Anxiety in San Francisco's Fast-Paced Professional World. Therapy in San Francisco, California
As a high achieving professional in the San Francisco Bay Area, you recognize the fierce competition. You don’t mind working hard to get results. But you’re noticing your mind wanders often and you’re feeling distracted at work and at home. It’s making it hard to get the results you want. You find yourself thinking often about the worst thing that could happen which makes you feel scared and uncomfortable. It’s making it difficult to know the right thing to do and to make decisions. You’re moody and irritable, and it’s all so exhausting.
Being a professional in the San Francisco Bay Area can be a breeding ground for anxiety. Anxiety is no small problem. Sometimes it feels like just an ongoing nuisance and other times it debilitates you from living your life. To make matters more difficult, its an invisible ailment that others may not see or understand, which can make living with anxiety feel very isolating. You feel anxious about letting others know that you’re feeling anxious, making the anxiety even worse!
What is Anxiety?
In simple words, anxiety can be defined as an excessive concern and apprehension about something uncertain that is going to happen in the future. Anxiety is experienced cognitively, which affects our thoughts; emotionally, which impacts how we feel; and physically, causing sensations in our body. Anxiety also manifests itself through various symptoms. Some of the most commonly experienced and reported symptoms of anxiety are:
Cognitively
Remaining distracted.
Expecting the worst to happen.
Mind wandering frequently.
Excessive apprehensions and fears.
Thoughts that are intense and feel uncontrollable.
Sometimes feeling as if one is losing their mind.
Emotionally
Self-depreciating and/or pessimistic thoughts.
Irrational feelings of dread.
Irritable mood.
Recurring memories.
Difficulty managing emotions.
Difficulty taking decisions or feeling impulsive.
Difficulty remembering things.
Feeling overwhelmed.
Physically
Tiredness or fatigue.
Heart beating fast.
Tension and muscle aches.
Shallow breathing or difficulty breathing.
Digestive issues.
Feeling generally unwell.
Headaches.
Difficulty sleeping.
Why is anxiety so hard to deal with?
People with anxiety tend to think more pessimistically as a way to defend against the fear of something bad happening. The idea is, “if I don’t get my hopes up, I won’t be disappointed when things don’t work out.” However, this approach can aggravate anxiety and make it worse. While people without problematic anxiety normally fend off their anxieties by thinking positively, people with anxiety find it harder to do so. This can negatively impact interactions and relationships with other people.
When a person is unable to anticipate favorable outcomes in the future, it can easily lead to the development of low self-confidence. Low self-confidence then impacts performance. Even when you might otherwise be quite capable, low self-confidence and anticipating a negative outcome makes it difficult to perform or deliver, especially in competitive situations. This often leads to rating oneself as incompetent which can further damage self-esteem and self-image. It’s just a bad cycle to get caught up in.
There is hope for reducing anxiety.
Even for a problem such as anxiety, there are solutions. Anxiety is helped by targeting the three ways that it affects a person, as mentioned before: cognitively, emotionally, and physically. When you address how your thoughts are contributing to anxiety, you can start to think differently, and in more helpful ways. Anxiety often distorts our reality. So, altering your thoughts to be more in line with reality has the effect of decreasing the emotional part of anxiety. This is a big step in reducing anxiety and the impact it has on your life. The physical sensations of anxiety can be quite awful. The body becomes used to living in a state of fear, all the time! Teaching the body to relax when there is no serious threat or real reason to be afraid, can calm down the physical sensations of anxiety.
You don’t have to do this alone.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is the most commonly used treatment for anxiety. CBT aims to change any faulty thought patterns firstly by identifying it, the impact it has on you, and then changing it. (Soon I’ll be writing a blog on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for depression and anxiety, so stay tuned!). While CBT is something one can do on their own, it is often best to do this with a therapist because we are usually unaware of our own distorted and unhelpful thinking patterns. Once you learn and effectively practice CBT, it is a great tool to have lifelong to manage any other anxiety that might arise in the future.
As a psychologist helping ambitious professionals to manage their anxiety, I work with them to reduce the symptoms of anxiety and the impact it has on their lives. I help people identify their particular thinking patterns and guide them in using CBT methods to determine better and healthier ways of thinking. If you’re struggling with anxiety, I can guide you in establishing new thinking patterns that stick, with the goal to make lasting changes in how you think, feel, and act, resulting in less anxiety. Besides CBT, there are many approaches to keeping anxiety at bay. I also use mindfulness strategies help you to connect with what’s happening in your body so you can take more control over calming down these sensations so you can get back to your life!
Anti-anxiety medications are another option for reducing symptoms of anxiety. These are not meant to be an absolute solution, but research has shown much evidence for the combination of medication and CBT in effectively reducing anxiety. It is often recommended to see a therapist while taking anti-anxiety medication so you can learn strategies that help reduce anxiety.
Anxiety isn’t always bad.
Anxiety is often perceived as demonic, but it can actually be helpful at times. For example, if you don’t feel anxiety about an interview, you won’t bother to prepare for it. So, it can be a helpful and adaptive mechanism when it happens within certain boundaries. There are a multitude of benefits to getting rid of excessive and problematic anxiety. A life with anxiety under control can lead to better physical health, more efficient and effective performance at work, the ability to create and maintain quality relationships with people around you and adjusting more easily to changing circumstances without the fear of “what’s going to happen next?” swinging over your head. Ultimately, being able to manage and reduce anxiety allows for peace of mind and frees you up to live your life on your terms. How does that sound?
FREE therapy consultation in San Francisco, California
I hope this post provided you with useful information about anxiety. As a working professional, you have much to focus on. So getting anxiety out of the way is a must. If you are looking for help with anxiety, or work and life stress, find out more about how I can help here. I understand how anxiety can make a person feel and I use a variety of therapeutic strategies because I want you to feel better. If you’re struggling with anxiety in your life, feel free to contact me for a free 15-minute phone consultation to see how therapy can help you.
