You Must Challenge Both Your Beliefs As Well As Your Therapist's Beliefs/Arguments

[MainerMikeBrown]

As any psychotherapist will tell you, individuals with extreme anxiety issues have a lot of irrational beliefs. Cognitive Behavioral Therapists try to help their clients replace negative, irrational beliefs with more rational and positive beliefs.

If you have anxiety issues, you have to challenge your beliefs. And if you challenge your own belief system, you can replace those beliefs that help keep you way too nervous with beliefs that help make you calm.

However, while seeing a therapist, you also have to challenge the beliefs and arguments the counselor has and is making. If you find that the positive beliefs the therapist has are more rational than yours are, then that can help you to calm down and better manage your anxieties.

But if you don't find the therapist's arguments to be more rational than yours, and if you don't think the therapist's advice is helpful, than you have the option of moving on to a new counselor, if you want.

I used to have bad anxieties. But with the help of psychiatric medication and a therapist who helped me challenge my beliefs and gave what I felt was good advice, I am now much calmer and happier.

If I can do it, so can you.

 

[smilingsoul]

I agree, Mike. My most recent relapse occurred around the same time I was trying to get my head around some principles from quantum physics. It led me down a very scary path, that was completely irrational, but I was in the grip of anxiety. I began challenging those ideas, and realized that I am not in fact a quantum physicist, and most likely am misunderstanding the point the science writer was trying to get across (so my worries were based on me interpreting a writer trying to interpret a physicist). I developed a habit when I was younger where if I couldn't choose between two options logically, I'd go with the one that caused the strongest emotional reaction (I was a big Star Trek fan, and Kirks' arguments with Spock over the value of human emotions was influential there). That was of course a mistake, but I think it became a deeply ingrained habit of thought. Something to work on with my therapist, no doubt.