Manage anxiety with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

You can manage anxiety with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Anxiety is a part of life and even a useful addition but too much anxiety can destabilise and overwhelm you. It’s not possible to eradicate anxiety completely. Many of my clients expect that Cognitive behavioral therapy will stop anxiety completely but this is unrealistic.
Aspects of anxiety
There’s two aspects to anxiety. On the one hand, anxiety is a symptom of the way we are built. We needed anxiety to keep us alert and safe. If we never experienced anxiety we’d probably be extinct by now and more wiley predators would be top dog. Anxiety alerts our survival instinct and keeps us away from danger. So far so good.

Our biology hasn’t kept up with modern technology though. The fast-paced world we live in has sped up exponentially but evolution takes a while to catch up. Changes that need to be made in the way we process information in our brains to keep up just aren’t possible. So we have an outdated reaction to many of the stressors we face today.

This brings me on to the second aspect of anxiety. When we face stress today, our old brain still reacts in the same way as it would when we were faced with a deadly predator from our caveman-days. The old brain senses the same fight/flight/freeze response and acts accordingly. It gears the body up for the perceived threat. Adrenalin is released, we might get sweaty palms and a racing heart. Anxiety can feel really frightening and unmanageable.