Strategies to control anxiety
Anxiety disorders are the most consulted in psychological therapy as a whole. Therefore, the need to know the best therapy for anxiety is decisive.
Traditionally, the cognitive behavioral therapy It is the one that has demonstrated the greatest scientific evidence in this regard. The work through this orientation consists of a first psychoeductive phase to understand what anxiety and its associated factors consist of, with the intention of starting from a professional framework. Relaxation techniques are then taught to manage physiological symptoms and cognitive restructuring strategies to manage anticipatory and catastrophic thoughts. Finally, exposure techniques with response prevention, such as flooding or systematic desensitization, are proposed to progressively address the problem.
Included within the so-called third generation therapies, in the last 20 years the Acceptance and commitment therapy has tried to advance in the treatment of anxiety, from a perspective of acceptance of pain in life, so as not to generate greater suffering in the face of problems.
It uses acceptance, understood as the human capacity to experience being aware, in the here and now, of sensations, thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, images, etc. (private events). This ability to be aware would be linked to the commitment to carry out actions in accordance with personal values and would also be linked to the change strategies necessary to increase psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility refers to the possibility of contacting private events that occur in the present, as much as possible as human beings, while choosing to either abandon or persist in an action that implies discomfort but is at the service of the values that one identifies as one’s own.
Other therapies
Various approaches have also tried to address the problems of anxiety. The gestalt therapy with a more corporal approach with the assumption of the person’s own responsibility for his or her behavior and life as an essential element for mobilization and change. He EMDR as a psychotherapeutic method that causes faster emotional healing of experiences, traumas, difficulties or disorders that arise throughout life and that cause us discomfort, anxiety, depression and phobias. Research indicates that EMDR provides effective and long-lasting results.
The integrative perspective from which the psychologists of Open Minds work, allows us to combine the basic concepts and strategies of cognitive behavioral therapy, with an approach focused on a therapeutic relationship of trust and the contribution of other orientations according to the needs of each patient.