I remember a patient who introduced herself like this in the office, "Good morning I am Mrs. XXX XXX and I am anxiety in person." This woman had been constantly living in anxiety for many years now and decided to schedule a first session only when her difficulties became so severe that they strongly affected her daily life to the extent that she left the house in extreme fear.
Anxiety: how it manifests and where it occurs
Anxiety can take many different forms (e.g. panic attacks, obsessive compulsive disorders, stress, eating disorders, ...) and touches the body at different points depending on our sensitivity. Such outward manifestations underlie much more articulated and complex issues that it is important not to overlook and to start looking at early in order to prevent them from growing and amplifying their scope.
With the passage of time, without being able to deal with these issues to the best of our ability, suffering can progressively increase and invade different areas of our daily lives, no longer allowing us to live peacefully in the family, friendship, and work environments.
Anxiety is an emotion characterized by a sense of agitation, worry, and threat, accompanied most often by a somatic reaction that alarms the body. Anxiety has an adaptive role: it helps us identify future threats and deal with them in a functional way.
When anxiety states become persistent and intense, however, they risk becoming dysfunctional and cause anxiety crises that are difficult to manage. How to recognize anxiety? Anxiety has physical and mental symptoms that are found by observing the physiological, cognitive and behavioral signals. Psychotherapy can help us manage anxiety and treat related anxiety disorders.
Anxiety: how to fight it, manage it, cure it from today
Anxiety, malaise, nervousness, anxiety, stress, are not always easy issues to deal with and manage alone or with the generous help of a friend.
Meeting with a professional, a psychotherapist, with whom to have a few sessions can make it possible to better understand the situation, face and interrogate these difficulties (anxiety, malaise, inhibitions, nervousness, anguish, stress, ...) through an appropriately specialized support that facilitates and accompanies this process of processing and crossing the suffering.
This work, however, takes time, a different time for each person. Being well takes time, his time, our time.
We would like to emphasize that it is possible, indeed appropriate, to turn to a professional not only when suffering becomes unbearable, when the psychologist becomes the "last resort." Clinical experience shows its most effective treatment at an early stage, that is, when the first difficulties of a certain importance appear. Anxiety, it should not be forgotten, can also turn into depression if not addressed.
Solving a problem, building solutions
"I thought I could do it on my own" is a phrase that often comes up in session. Turning to a psychologist-psychotherapist does not mean throwing in the towel and delegating our well-being to others, "tell me what to do and I'll do it," but it means building together the story of this malaise and together building solutions to change the conditions that led to the malaise. "But I cannot change the situation that is in the office. This just generates anxiety and stress for me."...this is not always so true, insofar as one's own change, one's own experiencing situations differently, necessarily leads to relating to these circumstances in a different way that impacts the system and, even if only slightly, changes the balance of the system.
What medications to take for anxiety? Which antidepressant to choose?
By now Italy, not only our Cernusco sul Naviglio, sees its inhabitants prisoners of anxiolytics, so much so that there is now clear talk of a benzodiazepine addiction scare. Recent studies indicate that one in ten Italians use them (in the over-65s, even one in four) and that many people, too many, use them without medical indications, but do-it-yourself, or following the advertisements. We would like to emphasize that the use of drugs for too long periods and with increasing quantities then leads to becoming addicted to them.
All too easily we take these drugs, which are also offered on television, because it is easier and quicker to take a pill than to stop and ask questions, even uncomfortable questions that can open closets in which we have long kept skeletons, but, it should be said, the drug, alone, does not solve the problem, at most it alleviates the symptomatology.
Anxiety: what to do? Take time for yourself
In addition, we would like to emphasize that taking care of one's health can also mean turning to a psychologist-psychotherapist for a path of personal growth, analysis of one's inner and relational dynamics, to increase self-knowledge. One may therefore choose to meet with this professional not necessarily for a serious disorder or psychiatric symptomatology.
Suffering from anxiety does not mean being crazy.
Undertaking work on oneself, even more so if it is psychoanalytically oriented, can lead to much more than just an increase in one's well-being.
Undertaking work on oneself allowsone to have aunique experience, a journey within oneself, accompanied by a professional who does not ask the subject to be 'normal,' 'conforming,' but invites him to bring out his own unrepeatable singularity, what makes him unique, what differentiates him from all others.
Taking time for oneself and facing one's anxiety means no longer living passively at the mercy of anxiety, but transforming anxiety into strength by becoming leading actors in our lives.