CBT For Anxiety, How It Works, Examples, & Effective Options

What is CBT for Anxiety?

Whether you’re suffering from panic attacks, obsessive thoughts, unrelenting worries, or an incapacitating phobia, it’s essential to know that you don’t have to live with anxiety and fear. Cognitive behavioral therapy can help, and for many anxiety problems, therapy is often the most effective option. That’s because anxiety therapy—unlike anxiety medication—treats more than just the symptoms of the problem. Therapy can help you uncover the underlying causes of your worries and fears. You can learn to relax, look at situations in new, less frightening ways, and develop better coping and problem-solving skills. Therapy gives you the tools to overcome anxiety and teaches you how to use them.

What is the Effectiveness of CBT for Anxiety?

CBT is highly effective in treating anxiety disorders and has decades of research proving it works. It is an evidence-based practice endorsed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Association and the American Psychiatric Association, two leading mental health addiction treatment authorities.

Decades of research exist to support the efficacy of CBT for anxiety disorders and other common mental illnesses. [2] Recent research efforts have focused on a comprehensive review of existing studies, and here’s what they’ve found:

• CBT interventions for anxiety are considered the gold standard treatment for anxiety disorders because it has the most evidence to support it works to reduce symptoms in people with a generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), panic disorder, specific phobias, and social anxiety disorder
• CBT skills for anxiety are also effective in treating obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), mainly when Exposure and Response Prevention (a specific kind of CBT) is used
• CBT has proven to reduce symptoms in people who struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), especially Trauma-Focused CBT for young individuals who are experiencing PTSD symptoms
• CBT is effective in treating other mental disorders, including depression and mood disorders, and substance use disorders

Anxiety Disorder Statistics

Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent class of mental disorders, with 12-month prevalence rates of 21.3% in the United States and 11.6% worldwide. These disorders are associated with high societal costs and significant decrements in psychosocial functioning and quality of life. Fortunately, a sizable body of research has developed over the last several decades, demonstrating cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as an effective treatment for anxiety disorders. [3]

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the severity of symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder differed by sociodemographic characteristics. The percentages of adults with mild, moderate, or severe symptoms of GAD in the past 2 weeks decreased with age and were higher among women than men. [4]

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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety disorders vary considerably, so therapy should be tailored to your specific symptoms and diagnosis. If you have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), your OCD treatment will differ from someone needing panic attack treatment. The length of therapy will also depend on the type and severity of your anxiety disorder. However, many anxiety therapies are relatively short-term. Typical CBT for anxiety treatments involves approximately 60-minute sessions occurring weekly for 8 to 12 weeks.

While many different types of therapy are used to treat anxiety, the leading approaches are cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and exposure therapy. Each cognitive behavior therapy for anxiety may be used alone or combined with other types of therapy. CBT for generalized anxiety disorder may be conducted individually, or it may take place in a group of people with similar anxiety problems. But the goal is the same: to lower your anxiety levels, calm your mind, and overcome your fears.

CBT for Social Anxiety

The social anxiety disorder cognitive behavioral therapy approach effectivity often depends on your unique symptoms and therapy needs. Still, social anxiety CBT is one common approach known to make a difference. CBT social anxiety teaches you to identify specific thoughts, emotions, and behaviors fueling your distress. You can explore these feelings and reframe them into more helpful beliefs.

Social anxiety involves extreme and persistent worry, nervousness, and dread. These feelings appear in social situations or the mere thought of social situations. More specifically, you might:

• Fixate on how others perceive you
• Think you’ll do something to embarrass yourself
• Feel very self-conscious around others
• Assume people will reject or laugh at you when you try to make friends
• Notice physical anxiety symptoms in social settings (stomach pain, nausea, digestive trouble, etc.)
• Avoid most situations involving anyone beyond a few trusted loved ones

If you’ve noticed any of these key signs, you might wonder whether working with a therapist and cognitive behavioral therapy for social anxiety could help.

Types of CBT Treatment for Anxiety

Different types of cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety disorders may be prescribed depending on the precise type of anxiety condition a person has and the symptoms they experience. Some kinds of CBT have evolved into different therapies while remaining linked to the “family” of CBT treatments. These distinct types of CBT have frequently been extensively examined and proved beneficial for specific anxiety disorders. The following are the CBT treatment plan for anxiety example:

Example of Exposure Therapy for Anxiety

Exposure Therapy is a type of CBT therapy used to help people reduce avoidant behavior driven by anxiety. It involves weekly therapy sessions with a licensed professional to provide CBT anxiety worksheets and exercises. Sessions usually last 1-2 hours weekly for 9-12 sessions. Exposure therapy is most used with specific phobias (fears) or situations where avoidance-related anxiety has become problematic.

As a part of this treatment, therapists first help clients learn relaxation skills. These might include exercises like breathing or mindfulness or exercises that introduce calming thoughts. Next, therapy would involve exposing the client to some of the triggers that cause mild anxiety and gradually working up to triggers that cause high anxiety levels. The exposure can happen in real-life (in-vivo exposure), in a person’s imagination (imaginal exposure), or computer simulations (through virtual reality exposure).

