If you’re in treatment for anxiety, you may discover that your therapist encourages you to do a lot of “homework.”
In sessions, your therapist is probably teaching you many new skills to help you address your anxiety. This might include reframing your thoughts, tuning into what’s happening in your body, and other mindfulness-based behaviors.
While you’re at sessions in the office, it can feel a little easier to learn these skills. After all, you have the expertise of a trained professional immediately at hand. They can talk you through your scariest thoughts and feelings. And you can relax in a quiet, calm environment without the distractions and stress that you might have in your own home.
However, when your therapist gives you advice on how to use these skills at home, you may feel a little overwhelmed. After all, if it’s going well in session, why add the burden of having to think about it at home as well?
Well, there are very good reasons for this. Consider three major ones.
1. Practice Makes Perfect
As millions of people can attest, anxiety treatment really can work wonders. However, like learning any new skill, it does take practice.
Anxiety treatment often involves learning to teach your brain to react differently to situations and triggers. But this doesn’t happen overnight. Over the years and possibly decades that you’ve had anxiety or phobias, your neural network has put down some pretty strong pathways that automatically respond to triggers. These triggers could be as small as one tiny fearful thought that cascades into a full-blown panic attack.
Your therapist is helping you learn how to build new pathways—almost like detours—for your thoughts and emotions to travel down. Like any new venture, the more practice you can get in, the stronger those neural networks will be. But you need to exercise these new neural pathways more than a few times a month. Thus, practicing at home helps build your emotional resources more quickly.
2. Real Life Rehearsing
The security and safe haven of the therapist’s office truly is invaluable. When you’re in their office, you don’t have to keep a stiff upper lip for fear of what others will think. You’re given a reprieve from the clutter and mess of your own home and life. You can show your fear and not worry about being judged. This is very important to help you locate the inner peace needed to move forward out of anxiety.
The next step, though, is being able to move the skills you’re learning out of the therapist’s office and into real-world situations. Chances are, your anxiety is not triggered by the peaceful quiet of your counselor’s office. So you need to begin to practice your anxiety treatment tips and tricks when you’re on your own and in the situations that do trigger anxiety.
3. Transition Out of Therapy
Your therapist wants to see you succeed. They’ve walked many others through anxiety issues, and they know you can do it too. While they can be right next to you in sessions, they can’t be with you all the time. They believe in your ability to build resiliency and coping skills. Just like a patient transitions out of physical therapy after bodily injuries have been rehabilitated—counselors want the same for their clients.
The invaluable tips and skills you’re learning during your therapy sessions truly can be used effectively beyond the walls of a therapist’s office. Your therapist knows this, and that’s why they give you tips and exercises to practice at home. As you apply the anxiety management techniques you’ve learned, you’ll be ready to start transitioning out of therapy.
While this in itself can be anxiety-provoking, it’s an important step—one that you’ll be ready for when it’s time.
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If you’re struggling with anxiety, please know that you can find ways to manage it. I encourage you to read more about anxiety treatment and reach out to my office to learn more.
