Feeling anxious can make you worried and stressed out to the point that you can’t think about anything else but the situation that you’re dealing with. And for millions of people around the world, that anxious feeling is a mental health issue that interferes with their quality of life.

Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent mental issues in the U.S., affecting 18.1% of the adult population. In particular, generalized anxiety disorder affects 3.1% of the population. That adds up to more than 6 million adults. But only 43.2% of those affected seek treatment. 

There are many types of generalized anxiety disorder treatment that you can explore, including process-based therapy. But why should you try it? That’s what we’re here to explain.

Read on to learn about the basics of generalized anxiety disorder, the benefits of treating anxiety with therapy and how process-based therapy works. At the end, you’ll learn about the many reasons that you should consider process-based therapy.

The basics of generalized anxiety disorder

Generalized anxiety disorder, commonly referred to as GAD or anxiety, is a mental health disorder that causes you to feel overwhelmed with stress and worry, often without cause. Anxiety can make it difficult for you to successfully complete your work responsibilities, have emotional tolerance for everyday situations and maintain a healthy social life. Anxiety can affect your emotional, mental and physical well-being.

Symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder include:

• Chronic stress
• Concentration problems
• Increased fatigue
• Heightened irritability
• Difficulty relaxing
• Unexplained aches, such as headaches and muscle aches
• Panic attacks

Benefits of therapy for generalized anxiety disorder 

Generalized anxiety disorder can take a toll on your everyday life, but proper treatment can help alleviate the symptoms. The two pillars of anxiety disorder treatment are medication and therapy. A mental health provider will prescribe the medication that they believe will work best for your specific needs and medical history.

When it comes to therapy, specifically psychotherapy, you can gain many long-term benefits that can help you manage your anxiety, including:

• Discovering the root of your worries
• Learning coping mechanisms
• Looking at problems with a new perspective
• Developing problem-solving skills
• Learning relaxation techniques
• Managing side effects from medication

What is the Precision Care Model?

Therapy is not a one-size-fits-all solution to helping your anxiety. Even for people who have the same mental health issues, like generalized anxiety disorder, they don’t have the same personal problems or thought processes. 

There are different approaches that your therapist can explore to help your generalized anxiety disorder, including process-based therapy, or PBT. Process-based therapy is a clinical model that integrates the effective ingredients of a wide range of therapies and provides a holistic and personalized approach to focusing on your entire well-being, not just your GAD diagnosis.

PBT allows you to work with your therapist to look at every interacting factor that influences your mental health. It consists of a variety of integrated interventions, such as arousal reduction and values clarification, that are rooted in four core processes that drive mental health symptoms, like those associated with GAD:

• Difficulty with emotions
• Difficulty with thoughts
• Difficulty with behaviors
• Difficulty with relationships

6 reasons to use process-based therapy for generalized anxiety disorder treatment

If you’re considering process-based therapy as a generalized anxiety disorder treatment, here are six reasons why you should talk about it with your mental health provider:

1. Flexible and personalized to work with your specific needs
2. Backed by data of efficacy
3. Based on evidence-based psychotherapies
4. Allows your therapist to track your progress
5. Addresses how biological, psychological and social factors influence your mental health
6. Ensures that you’re not put in a box confined by your anxiety diagnosis

Lightfully can provide you with PBT to treat your generalized anxiety disorder

Anxiety can make you feel like you have no control over anything in your life. But process-based therapy for generalized anxiety disorder will help you examine your mental health from every angle to alleviate your anxiety. PBT can help you understand how many factors in your life have an impact on your mental health and how you can work with them, not against them.

You can find generalized anxiety disorder treatment, like PBT, in our programs: Residential Treatment, Virtual Intensive Outpatient Program (vIOP), Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP), and Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP), also called our Day Treatment Program.

Change is possible. When you’re ready to explore treatment for generalized anxiety disorder, reach out to our Admissions Concierge Team. We’ll take the next steps together, toward the fullest, brightest version of you.