Example of Trauma-Focused CBT

Trauma-Focused CBT (TF-CBT) is one of the most effective therapy methods for young individuals with PTSD. This treatment involves individual, parent, and family therapy sessions and provides a structured approach to helping resolve trauma symptoms.

TF-CBT is delivered over 8-25 sessions, usually offered every week. Individual sessions are targeted towards changing unhelpful thoughts (like self-blame) the person may have about the traumatic event and working to find a more helpful framework. Early treatment involves a lot of education and skills training with the help of cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety worksheets, teaching individuals skills to cope more effectively with complex thoughts and feelings that traumatic memories trigger.

The client then develops a trauma narrative, or a detailed account of the traumatic memory, which is reviewed several times in sessions with the therapist, and later with the caregiver. This narrative helps the person process, work through, and heal from the traumatic event.

CBT Therapy for Anxiety Helps Reduce Anxious Thought Patterns

The cycle of anxiety CBT describes anxious thoughts as “thought distortions” or “negative automatic thoughts,” which increase anxiety. These include worried ‘worst-case scenario’ or ‘what if…’ thoughts that many people contemplate when they feel anxious and other negative thoughts a person has about themselves or their lives. With the help of CBT skills, it is possible to stop and change these thoughts into more positive, helpful thoughts that reduce anxiety.

Below are some cognitive distortions that are commonly seen in individuals with psychopathology:

• Dichotomous Thinking: Things are seen regarding two mutually exclusive categories with no shades of gray in between.
• Overgeneralization: Taking isolated cases and using them to make broad generalizations.
• Selective Abstraction: Focusing exclusively on particular aspects of something, usually negative or upsetting, while ignoring the rest.
• Disqualifying the Positive: Positive experiences that conflict with the individual’s negative views is discounted.
• Mind Reading: Assuming the thoughts and intentions of others.
• Fortune Telling: Predicting how things will turn out before they happen.
• Minimization: Positive characteristics or experiences are treated as natural but insignificant.
• Catastrophizing: Focusing on the worst possible outcome, however unlikely, or thinking that a situation is unbearable or impossible when it is uncomfortable.
• Emotional Reasoning: Making decisions and arguments based on feelings rather than objective reality.
• “Should” Statements: Concentrating on what you think “should” or “ought to be” rather than the actual situation you are faced with or having rigid rules which you always apply no matter the circumstances.
• Personalization, Blame, or Attribution: Assuming you are entirely or directly responsible for a negative outcome. When applied to others consistently, the blame is the distortion.

Download the free CBT worksheets for anxiety pdf below. With your answers, your therapist will determine what works best for you using the CBT anxiety cycle or suggest a personalized treatment for you for a better outcome.

CBT Reduces Behaviors That Lead to Anxiety

CBT therapists also help people identify behavior patterns that may be causing problems or making their problems worse. Problematic behaviors are identified by evaluating a given behavior’s short- and long-term consequences. Often, problem behaviors reduce anxiety in the short term (by providing immediate relief) but increase it in the long term while also creating other unwanted consequences. Problematic behavior patterns in people with anxiety disorders could include:

Avoidance

• Avoidance coping, or avoiding situations, places, or things that trigger anxiety, can offer short-term relief for anxiety but tends to make symptoms worse in the long term.  Anxiety cycle CBT often uses exposure therapy to encourage anxious people to face their fears gradually while teaching them relaxation skills to manage their anxiety.

Control

• Anxious people sometimes resort to controlling strategies to manage their anxiety and feel more secure when uncertain. A CBT therapist might encourage a person to change their routine in small ways as a form of exposure therapy. Over time, this can help them feel more confident in adapting to change.

Distraction

• Distraction involves doing or focusing on things to avoid anxious thoughts or feelings. CBT for anxiety teaches alternative skills that can be used instead of distraction, including skills to help them interrupt, challenge, and change anxious thoughts into ones that help them feel calmer.

Projection

• Projection involves redirecting anxiety or other emotions outward to another person or situation. CBT for anxiety would encourage a person to identify the actual trigger or cause of the emotions and to deal with this head-on by examining the CBT cycle of anxiety and the specific thoughts and fears feeding into the anxiety. A CBT therapist might also help the person challenge these thoughts or develop actionable steps they can take to complete the project successfully.

Procrastination

• Procrastination involves delaying or putting off a task because of anxiety. A CBT therapist might help people identify procrastination patterns, when and where they are most likely to show up, and how to resist urges to procrastinate. For instance, a person might be encouraged to break the task up into smaller parts that are easier to complete instead of doing the whole task at once.

The structure of each session:

The session always starts with a brief update and a check on mood. This is followed by bridging from the previous session to establish continuity. The agenda of what will be discussed in the session is set up collaboratively. The homework the patient had to do between the sessions is reviewed before discussing any problem. Issues on the agenda are talked about and punctuated with feedback and summaries. The session ends with setting up further homework, CBT for anxiety worksheets, and a final summary.

