Treating Anxiety

The Psychotherapy Model views anxiety as a normal response to human experience and survival. Not unlike the fight, flight, or hide response, humans need anxiety in order to act and to protect from suffering. Because anxiety is normal, most people experience anxiety at some point in their life, however limited or mild. Yet, many experience a heightened and uncomfortable level of anxiety causing one to seek treatment. Rather than medicating the anxiety away as a permanent solution, the Psychotherapy Model approaches a person's anxiety with intense curiosity in an effort to help the person to understand and heal the source of the anxiety. Through the process of focusing internally a person can understand, unravel, and transform their anxiety. Sometimes anxiety is the result of an inner polarization (See Case Example: Anna). Sometimes anxiety is the result of unresolved trauma leaving the individual in a heightened physiological state of arousal in which certain experiences have the potential to reactivate the old trauma, as is often the case with Post-Traumatic Stress. Sometimes anxiety results from a lack of, or inexperience at, knowing how to self-sooth. And there are other psychological and emotional reasons for anxiety. Whatever the cause, anxiety can be reduced if not resolved completely with therapy. Indeed, anxiety may be hereditary to some degree, in that some people may be more predisposed than others to develop anxiety in response to life events. Whether one is predisposed to anxiety or not, there is nonetheless a great benefit in addressing anxiety with therapy.