Anxiety Counselling in Victoria Park, Perth: Using Emotion-Focused Therapy For Treatment
Anxiety. An emotion none of us like to experience. And an emotion that can turn into a disorder.
Have you ever wondered how anxiety is treated? While there are many different therapeutic models, I am going to talk about how I help people with anxiety from an Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) approach.
In EFT, we conceptualise anxiety like a smoke detector. It functions to alert us to danger so that we can become hyperaware of something that needs to be dealt with. You can see in the right dose, this is helpful. It might motivate us to get an assignment done by the due date, it might prompt us to check the front door is locked to protect us from an intruder, or it might alert us to avoiding someone dangerous when we hear their voice. We can see with these examples, the anxiety is functioning in a way to help and protect us.
The issue becomes, when anxiety is occurring in levels that are too high, or when there is no threat or anything to solve. This usually stems from past unresolved issues.
In generalised anxiety disorder, at the core is typically an abandonment wound (could be from emotional or physical abandondment) that has led someone to feel unsafe in the world. Then the worry is an attempt to protect the person, to get them to be hyperaware to avoid the danger, even when there is no danger present or the danger is something that could be handled. To treat this in therapy, we would want to work to get to the core pain of this, and process and transform the memories that caused the abandonment wound. This would lead to the generalised anxiety beginning to subside.
In social anxiety, at the core is typically a shame wound of not feeling good enough or not valued in some way. Then the anxiety functions to make the person be hyperaware of judgment or being perceived negatively by others to get the person to protect themselves from people by closing themselves off in some way. This could look like them second-guessing or altering their behaviour and word choice, or avoiding social situations altogether. To treat this in therapy, we would want to work to get to the core pain of this, and process and transform the memories that caused the shame wound. This would lead to the social anxiety beginning to subside.
Consider a tree. If the leaves are the anxiety symptoms, it’s always going to more effective to pull the tree out by the roots, than to simply prune the leaves whenever they appear. This is the same in therapy. Treating the core pain leads to long-lasting transformation, compared to a therapy that only teaches you how to manage the anxiety symptoms.
If this blog post has convinced you that EFT could be effective in treating your anxiety, book a session with me. I am located in Victoria Park, Perth, and can provide telehealth sessions to those outside of Perth.