Talk Therapy for Anxiety & Why You May Need More
Talk Therapy for Anxiety & Why You May Need More
Talk therapy is not always enough and here’s why. In the mental health world, talk therapy has long been considered the standard treating various mental health concerns, including anxiety. While traditional talk therapy can be incredibly valuable, it may come up short in providing a comprehensive treatment for people grappling with anxiety. Here are three key reasons why I believe talk therapy alone might not be enough and why a holistic, well rounded approach to treatment can be so beneficial for those seeking relief from anxiety.
What is Talk Therapy
Talk therapy is a form of therapy that relies on talking about symptoms, triggers and stressors that may be impacting your life. Most (if not all) therapy interventions involve talking and connecting with clients because we are social beings. We rely on verbal and nonverbal communication for understanding each other. So talking is a necessary tool in anyone’s treatment. For some, especially if you are someone who experience anxiety or are an external processor, you may be so used to talking about what is going on internally. You know what you’re thinking, how you’re feeling and why. For a lot of people, the experience of anxiety is based in racing thoughts and uncontrollable worries; there is an ongoing inner dialog that is happening. You may even be good at intellectualizing your experiences, which works great for talk therapy. The main issue with this is that with talk therapy alone, we are only activating the logic and reason parts of the brain. We are often missing out on the bodily experiences and the emotional or survival parts of the brain. Here are 3 techniques that can add to talk therapy treatment and provide a more holistic approach to healing:
1. Somatic Therapy Techniques: Connecting to the Body
Anxiety doesn't only exist in the mind. Anxiety often presents as physical symptoms as well, including muscle tension, racing heart, sleep issues and more. Talk therapy, which primarily focuses on verbal communication, may skip over the real connection between the mind and body. Somatic or body-based techniques allow for you to build awareness of your body and nervous system. You are able to make connections between what you’re thinking and feeling and how those experiences are showing up in your body. Somatic therapy is intended to support you in getting more acquainted with your nervous system and finding the right tools to help regulate it.
Techniques such as progressive muscle relaxation, body scans, grounding techniques, and mindful movement can help you develop a deeper awareness of your body and learn to manage physical sensations associated with anxiety. By adding somatic approaches into therapy, you can gain a more well rounded understanding of your anxiety and your body while developing practical skills to ground yourself in the present moment.
2. Bringing Mindfulness into Therapy
Talk therapy often revolves around discussing past experiences or future concerns, which certainly has its benefits. But sometimes, talking about the past and future can exacerbate anxiety symptoms and can keep you feeling stuck in a cycle of overthinking and worry. Mindfulness practices is a great way to counter that because it encourages you to have a non-judgemental awareness of the present moment.
Mindfulness techniques often include meditations, visualizations and deep-breathing exercises. Mindfulness has been shown to reduce anxiety symptoms by promoting relaxation and can break the cycle of rumination and overthinking. Integrating mindfulness into therapy can equip you with the skills to observe your thoughts and emotions non-judgmentally, which helps to build a sense of empowerment and grounding.
3. EMDR Therapy to help you get unstuck
Your anxiety may stem from a past traumatic, harmful or scary experience. And those experiences may have created negative core beliefs that contribute to your current experiences of anxiety. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a therapeutic approach specifically designed to address the emotional impact of trauma and negative core beliefs that resulted from those traumas. While talk therapy may explore traumatic events verbally, EMDR takes a different approach by incorporating bilateral stimulation into the reprocessing experience.
EMDR has been proven to be successful in helping individuals process and integrate traumatic memories, which helps to reduce the emotional charge associated with them. By identifying the past experiences that is contributing to your current anxiety symptoms and using EMDR to reprocess those memories, you can experience lots of relief from those symptoms.
While talk therapy is a valuable tool in anyone’s coping toolkit, its limitations become clear when it comes to addressing the complex nature of anxiety. By incorporating somatic techniques, mindfulness practices, and EMDR into therapeutic approaches, you can have a more holistic experience to your healing. In order to support the whole person, we have to highlight the interconnectedness of the mind and body and offer a more comprehensive solution for those navigating anxiety.
If you’re interested in exploring any of these therapeutic techniques to help with your anxiety, contact me to get started today!
