Can Counselling Help With Anxiety?

To a degree, yes. 

Counselling can help, but what does help mean?

It probably won’t resolve it but hopefully you will have less of it in life. 

If you're lucky and you get a counsellor that is highly skilled, she/he might be able to help you with some tools and strategies to manage your anxiety. If some of your anxiety is coming from your mind, you might learn how to lessen the stress that you are creating by your own thinking. This can be very valuable. 

Also, many people find talking about unresolved issues to be helpful, but once again this depends on the counsellor. 

If the unresolved trauma is triggering your anxiety you might find it helpful.

So, in some ways, counselling can be helpful with anxiety.

But, it fails to address anxiety at the cause.

And if you want to address anxiety at the level of the cause, then you need to address the Nervous system. And this needs more than talk therapy/counselling. 

So, if your goal is to gain control of your mind, you need to address the body - and to do this, you need to go beyond the scope of talking therapy.

What are the disadvantages of anxiety counselling?

There are a few reasons that cause this approach to be limited.

1. The time frame. Often, counselling does not really have an end goal. I have had many clients be in talk therapy for years without a resolution!
2. Unpacks more and more depth but does not move closer to the goal of the client to resolve the anxiety.
3. Does not address the cause - if the cause is not coming from the mind.
4. Can be good short term, but mid to long term can cause someone to become more stuck. If they teach management strategies, they actually perpetuate the anxiety.
5. Does not address the body aspect of anxiety.
6. Does not address the Nervous system  - and this is crucial in most cases of anxiety, unless the anxiety is very mild and only brought about by destructive thought patterns.

What are the advantages of counselling?

The biggest advantage of counselling is that the person who is seeking help is being proactive. They are doing something to make their life better and focusing on improving their own life. 

Having someone hold the space or keep you accountable can be very helpful and with a skilled counsellor, you can gain new perspectives which can dramatically help the way you see what's happening and can shift many things in your life.

Some counsellors will give you tools to work with, this can be either great or actually a bit of a problem as discussed above. 

If the tools they share with you are management strategies (which most are), they can be helpful in the short term.

What counselling is best for anxiety?