Having a little stress in your life can be a good thing. It gives you a reason to accomplish your goals or solve a problem. It’s your body’s natural way to respond to a threat, and having no stress at all can be bad. However, too much stress can overwork your body and mind, causing you to lose the motivation to get rid of whatever it is causing your stress. It can be a tough cycle to break out of once you’re in it.
Luckily, there are therapists who can help manage your stress. With that said, you may wonder which therapist is the best for your situation. If you’re looking to decrease your stress, a cognitive behavioral therapist, or CBT, is your best solution.
What is CBT?
CBT involves changing your thinking or behavior so that you can respond to situations in a certain way that is much more productive. For example, if you always stress over a project, and that stress prevents you from working, CBT involves taking you stressing over the project and turns you into you actually getting the project done.
CBT works fast and doesn’t require too many sessions. In addition to stress, it can help treat other mental illnesses and is good for lots of situation. Grief, relationship issues, anger management, phobias, and anything else works great with CBT.
Why it Works
Our feelings, be it conscious or unconscious, motivate us or hinder us. If you are always feeling worthless, then your performance may suffer. It may become a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, where because you believe that you are worthless, your work goes down in quality and you think your feelings were correct.
Ever been told to just think more positively? While being told this can be frustrating, as it’s not so easy to turn your thinking around, there is truth to this statement. You can think more positively and this can cause different effects on your brain, such as having more energy and self-esteem.
You can’t instantly change the way you think, but with some intense therapy, you can reduce those negative thoughts and replace them with something more positive. Teaching you how to not be so hard on yourself or think in a motivated manner are just a few examples of CBT working.
The mind is a powerful tool, and what it thinks can come to truth. If you always think you’re sick, such as having hypochondria, then you may experience certain symptoms that are, in reality, all in your head.
Many therapists will have different approaches to turning your thinking around. When speaking to your therapist, see how their technique works. The therapist may adjust their technique depending on your behavior so that it best suits you.
Instead of letting the stress take over, CBT will teach you how to use the stress as a motivator to finish your work, reducing your stress levels.
Therapy at Any Time
Stress can strike at any time, and online therapy has made it easier to tackle stress and get back to whatever it was you were doing. Online counseling services such as BetterHelp can give you the motivation to carry on instantly, and you can talk to your therapist through text, phone, or video chat. You can talk to them based on your schedule and your lifestyle, making around the clock stress relief much easier to accomplish.
We all get a little over-stressed, but when stress is stopping you from living your life, that’s when you need to talk to a therapist and take back control.