What is anxiety? – Part 3: Treatments and Creativity

What are the treatments for anxiety?

Since there are so many different types of disorders and anxiety can be more difficult to treat depending on the type, it is important to keep trying until you find something that works for you. There are many strategies that professionals can use to treat anxiety disorders. Knowing what they are can help you ask the right questions to your professional and get at the right treatment quicker. These are just the bare bones information, and I will probably end up looking at some of these in more depth for future articles.

Types of professional treatment

1. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or CBT: One of the most researched and said to be one of the most effective methods of treating anxiety disorders (among a whole host of other mental health issues). It aims to help create awareness of and explore your emotions and thoughts and how they affect your actions as well as giving you exercises to cope and manage everything better.
2. Acceptance and commitment therapy or ACT: Using our values and feelings, this type of therapy tries to teach us to accept our feelings (even the perceived negative ones) instead of avoiding and fighting and live more mindfully and in the present. It helps with anxiety as it helps us get out of our heads and helps give us a better perspective. It is also a type of cognitive behavioural therapy.
3. Psychodynamic/ Psychoanalysis therapy or “talk” therapy: This is the more traditional method of talking with a therapist to get at the root of emotional suffering. It is used to evaluate patterns and help people gain insights into their patterns and behaviours. When you see the picture of someone taking notes for a person on a couch, this is usually the method that is being used. Though for me personally, it is the type of treatment that doesn’t seem to work, though it is the most widely available.
4. Interpersonal therapy: This is another type of cognitive behavioural therapy that is focused on interpersonal relationships issues and conflicts and helps improve relationships with others. It is used for many different types of mental illnesses. Some research shows that it can also be useful for anxiety, especially social anxiety.
5. Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy:  This is a relatively new type of therapy (1980s) in which the mind is composed of different parts that each play a role in defining our behaviours and understanding of these parts, often created by stress or events in our life, can lead to acceptance and to a more balanced mind. This type of therapy is not for everyone and involves a lot of imagination and meditation. It may not have as much research as other therapy types but has been shown to be effective in some studies. I’ve personally tried it and found it very enlightening but very difficult. Painful past events are often revisited and so this is not for everyone.
6. Medication: There are many different types of medication that can be used to treat anxiety disorders and depression but given side-effects and interactions with other medications only a medical professional can advise on their use for treatments depending on what other diagnoses or medical conditions are present.

These are just a few of the types of treatment available. The best treatment method is said to be a combination of therapy and medication. Though medication for the creative, can be a choice that is often avoided for fear that it will not only block their anxiety but their creativity as well. However, if anxiety is preventing us from creating then medication can help us to be overall more creative and even out the peaks and valleys so they can be helpful. I would only recommend them under supervision of a trained medical professional.

How are creativity and anxiety linked?

Imagination is the best tool of the creative but also what makes a person anxious, we have more vivid imaginations with which to picture the worst-case scenarios. We are also more in our heads and think more than the rest of the population. There are also a higher proportion of creatives who have anxious disorders. There are interesting research articles that talk about this link. Knowing that you are at risk being a creative is the first step.

I know when I start a project, I get that new project high, it can go great. Then as the project enters the ugly phase (or for writers the inciting incident, when things start going bad for the characters) the doubts start creeping in, and the fears, so the procrastination and other avoiding behaviours and the anxiety gets triggered accompanied by the thoughts:

“I will fail,”

“No one will like it,”

“I will be judged and rejected, so what is the point in continuing…?”

“If you love something, why is it so hard to do? To finish? You must not love it as much as you thought?”

“What is the point in continuing?”

“What is the point in even starting that project….”

(Some of the thoughts are on repeat in my head…)

I’ve always wanted to be a writer and an artist, but low self-esteem and my anxious problems have always sabotaged my efforts. This blog is actually my third attempt at working for myself and make a living at my creative endeavors. I always let my fears and self-doubt sabotage my efforts before. But not anymore, I really want to succeed (not that I didn’t want to before…) but I think learning from those experiences and changing the subject to what it is now has more meaning/value for me so it will be easier to push through the tougher times. If I always come back to why I am doing this and my belief that we can learn to overcome our difficulties and we can do it creatively, I believe I can push through! I hope to help others in this situation as well.

If you consider yourself creative, have you sabotaged yourself in the past and how have you overcome it? Please leave an answer in the comments section.

Next week I will be looking at tips and tricks for managing anxiety.

“The best use of imagination is creativity. The worst use of imagination is anxiety.”

– Deepak Chopra

Sources

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.31887/DCNS.2017.19.2/bbandelow

https://www.besthealthmag.ca/article/anxiety-symptoms-and-treatment/

https://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/guide/anxiety-disorders

https://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/guide/anxiety-disorders

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-ifs-therapy-internal-family-systems-therapy-5195336

https://solaramentalhealth.com/anxiety-and-creativity/