to believe "that's just the way I am," or "that's just who I am." Except, if you look back far enough, you realize you weren't always "that way."

But many (some would argue all) of these situations are like Santa Claus. You believe in something because of a memory or something someone told you and you believed them (which is still a memory). Yet if you really examine the belief, you might not find any *actual* evidence for it. If you believe in Santa Claus, there certainly seems like there's evidence for Santa Claus! *Someone* eats the cookies you set out for him Xmas Eve. *Someone* puts the presents under the tree. And you were told that Santa Claus does all that and visits and likes cookies etc. The signs of Santa Claus seem like they're pretty air-tight!

Yet... you never see Santa Claus. You just assume he exists because of what you were told and the "signs" that he exists - or the signs that you interpret as evidence of him existing. Upon investigation, you find that there is no *actual* evidence of Santa Claus, just a bunch of beliefs and assumptions that you formed and/or were fed to you by people you trusted.

Yet, once you "get wise" about Santa Claus, you see it all differently, and are even shocked that you "believed" for so long. You simply believed in Santa Claus because you gave authority to the words of those who told you about him. Nothing sinister, no evil plotting, just a simple innocent misconception / interpretation on your part, because you didn't know any better! The result of a coin flip, at best. So there's no one to blame, either. You were only fooling yourself!

These things are not impossible to find and very much fixable / changeable. A good therapist will help speed the process if you don't want to do it yourself, or want a little help.

 

Last edited: Mar 29, 2024