In class, we talked about the different types of therapies one could use. Psychotherapy and biomedical therapies are used on patients either by themselves or together. The difference is that psychotherapy is between a trained therapist and a patient while biomedical therapy uses drugs or other procedures that act on ones nervous system. Therapists use many different methods with patient depending on what what they are there for. For example, exposure therapy. Exposure therapy is when the patient is exposed to the things they fear and avoid.
In my case, I used both psychotherapy and biomedical therapy at the same time. During my psychotherapy, I specifically remember my therapist telling me I should do something I would normal get anxiety about. When he said this to me, I was absolutely terrified. I thought why on earth is he telling me to do something that gives me so much anxiety? After awhile of that, I started being less anxious doing the things I originally couldn’t even do. I believe the mixture of exposure therapy and biomedical therapy got me to the place I am in. Clients do tend to overestimate improvement and effectiveness of either therapy, but even if thats what I did, I’m okay with that because I am in a good mental state now.
After reading your article, I can relate to you in different ways about how the theories behind psychotherapy can help with anxiety. Although I have never been to a therapist, I still use what I think is my own personal form of therapy with people I am close with to help deal with some of my anxiety issues. For example, when something has raised my anxiety levels and I start to get anxious, I will reach out to talk to someone. Also, the same way you described how you didn’t understand why someone would make you think about something that you thought was the root of your anxiety and didn’t make sense actually turned out to help me in the long run the same way it did to you. Although this may not as effective or accurate as psychotherapy for dealing with my anxiety, it still helped me with my problems and put me in a better mental state.