Examples of CBT in practice:

Cognitive behavioral therapy techniques for anxiety often focus on replacing negative automatic thoughts that can occur in generalized anxiety disorder and may be used alone or in combination with medications such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which are typically first-line as benzodiazepines have a greater risk of adverse outcomes.

CBT for anxiety places responsibility in the hands of the patient.

In addition to learning tools to help solve problems, CBT focuses on issues and concerns in the present rather than the past.  Here are some of the stages and techniques used in CBT:

• Functional Analysis: Helping an individual identify problematic beliefs. This is important in learning how thoughts, feelings, and situations can lead to maladaptive behaviors.
• Data Log: Keeping a daily log of observations, feelings, and negative automatic thoughts.
• Learning New Behaviors: Practicing problem-solving skills that can be employed in real-life situations. This may sometimes include facing one’s fears instead of avoiding them.
• Setting Goals: An essential component of CBT is goal setting. Once an individual identifies which thoughts or feelings are harmful and which new behaviors may be helpful, a CBT therapist may encourage setting small milestones between sessions to help the patient mark progress on the path to behavior change. 
• Activity Scheduling: Planning daily can help remove the need for repeated decision-making.
• Graded Task Assignments: Creating manageable steps to help overcome procrastination and anxiety-provoking scenarios using anxiety CBT worksheets, CBT anxiety workbooks, or a CBT for anxiety pdf.
• Role Play: Some therapists may use role play to help a patient prepare for upcoming problematic interactions. 
• Relaxation Training: Learning how to manage panic, anxiety, and stress through various stress management techniques.

Remember that each person’s experience with CBT will vary, as most therapists will tailor the experience based on the patient’s needs and level of comfort. In every case, to shed light on anxiety CBT treatment centers, building a trusting and collaborative relationship with one’s therapist is crucial to the approach’s success.

CBT Treatment Plan for Anxiety

An anxiety treatment plan involves a significant cognitive aspect, such as using cognitive techniques to reduce excessive worrying. Finding a good therapist and treatment plan can be challenging. While you might feel overwhelmed by figuring out where to start, you *can* find a therapy practice that’s right for you. Here are some things to consider when looking for a CBT professional.

It can be helpful to figure out if there is a type of therapist you may feel more comfortable with. A good relationship with a therapist is vital to your mental health recovery process. Ask yourself:

• What do you want in a therapist?
• Do you feel more comfortable with a therapist of a specific gender?
• Do you want a therapist who is older or younger?
• Do you want a religious aspect to therapy?

Anxiety can be a challenge, but the good news is that you can take steps to work through it. CBT for anxiety is a way to change your negative thought patterns to affect how you respond to situations positively. By finding a therapist with expertise in CBT for anxiety, you can take steps to manage your mental health. You can then take the skills you learn from CBT and apply them to situations in the future.

CBT Therapy Anxiety Exercises to Try at Home

Some beautiful things about CBT for anxiety are that it can cater to the unique needs of various clients so that the benefits are not missed by anyone, and it can be practiced outside of therapy sessions, too. If you are curious about some methods of practicing CBT at home, we have you covered.

• Entirely Focus on Your Thoughts

A fantastic way to practice CBT at home is to consciously watch these thoughts and catch any that are not conducive to the behaviors you would like to alter. Journaling or keeping some form of thought record is a productive way to keep track of one’s thoughts throughout the day. Being aware and writing down anything that comes to mind during the day forces one always to be present and with their attention on their thought patterns. 

• Schedule Your Day with Manageable Tasks

An excellent way to incorporate CBT into your daily life is to plan your day with small, manageable tasks that will not overwhelm you. Going into your day with such intentions will make you more likely to accomplish everything you set out to do successfully, and you can slowly build the number of tasks up over time. What you plan out for your day does not have to be inherently “productive,” but instead can be a few enjoyable things that you can look forward to and will take pleasure in getting done.

The We Level Up FL mental health treatment center is ready to walk this journey with you if you want a healthier mentality. We have a team of psychiatrists, therapists, and psychologists specializing in CBT for anxiety and medication management. Our team of compassionate and skilled professionals is available for inpatient care appointments for clients.

How to Find CBT Anxiety Treatment Center?

Are you searching for “cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety near me?” Many therapists in the CBT center for anxiety and OCD have received training in CBT for anxiety and have experience working with people with anxiety disorders. In many instances, health insurance will cover at least part of CBT for anxiety treatment.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is a cutting-edge treatment informed by the latest scientific advances in psychology research. Cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety disorders, depression, and other psychological problems are proven effective. Numerous cognitive behavioral therapy techniques aim to change self-defeating thoughts, overwhelming emotions, and ineffective behavior.

Deciding to get help and taking steps to start can be challenging, but several effective mental health treatments exist. This means you have options. Many professionals provide evidence-based talk therapy and medication. Treatments with the most substantial evidence should be the first line of mental health treatment whenever possible, considering patient preferences, values, and clinician expertise.

We Level Up FL provides world-class care with round-the-clock medical professionals available to help you cope. If you have any questions about cognitive behavioral therapy or looking for mental health treatment options, connect with one of our mental health counselors. Make this your opportunity to reclaim your life. Your call is private and confidential, and there is never any obligation.

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