Anxiety is so present in our day to day that it doesn’t take much to get it out of time, at this point we are looking for ways to solve the problem, go to the doctor or psychologist and put in practice strategies ?But after that, how to avoid relapses?
We ourselves can use and exercise a number of tools that can help us not let anxiety return; in this article, we’ll talk about it exactly and how you can use them to prevent a relapse.
- Anxiety cannot be avoided.
- But reduced.
- The issue of anxiety control is to return it to normal levels and use this normal anxiety as a stimulus to increase perception.
- Alertness and willingness to live.
- -Rollo May-.
The first thing to consider is that our effectiveness in preventing relapses will depend on the treatment we take to control anxiety in the first place, it may seem irrelevant, but in fact it is the most important of all.
So if we have chosen to take some type of psychotropic, it will be more difficult to avoid relapses without outside help, just by ourselves. I will explain it better. With drug therapy we take a pill that lowers our anxiety level, but if the pill is not associated with a psychological intervention, we will have no other strategy to control anxiety than the alternative of treating oneself.
However, if we are turning to a quality psychologist, you will probably have offered us several forms of emotional control to implement in situations where our balance is compromised, so that we can apply them without having to resort to a drug, so, although requiring more effort on our part, psychological intervention is more advisable to prevent relapses.
If we have chosen a suitable psychologist, who follows a cognitive behavioral current, we will have acquired, throughout therapy, tools to manage our thoughts and emotions, but, like all the skills we have acquired throughout our lives, we will have to continue practicing if we do not want to lose them.
“Imagination never takes possession of the mind as strongly as when it finds it empty and unemployed. “Johnson Burton.
Thus, continuing to practice certain exercises, even if it is more spaced and frequent, will be the first step in avoiding relapses. Think, for example, when we learn a language, how quickly do we lose control if we stop practicing, right?In this case the same thing happens: if we don’t manage to implement emotional control strategies, it will be more difficult to use them when we need them.
That is, we must strive to maintain the changes that have been made in therapy, the work does not stop when the intervention ends and the psychologist releases us, this continues in our daily life. Therefore, our emotional health depends heavily on ourselves.
“The ability to resist anxiety is important for the development of the individual and the conquest of the environment. Anyone’s achievement is achieved only when advancing, despite emotional shocks. This indicates what is the constructive use of anxiety. ?-Kurt Goldstein-
It is necessary to continue practicing, but also always remember the information received in psychoeducation therapy, so we cannot completely exclude the role of thoughts in the emotional process, you know that we all have inappropriate thoughts, so we need to be careful to identify, classify and question these thoughts when they seem suspicious.
In addition, it will help you identify potentially distressing situations, so that we can put into practice the tools that we have already acquired with a little effort, remember that you have already learned to solve problems. We can see those that appear as challenges and not as threats that endanger abstract elements, such as our image.
Remember that the sun does not shine with the same force every day. I’ll explain it better. We all have bad days. In a way, this condition is intrinsic to our nature. What we can choose is how we’re going to address the problems or predict that a day that started with the left foot will continue like this. In fact, many days that seem to start badly continue because of our own anxiety that causes us to confuse roles and assume the role of witchcraft so that the phenomenon of self-fulfilling prophecy occurs.
Finally, if you need to go back to the psychologist, no problem. Doesn’t that mean it’s a failure even if you’ve lost everything you’ve accomplished so far?It’s better to do this before anxiety gets stronger!
Images courtesy of Mike Wilson, Malik Earnest and Mauro Mora.