5 Misconceptions About Therapy for Anxiety

You wake up with a heaviness in your chest, heart racing, and a sense of dread. Your cardiologist says that everything is ok. So what gives?

You feel on edge all the time, like you are walking on eggshells.

Sometimes, for no apparent reason you just worry about things, even though you know you are being irrational.

Your loved ones tell you to “calm down”. 

Thanks. I would if I could, believe me.

Maybe you start crying or shaking, without really knowing why.

You’ve got a pit in your stomach. 

Your brain automatically jumps to allllll the worst case scenarios. And you think about them all night long instead of sleeping.

You are exhausted… not just from lack of sleep but from the mental/emotional energy you expend managing this internal experience.

Anxiety stinks.

I am a licensed professional counselor who works with women who experience anxiety, and I am here to offer a lot of hope for managing anxiety, while also clearing up some misconceptions about how therapy for anxiety works.

People sometimes ask me how I manage to do this job, to sit with people who are hurting and have gone through such horrible things.

My training gave me some tools to use to manage compassion fatigue (which, yes, is a real thing), but also, it’s because I have so much confidence and hope that you are going to feel better! 

Clients also come to see me with great hopes of resolving their anxiety, but sometimes people think I can just give them some magic solution to make it all go away.

I wish I had that kind of power, but it’s just not that easy.  Or fast.

Let’s take a look at what is really involved with anxiety therapy. And what isn’t.

Common Misconceptions About Therapy for Anxiety

1.      Anxiety is always illogical.

When we are anxious, it activates that “fight or flight” system in our body and there are physiological ways our body starts mobilizing to fight the threat or run away from it. In actual threatening situations, anxiety can help us focus on the threat so we can protect ourselves.

Sometimes anxiety gets activated when there is a challenge to meet, not so much a threat. Anxiety can actually be helpful here, signaling our body to be on alert and focused to get the job done well.

It is a normal human emotion, with a purpose.

Yes, anxiety can be beneficial…until it isn’t. Sometimes anxiety will show up and activate the fight or flight response when there is no actual threat or challenge in our near future.

Our brains create these intricate webs of memories that connect our past experiences and our thoughts and beliefs.  It might not take much to activate an anxious memory network, and then our brains go into overdrive trying to protect against an imagined or anticipated threat. Or even a past threat that had the tiniest thing in common with whatever you are experiencing in the present moment.

Very often it feels illogical when that anxiety pops up, because we are not aware of the connection between current circumstances and the brain’s “anxiety alert” network.

I am not going to say there is always a clear origin of anxiety (Therapists rarely use the words “always” or “never”), but you’d be surprised at how often there actually is a reasonable explanation for anxiety’s unexpected appearance.

Sometimes the reason is just that you have trained yourself to respond anxiously.

2.      Once I know the origin, I won’t be anxious.

Oh that it were so easy. 

It is so frustrating to find yourself thinking, “I know I shouldn’t be anxious about this, but I just am!”

Remember, your body has had lots of practice training itself to be anxious.  It’s going to take lots of practice to train yourself to react differently.

We do make lots of progress when we start looking at the thoughts and beliefs that underlie the anxious feelings. But that doesn’t make those underlying feelings instantly go away.

We can focus on reminding ourselves we are actually safe, there isn’t an actual threat, but it takes time and repetition to teach the body to calm down.

I find that deep breathing can really help with this.

One of the physical changes that happens in fight or flight is that we breathe shallowly, with a rapid heartbeat like we are in a full-sprint.

When we take the time to take deep breaths, using the entirety of your lungs all the way down to the diaphragm, it sends a signal to the rest of the body that “It must be safe or we wouldn’t have the time to take these deep breaths.”

When we focus on exhaling longer than we are inhaling, it can actually slow your heart rate.

Deep breathing can be like a body hack that can train the brain to relax easier.

Sometimes we have had ongoing difficult situations that have kept us in fight or flight almost constantly.  Taking time out during the day to practice calming the body can really help train the body that it really is ok to relax.

In conjunction with tools like deep breathing, we can use trauma processing to work on anxiety.  Which leads me to the next misconception…

3.      Trauma processing is only for horrific traumas that are life threatening.

In the field of counseling we often talk about Big T Trauma and little t trauma. 

Big T Trauma is the horrific kind of trauma you are probably thinking about. This is the kind of trauma that gets defined in the official PTSD definition.

