If you are one of the forty million Americans who deal with an anxiety disorder, then you have no doubt experienced symptoms that you found unpleasant.
The good news is that with proper treatment the majority of your anxiety symptoms can be deal with.
The most successful clinical treatment for anxiety is called cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT.
This article will examine the ways in which CBT can be useful for patients looking to take back their lives.
Overcoming anxiety with cognitive behavioral therapy is not a difficult undertaking, but it will take time, dedication and a willingness to examine some of your key beliefs about yourself.
CBT works by requiring patients to think about the ways that they think about their anxiety.
In nearly all cases anxiety is brought about and reinforced by a particular fear.
In the case of social anxiety, this fear may be that a person will embarrass themselves or be seen in some way as defective.
In the case of a phobia, the fear may be that the person will die in a plane crash or experience some other unwanted outcome.
CBT works by eliminating the thinking errors that go on between the patients ears.
Often times they associate consequences with an action when the consequence does not logically follow from that action.
For instance, in the case of the person with social anxiety, other people are not always thinking that they are incompetent after a social interaction.
It is the belief in these consequences that causes the fear and the escalation in the anxiety.
By removing the association, it becomes possible for the patient to think logically about a situation without being overwhelmed with irrational fears.
For this reason, research indicates that cognitive behavioral therapy works in about 90% of cases.