When it comes to stress management, it’s important to take advantage of all of your options.
You probably have heard about lots of tips and tricks for managing anxiety and stress in your daily life. However, stress therapy may not necessarily have been mentioned. Though, it should also be included in your overall plan to overcome the emotional strain related to anxiety.
Why? Because in therapy we can take advantage of specific tools that allow you to not only manage stress but to overcome it as well.
If you have been struggling with stress, consider how stress therapy can help you.
Finding Understanding
One reason why stress can be so overwhelming is that nobody seems to understand you. It feels as if you are all alone as you struggle to get by, day-by-day. This can leave you feeling isolated and alone. Which, in turn, only compounds the stress you’re under.
Wouldn’t it be great to know that someone “gets” why you feel so stressed?
You can find that understanding in therapy. After all, your therapist’s job is to seek to understand you, first and foremost. And knowing that your worries and concerns are being heard can be so relieving, especially when it comes to overcoming the emotional strain related to stress.
Utilizing the Strength of Your Brain – Neuroplasticity
In therapy, we want to take advantage of all of the strengths that you already have. Yes, even though it can seem you have no advantages at all when it comes to stress therapy, you do!
It starts with your brain, and something called neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity refers to your brain’s ability to adapt and change. Rather than being a static organ, your brain is actually very flexible. For example, your brain has the ability to build new neural connections.
Neuroplasticity allows you to cope and adapt to many things, including stress. So when you engage in stress therapy, you will be able to utilize this attribute of your brain to better cope with stress and anxiety.
Digging Deep via Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
One tool that’s available in stress therapy is cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). Using CBT, you and a therapist can take a look at all the reasons why you are feeling so stressed. For instance, maybe you have some very negative beliefs about yourself. Or perhaps you carry with you unrealistic worries that no longer apply to your life.
Once these thought patterns have been identified, you can begin the work to change these unhealthy patterns into healthier ones. For example, perhaps you worry about not having enough money. Maybe this was true earlier in your life when you lived on a tight budget or had little income. But now you have a job and career that is both lucrative and rewarding. So perhaps it’s time to let those old worries go.
Changing Stress Responses Through Neurofeedback Therapy
Another technique that takes advantage of your brain’s ability to change is neurofeedback therapy. With neurofeedback, you and a therapist study your brain patterns. You especially focus on those that occur when you feel stressed out.
Once you have identified those patterns, your therapist helps you to forge new ones. Together, you literally retrain your brain to respond differently to stress. This approach is really helpful for breaking old habits that, when you experienced stress, only made things worse.
Managing Stress with EMDR Therapy
Finally, eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a great tool for stress therapy and management. It also utilizes your brain’s ability to adapt and change.
With this technique, you use eye movements combined with specific coaching from a therapist which allows you to feel the stress, but to then process it and pack it away. This is different from “stuffing” an emotion or memory. Rather, EMDR lets you actually resolve what’s been bothering you. That way it no longer causes distress.
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What’s important to note with these stress therapy techniques is that they all rely on the strengths and resources that you already have inside you. No magic pill or medication is required. Rather, to overcome emotional strain you utilize the brain’s neuroplasticity for stress management.
If you want to find relief from stress, contact me to find out how my approach to anxiety therapy can help you.