Why GAD is so Physically and Emotionally Painful
If you’re struggling with anxiety, you’ve probably noticed that it’s like an unending loop. It starts with a worry, “What if…” What if I get fired? What if I go broke and can’t support my family anymore? What if my wife doesn’t want to be with me anymore and she leaves me?
The cycle always starts with a worry. A worry is nothing more than a story you tell yourself about how things could possibly go wrong. The only problem is 1) unless you have a crystal ball, you can’t possibly predict the future with any certainty and 2) you will FEEL as if it is CERTAIN, even if you’re worried it’s a possibility.
Imagine telling a child “We might lose our home.” Notice the word “might.” It’s an important word. However, if you were to tell a child this, they would begin to experience all the feelings as if it were actually going to happen – perhaps even tomorrow. They would feel scared and sad, unprepared, maybe helpless. Their mind and body wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between “We might lose our home” and “We’re going to lose our home.” Unfortunately, your adult body can’t tell the difference either. So the more your mind runs through all the possible worst case scenarios, the more your body is forced to go along for the ride and feel as if each of those terrible things were actually happening right now.
The other common element of anxiety that makes it particularly difficult, is the never-ending feeling of “I wouldn’t be able to handle it if…” With generalized anxiety disorder, it’s common to underestimate your ability to cope with problems, stressful situations, or specific uncomfortable emotions. Ironically, this type of thinking seems to persist even if you have handled really difficult situations in the past. With generalized anxiety disorder, you continue to worry, despite evidence to the contrary. Unfortunately, the more we tell ourselves we couldn’t possible handle something, the more we worry about it happening – thus keeping us stuck in the worry cycle.
This is why Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is considered one of the leading treatments for generalized anxiety disorder. In order to break the cycle of worry, we can teach you to organize your thoughts and examine the evidence to come up with more realistic expectations – instead of always expecting the worst. But it doesn’t stop there. A key element of CBT for GAD is that in order to actually believe the new thoughts, we’ll need to come up with a plan to help you test them out in action – so you can see for yourself.
We can help.
If you or someone you love is struggling with anxiety, please reach out. We offer anxiety treatment with CBT Therapists in Orlando and online throughout the state of Florida. Call today or send us your info and we’ll reach out for a free consultation to see if one of our therapists would be a good fit.
