- What is an Anxiety Counselling?
Anxiety counselling is a phenomenon that has relatively becoming common in the recent years, especially in India. We feel sad and worried about the several problems that life may throw at us. But what if this worry starts becoming an invisible cloud over your head? With constant doubts free floating around you about even the smallest of details, daily functioning can become a task. This is what would be part of anxiety. It can be seen as an unpleasant part of life that can have an affect us in different ways. This can result in constant restlessness, depression or even obsessive thoughts and behaviours. Anxiety counselling helps in dealing with these concerns.
- Symptoms and causes of Anxiety Disorders
Anxiety is usually caused by the triggering factor being stress. Stressful situations are subjective and will change for everyone. One can have several reactions or levels of anxiety to stressful stimuli. In PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), one of the symptoms is anxiety. PTSD, in brief, is followed by a traumatic experience the person might have faced. Another common cause of an anxiety provoking situation, is phobic reactions. Phobias (considerably high fear of something) trigger anxiety and can result in physiological symptoms such as palpitations, shaking, and sweating. Anxiety might also make you tensed, uptight, uncomfortable, nervous, all of which are because of the adrenaline that is produced by the body in such situations. Through anxiety counselling, one can rightly recognize the patterns of anxiety and behaviour to help cope with it.
Other than these, causes can be genetics, environmental factors, substance abuse and so on.
- Why is Anxiety Counselling Needed in India?
A couple of recognized anxiety problems are General Anxiety Disorder(GAD), Phobic anxiety, Panic Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. According to the surveys and studies conducted in India ahead of the World Mental Health day in 2013, one in four Indians had anxiety. This is the first step to depression. Anxiety in individuals also results in taking up coping strategies that are detrimental to health and wellbeing. Resorting to smoking cigarettes, drugs and alcohol (to name a few) have been on the rise, to counter the anxiety and stress situation in India. With the increasing need for healthier coping systems, activities such as yoga, meditation, physical exercise and so on, the role of counselling also is vital. Counselling, anxiety counselling, gives one the window to discover the nature of anxiety and deal with it effectively.
- How it is performed online?
Like any other counselling session, anxiety counselling online will deal with the root, symptoms and causes of anxiety. Having said that, online counsellors will guide you initially with coping strategies after which they might or might not do in depth about the root of the problem. This will depend on your therapist and your comfort. Most common therapies that are used are CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Techniques) and SFBT(Solution Focused Brief Therapy).
- What are the Preparations before Anxiety Counselling?
As a person going in for anxiety counselling, you need to be prepared to be talking to a qualified professional about your anxiety. You have to remember that the therapist will ask several questions that you might think are unrelated, but be ready to answer them. In case you feel uncomfortable to answer a question or describe a situation, you can always decline to do so. The most important thing is to know that anxiety counselling, while triggering emotions and reactions, will take time to reduce.
- What to expect after Anxiety Counselling?
After a few sessions of anxiety counselling, you can expect changes that you will begin to notice in yourself when in stressful, anxiety provoking situations. As this is not a process which ends right after anxiety counselling ends, you will constantly need to work on yourself till you feel confident about your feelings and thoughts. All in all, you can expect changes, depending on how much effort you have put in and how true you have been to yourself. But these changes will not last if revert to regressive ways of coping.