You may have been stressed for a few days, weeks, or even months. You are starting to think that there’s nothing you can do to feel better. The good news is that there are proven techniques to help you cope with stress. If you think therapy can’t help you, keep reading – this article is for you.
The immediate way of improving your levels of stress is by dealing with the consequences to get immediate relief – it would be like taking medicine to alleviate your headache or your stomach ache. However, unless you want to be permanently stressed, the best treatment needs to look at preventing this from happening.
How does treatment for stress work?
Lots of research has been done on this and there are well-proven treatments for stress that significantly reduce the incidence of “too much stress”. How do they work? By re-training your brain.
If you are into sports, you’ll probably understand the importance of a good training plan. The most effective treatments for stress work in a similar manner.
CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy)
CBT has been proven as an effective treatment for stress. It provides the structured training of your mind so that you yourself are able to both get out of the vicious cycle of negative thoughts, but also to prevent going back there.
The process is very similar to the process athletes go through with a trainer. The trainer helps establish the best technique. When coping with stress, the counsellor or therapist provides the same role in helping you establish a good technique.
If you are seriously stressed, on the edge of a breakdown or feeling very depressed you may be more like the person who needs to re-learn to walk. The thought processes in your brain may need external help to start the re-learning process as you just cannot do it yourself.
So CBT is really a training plan for your mind. You learn the technique and apply it slowly and clumsily at first. But gradually this becomes second nature, just as walking did. At this stage, your stress or depression will have temporarily gone. But what if you fall down? You need to learn to get back up again. The same applies to your mind and CBT helps here as well and you will learn techniques to deal with this.
Getting help
In the same way that an athlete works with a professional trainer to achieve the best results, getting support from a therapist is going to help you speed things up. If you are under lots of stress and would like to navigate the possibility of talking to a certified therapist, give us a shout. With video counselling, things couldn’t be more convenient.