Understanding Anxiety Psychotherapy

Anxiety is a very real problem for a lot of people. People have stress related to their jobs, families and medical conditions. Existential anxiety is different because it deals with anxiety from less concrete things like the meaning of life and your own death at some point. Existential anxiety is also known as angst, which is a German word that was used by German psychotherapists who came up with the concept. The following information will help you understand the options for anxiety psychotherapy and how existential anxiety is handled by each one.

 

 

Arnold Lazarus who was a psychotherapist in South Africa came up with the idea for multi-modal therapy after seeing how many people continued to have anxiety problems after receiving the popular therapy at the time, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

The concept of multi-modal therapy can be described with the acronym BASIC ID, which stands for Behavior, Affect, Sensory, Imagery, Cognition, Interpersonal and Drugs. This type of therapy takes into account issues with the chemistry of the brain. There is no set treatment method with multi-modal therapy. Instead doctors use whatever type of therapy they feel is best for each patient.

 

Multi-modal therapy focuses on helping each person in whatever way will be most effective so it can't really be applied in group therapy for anxiety. Unlike many anxiety psychotherapy methods, multi-modal therapy combines traditional therapy methods with more natural treatment methods like changing your diet, emphasizing exercise and encouraging people to be as healthy as possible.

 

 

 

Victor Frankl, a psychotherapist from Vienna, is often put in the same category as Freud and Adler who were to other famous psychotherapists from the same area. Like the other Viennese schools of psychotherapy which all focus on "will" (Adler's focus was will to power and Freud's was will to pleasure), logotherapy focuses on will to meaning. Frankl thought that all humans longed for order and structure in all things in the universe so anxiety is caused when people feel this is lacking.

 

Frankl based a lot of his ideas for his anxiety psychotherapy on what he observed while in a Nazi concentration camp. He wrote a memoir in which he explained that despite his terrible circumstances in the concentration camp, he was able to see some meaning to his life and the world and that is what he wanted to share with others.

 

Logotherapy uses self-affirmations and self-awareness. This anxiety psychotherapy tries to get people to accept that there will be struggles and fears in life but you should learn from these not let them overwhelm you. According to Frank, all experiences have meaning and we should try and learn what we can from everything.

 

 

Rational-Emotive Behavioral Therapy or REBT is based on the ideas of Albert Ellis who used theories from different philosophies around the world. REBT comes from the idea that every human being has both rational and irrational parts to their brain. Sometimes our rational and irrational parts both try to be in control which results in conflict. When this happens, people get anxious and act inappropriately. The way REBT treats this anxiety and tries to free people from a life of stress and conflict is by teaching them to think positive thoughts instead of dwelling on the negative.