Are your fears keeping you awake at night? Do your worries consume too much of your time during the workday? Have you lost the ability to focus during much of the week because you’re obsessing over bad things happening to you? You have to learn to control irrational fears; many people come to therapy because they need help maintaining control over their fears.
Setting Goals
Are you tired of feeling like your fears or worries control you? People who seek counseling want to change their situation. When you come for therapy, it helps to sit down and set personal goals. Start with goals that can carry you through the rest of the year. If necessary, create long-term goals for how to live with anxiety. Talking is how you start to pinpoint the specific traumas, emotions, and thought patterns that are bringing you down. These needs to be addressed in your therapy sessions. I can help you prioritize goals as needed.
Why Set Goals
Dr. Michael Karson explains on PsychologyToday.com, “The difficult work of psychotherapy is made easier when patients can see the relationship between what they are asked to do (whether that is to reveal their inner thoughts, approach unpleasant emotions, or complete homework) and what they hope to get out of the therapy.”
If you and I agree on goals and work on them in a systematic process week after week, then you should begin to see progress. With successful goal setting, you and I can achieve a working alliance, finding an acceptable rhythm in your sessions on which you both depend.
How Goals Lead to Change
A therapist cannot promise to solve all your problems. A professional counselor is a partner in a therapeutic process designed to help you work through what troubles you. The same article by Dr. Karson remarks that most anxiety and depression conditions are not diseases with a biological foundation. However, the anxiety or depression you may experience does affect your life much like diabetes and arthritis. You must recognize the condition, seek treatment when needed, and be willing to make appropriate lifestyle changes. Without therapy, conditions like anxiety and depression will worsen over time and decrease your quality of life. People who tire of the effects anxiety has on their lives are motivated to seek therapy and obtain as many benefits as they can from treatment. When you set goals, the intent is to pinpoint the causes of anxiety and fix them, not just alleviate the symptoms.
Imagine a Different Future
When you are living with powerful fears, however real or imagined they may be, it helps to imagine a different future. With therapy, you can feel more in control of daily life. For more information about scheduling a therapy session, please contact me.