But, many counselors in the field see PTSD-like reactions in people who have experienced little t traumas, which are the traumas that may not have been life threatening, but it was something you just didn’t have the capacity to deal with at the time. Your brain interpreted it as traumatic.

This is a bit of a controversial topic, because when we elevate these little t traumas to the same level as Big T Trauma, those who have experienced Big T Trauma can feel invalidated. And, those who have little t trauma can use that label almost as a weapon, which can result in unfair accusations and broken relationships.

This is much more nuanced… I am planning on writing a separate blog post on this topic eventually. I am honestly tired of seeing people on social media (sometimes even therapists) who are quick to label people as “toxic” or “narcissistic” and advocate for “estrangement” because of little t trauma.  Little t trauma is real, but very often the person responsible for that trauma had no idea it hurt you so much, and would never want you to carry around so much pain.  They may be blindsighted if you try to talk to them about it, and not react well the first time you bring it up.  They may or may not be able to come to a place of understanding and empathy, but often are not given the chance.  I digress (but I’ll updated this blog post when I get around to writing an entire article on that!).

*end rant*

All of that to say, often, a little t trauma might be the culprit behind the anxiety response.

Something happened to you that was bigger than your capacity to handle it at the time.

Maybe you didn’t have the tools, the maturity, or a safe person to help you through it.

You felt alone in it, and you were scared.

Your brain understandably doesn’t want you to feel that way again, so it activates fight or flight at the hint of anything similar.

Trauma processing can make a big difference in helping you recognize that while you didn’t have the capacity then, you would know what to do now. You could get help. You are safe.

4.      Trauma processing will result in me never feeling anxious again. 

Feeling better doesn’t necessarily mean that you will never feel anxious again.

It usually reduces the frequency and intensity of your automatic emotions, but it doesn’t always completely take them away.

Anxiety is a normal emotion, and sometimes it is necessary to get us through some hard things.  Fight or flight has it’s purpose.

 Understanding when and why fight or flight is activating for no current reason and learning to calm the body and move forward with courage when it does, does not mean it will never activate.

 It just means that we know what to do when it does.

To have courage doesn’t mean that you do not have any fear. It’s moving forward anyway. If there were no fear, you wouldn’t need to be courageous, because it would be an easy thing to do.
(Note: there are lots of variations on this idea online. I couldn’t track down who originally articulated this concept in a tidy quote, so I don’t really know who to credit with the idea. It’s definitely not my own original idea, though!).

5.      If I am a Christian, I should never struggle with anxiety.

The Bible definitely contains lots of messages to “fear not” or “be anxious for nothing.”  Very often these kinds of messages are paired with a  promise from God that He will be with us. 

He knows that He created us to be human, with human emotions, and we live in a fallen world.  Maybe in Eden, before the fall there was truly no reason for Adam and Eve to be anxious because they had a perfect relationship with God.  There were no barriers to their connection with Him, and they felt absolutely, completely safe and unashamed.

But, we live in a fallen world. Bad things happen.

We are aware of our need for other people and fear our disconnection from them. 

We worry about doing the right thing, because doing the wrong thing can have extreme consequences here on earth.

If we were able to perfectly keep an eternal perspective on our eventual future in heaven, then yeah, maybe we would never feel anxious. 

But it makes sense that we fail at this again and again. 

And the scary things of this world send our bodies into fight or flight, because God made our bodies with mechanisms to respond to threat. 

I am pretty sure that David was breathing fast and shallow, focused and hyper-alert as he was slinging those stones at Goliath!

One of my favorite verses is 2 Corinthians 12:9, “But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness’” Our weaknesses, our anxieties, keep us focused on God.  Our weaknesses glorify God! They give us a reason to cling to Him and be reminded of that eternal perspective.  They motivate us to “Cast our anxieties on Him because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7) and remember He is with us always (Matthew 28:20).  

Anxiety is a normal, functional emotion that we all experience. Sometimes it gets a little out of balance and takes over our lives. Sometimes we need some help tracking down the roots of it and addressing deep-seated beliefs that keep us responding from an anxious place.

If you are a woman in Pennsylvania looking for that kind of help, give me a call!

Jennie Sheffe is a Licensed Professional Counselor and National Certified Counselor ™ who helps women find freedom from anxiety and peace in their chaos. She sees clients virtually in the state of Pennsylvania, or in her Carlisle, PA office. She offers Christian counseling to those who want to integrate faith into their therapy.