Bag of Tricks

Having a variety of tricks and tools on hand will help you manage anxiety in any situation.

When individuals who are experiencing anxiety come into my office, one of the first goals is to help alleviate symptoms. Once I have an understanding of their symptoms and source the anxiety, I help them understand how it is treated. I have told many clients that I love treating anxiety disorders. The reason why is simple. There are many tools and coping skills for managing anxiety that will bring short-term and long-term relief.  Utilizing anxiety reduction tools can frequently achieve rapid results. This starts to give clients some hope that their symptoms will be alleviated and they will feel better! 

The first thing that I will suggest is that we create a “bag of tricks”. While there is no magic wand inside this bag to make anxiety vanish, this bag of tricks will contain the tools needed to manage anxiety. It will give an individual the short-term and long-term help that they need. It will contain the short-term fixes (breathing and distraction techniques) as well as the tools to make the long-term changes (cognitive reframing). 

Why do you need a bag of tricks instead of just one trick? The reason is that not every trick may work for you in every situation. You need a bag of tricks because when one trick does not work well, you can utilize a different trick. A skilled craftsman knows that each tool in his tool kit has a specific purpose and use, but not every tool will work for every situation. Similarly, each tool or trick that you learn will bring relief in certain situations, but not others. By being able to access multiple tricks or tools, you will be certain to have the resources needed to bring relief to any situation. 

In the next several blogs I am going to focus on my favorite tools that I have taught clients or they have taught me.