by Dan Stelter

Created on: March 31, 2009   Last Updated: June 29, 2009

So what happens when a person first identifies that he or she suffers from an anxiety disorder? For all of us, thousands of thoughts are pouring through our brain at the same moment. I'm a freak! What do I do? What's wrong with me? Is there any cure? To further worsen the situation, many of us have lives that are full of all sorts of other drama such as addiction, other mental illness like bipolar disorder, or chaotic or nonexistent interpersonal relationships! This is indeed difficult to overcome! What should a person do in order to turn a complete 180 and live a happy and healthy life rather than a sad and miserable one?

Counseling

The first thing to do is to find a good counselor. Good counseling can be a hard find, and it can also be expensive. To find a good counselor, one simply needs to find a personality type with which he or she can work well. Some counselors are in-your-face and confrontational, while others are very laid-back, perhaps even more anxious than the client at the first meeting. Sometimes, a person will find that a particular counselor just is not working well with him or her for whatever reason; at this point it is important to remember that the client is the boss of the counselor. If the client wants, he or she can fire the counselor and see another one just make sure that the counselor is being fired for an inability to work effectively with the client, and not because of a silly superficial reason like the client disliking the way the counselor asks questions.

Keep in mind that the term here used is "counselor," and that it is used for a very specific reason. Many other professionals can treat anxiety; these include therapists, psychiatrists, and psychologists. The reason I recommend a counselor is because a counselor typically takes in the "big picture." As noted earlier, those of us with anxiety struggles in our lives often have many other stressful situations co-occuring which serve to increase our anxiety level. Therapists and psychiatrists will focus on reducing only the anxiety, while possibly psychologists, and definitely counselors, will look at the other stressful situations such as difficult parents, bad significant others, or substance dependency which may be playing an important role in increasing the client's anxiety level.

Finally, counseling can be expensive, but it can be made affordable. Typically, counseling will run somewhere from $75-$125 per hour, which is way outside the range of affordability for those of us without

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