Anxiety therapy
Psychologvirke has specialist expertise in therapy for anxiety and anxiety treatment. Here you can definitely learn a lot of new things about what anxiety is - and what anxiety is not.
Getting rid of some common misconceptions can help you deal with anxiety on your own.
We also want to give you a clearer picture of what it will be like to go into therapy for anxiety disorders with us. If you have already decided to give it a try, you can easily book an appointment online in two minutes.
Remember that we also offer video therapy to people all over the country. By pressing the button below, you can both read more about our psychologists, about our experiences with video therapy, and book an appointment.
Are you considering anxiety therapy?
Most anxiety information pages list diagnoses and common descriptive characteristics. Such pages can also give the impression that anxiety is to be understood as one disease which one must live with, or just learn to master.
Here we will try to give a basic understanding of what anxiety is most deeply, and not least what anxiety is not, so that we can clear up some of these misunderstandings. You will learn about the causes of anxiety, different forms and how we work with anxiety in therapy.
Anxiety Therapy at a Psychologist: What is Anxiety?
Anxiety is a bodily reaction in which the body reacts as if it is in danger, without it actually being so.
Anxiety can take many different forms, from pure panic attacks to vague restlessness, tension, chest tightness, difficulty breathing, nausea, abdominal pain, loose or hard stomach, blurred vision and dizziness. Sometimes also as paralysis or twitching.
It may feel uncomfortable but is not dangerous and it passes. Which, by the way, can be a useful mantra when anxiety first strikes.
The many physical forms that anxiety can take mean that anxiety is often confused with physical illness and can cause health anxiety or hypochondria.
Anxiety is basically something we all have the capacity to have. It is a normal fear response, but that comes in situations without an external, objectively dangerous stimulus. The body is built to withstand this fear response. It is even indispensable for the survival of the species.
What causes anxiety, what are the causes?
Often we do not know what anxiety is about. It may feel like it's coming out of the blue, but that's just because the trigger goes under the consciousness radar.
Anxiety is often an important signal of an underlying conflict within you. There may be conflicting emotions or needs that create conflict tension on the inside. And that may collide with the more or less conscious the performances one has about who one must be to enter into a relationship with others.
I can not show my disagreement. I can not show my vulnerability. I can not risk being rejected, I can not risk having to reject. I should not be annoyed with my mother.
When what triggers anxiety is unconscious, it often happens because one habitually ignores certain parts of one's own inner life. When you close your eyes or look the other way, you never really see what it is due to.
Many have also come to terms with the fact that anxiety is just the way it is. Nor is it, but a sign of a chronic imbalance or conflict in the emotional life that one can get help with.
In our view, anxiety is also not a "disease" you "get" or just have to live with. Although some may have a nervous system that is more sensitive and therefore have a lower threshold for responding with anxiety activation in internal conflict.
In our experience, anxiety is in most cases strongly associated with specific psychological factors, often a mix of conscious and unconscious, and can often be remedied with properly tailored psychological help.
Anxiety therapy with a psychologist: Avoidance in a thousand facets
Human beings are built to respond to anxiety with avoidance. If there is a wild animal we are afraid of, we flee.
When there is something inside us that we are afraid of, we have many different sets of ways to avoid - which we like to call defense mechanisms.
When there is an inner threat we fear, it is probably unfortunately the case that "you can run, but you can not hide".
This, as well as the lack of knowledge about what anxiety really is, means that most people do not search constructively towards identifying and resolving the inner imbalance that anxiety signals.
It is common for people to get caught up in the symptom of anxiety, to have anxiety about getting anxiety, to try to control it and/or to try and avoid it when it is triggered or becomes visible to others.
Then you usually have it going in self-sustaining and self-reinforcing circles.
Attempts at mastery become part of the problem.
Constant monitoring triggers more anxiety due to hyper-attention and fearful interpretations of normal body sensations.
Withdrawal and avoidance lead to a decline in functioning, and prevent opportunities for new experience that can have a learning effect on the anxiety response.
Then it may often be necessary to start dealing with the symptom in a new way.
Most psychologists and therapists stop here. For some people it is sufficient, but far from all.
A model that only works with sustaining factors in our view unnecessarily narrow and rests on a lack of holistic human understanding.
There is often an assumption that it is difficult, impossible, takes too long, or is simply not necessary to work with more underlying causes.
Anxiety therapy with a psychologist: A combination of methods
At Psykologvirke, we have cutting-edge expertise in psychodynamic therapy, which is not only symptom-oriented, but which extends more towards the bone of what it means to be a human being.
We have particular expertise in short-term and intensified psychodynamic treatment (ISTDP) which aims to work depth-oriented in a more efficient and targeted way.
With us, we can roughly say that in the sustaining factors of anxiety are handled with new coping strategies / tools.
These are often new attention strategies and interpretive strategies. This work often provides symptom relief.
Here we use principles from, among other things, cognitive behavioral therapy, metacognitive therapy and mindfulness.
More basic causal factors are treated with intensive depth therapy (ISTDP), psychodynamic therapy, emotion-focused therapy or existential psychotherapy.
This treatment addresses internal conflicts (often unconscious) that may be the cause of the anxiety. When these are resolved, anxiety is no longer triggered, so there is no anxiety to fight with anymore.
You also no longer need to bypass these aspects of yourself.
This results not only in symptom removal, but also in personality development and the potential for a more intimate relationship with oneself and others.
How far the work of these principles will bring you depends on a number of factors.
If you can not go to a private psychologist to get therapy for anxiety, we have made a clear guide to the various recommended the psychologist services in Oslo.
Treatment of anxiety: Deeper cause level
It is more important to understand which person has the anxiety, rather than the type of anxiety the person has.
Anxiety can be a signal of an underlying internal conflict that one is often not even aware of.
It may be that an unwanted, forbidden, painful, or guilt-ridden feeling or need is approaching consciousness.
Maybe you are about to meet the wall and the body begins to speak out. Maybe a facade is starting to crack.
The obedient one who is beginning to become anxious does not yet know that it is because an underlying protest is approaching.
It becomes clear after the second hour of intensive depth therapy (ISTDP).
The treatment is then not just techniques for dealing with anxiety symptoms, but help to withstand one's own underlying protest without immediately feeling guilty, starting to cry or having obsessive thoughts.
Ignore yourself and overfocus on others, doubt and attack yourself - to name a few of the lids that can automatically be placed over the underlying protest.
This not only gets rid of anxiety, but also gets rid of the defense mechanisms described above - which together can cause a depression (guilt, self-doubt, self-attack, pulling down something heavy) and which also damages self-esteem.
Then you can really talk about substantial life changes.
Here you can read more more about how we will post one treatment of anxiety with one of our psychologists.
We want to see everyone unfold more freely as human beings and enter into relationships with others on natural terms.
We bring our entire selves and the best of psychological expertise to help you on your way.
You are more than welcome at our offices!