How Psychotherapy Can Help Relieve Your Anxiety

If you live in a state of perpetual worry, fatigue, or restlessness that interrupts your normal daily routine, your anxiety levels are too high. You need intervention, so you can get relief.

At Palo Alto Mind Body, we have locations in the surrounding Bay Area, which includes South Bay, North Bay, East Bay, Peninsula, and San Francisco, California, where we offer psychotherapy. M Rameen Ghorieshi, MD, MPH, and our team are psychotherapy specialists who not only understand how anxiety affects your life, but we have compassion for you. We’re here to help you get better and live a normal, healthy life.

Why choose psychotherapy

We treat anxiety disorders at our practice, using evidence-based psychotherapy as one of our treatment options. It allows us to go beyond just treating your symptoms.

With talk therapy, we can help uncover the root cause of your worries and fears. We also work with you, so you learn how to be calm, relax, and change how you perceive certain situations that have affected you negatively in the past. Psychotherapy gives you problem-solving skills and teaches you how to cope in difficult moments.

Where to begin

Though there are many different anxiety disorders, we tailor your psychotherapy to your specific diagnosis and symptoms. For example, we wouldn’t treat obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and social anxiety the same way.

We also determine the number of therapy sessions you need based on the type of anxiety you have and its level of severity.

How it works

Psychotherapy has numerous approaches, but the two leading ones include:

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)

This type of therapy can be highly effective for you if you struggle with:

Social anxiety disorder
Panic disorder
Phobias
Generalized anxiety disorder

CBT isn’t just limited to the above list. It can help with many other conditions, as well. Cognitive therapy allows us to examine how your negative thoughts contribute to your anxiety. Behavioral therapy gives us the chance to look at how you behave and react or respond in certain situations that trigger your condition.

Once we identify the causes of your anxiety disorder, we can work with you to help shift your thinking and beliefs that can change the way you feel.

Exposure therapy

Exposure therapy puts you in situations that cause your anxiety. We may ask you to imagine the situation, like flying on a plane or being in a storm. As we create the triggers, we walk you through it.

Another option is to confront the situation in real life. As you continue to expose yourself to the very thing that causes you to feel threatened, you begin to gain a sense of control, which diminishes your anxiety.

Both therapies have many steps that we guide you through that ultimately help you meet your goal.

If you have an anxiety disorder and are ready to get the help you need, don’t hesitate to give us a call today at 650-681-2900. You can also click here to check appointment availability.