As anxiety disorders are on the rise, the number of medical and alternative treatments is multiplying. Are anxiety treatments really effective or do they only alleviate symptoms somewhat? Is the fight against anxiety over? Is anxiety cured? These are the questions that most of us ask ourselves and ask ourselves.
In order to have the answers, to know if anxiety is really cured or if we are always in danger of a relapse, we first need to understand anxiety itself and the nature of anxiety disorders. What we do know for a long time is that anxiety is managed.
Cure anxiety
From different areas we receive messages of the “cure your anxiety” type, clinics, therapists, various specialists, witches, magicians or illusionists promise us a cure for anxiety. For them we are going to get rid of worries, fear, insecurity, nerves… However, it almost never works, right?
The medical treatments in use do not seem to work in the long term either, if at all they alleviate some symptoms of anxiety. The same happens with alternative therapies, in which we find temporary well-being, as if its benefits were marked with an expiration date. Aren’t we ever going to get rid of anxiety? Do we always have to be alert to the symptoms?
Since anxiety is a natural defense mechanism, which we also need for survival, we are the first interested in not eradicating anxiety from our lives. The objective, therefore, is to learn to manage that anxiety, keeping it as part of us, leaving its negative effects locked in a dark corner.
Manage anxiety
Since anxiety is necessary to survive, there will always be some risk that anxiety will get out of hand and become, once again, pathology. So we can affirm that, indeed, we will always have to be alert to control anxiety. Something that seems very difficult, as well as exhausting, going through periods of anxiety and periods of calm, as we have done so far.
Always with the fear that the anxiety will return. However, if we insist on the need to learn to manage anxiety, it is to stop worrying about it, to manage to control anxiety naturally. To always keep it in mind but without it being a tension. That is what managing anxiety is about, knowing that it is there and using it to awaken our senses when we need it, not to be upset.
And there are no secrets, no magic, and no spells that teach us to manage anxiety. It is a process that can take us a lot of time, a lot of work and a lot of interest in learning the internal processes of behavior. Something that we can do more easily if we put that learning in the hands of psychotherapy.
