Social Anxiety Disorder Treatment
October 25, 2008 by Alex Taylor
Social anxiety disorder treatment can be separated into two different approaches - psychological counselling, and medication. Both of these approaches aim to lessen the severity of the anxiety, whilst also reducing the depression that can also develop as a result of the social anxiety or social phobia.
In extreme cases, or where someone is suffering from social anxiety disorder brought on by many different fears or worries, a combination of counselling and anti-anxiety medication may be used.
Types of Counselling:
The types of counselling you might encounter can be separated into two further specific areas - cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and exposure therapy.
- Cognitive Behaviroal Therapy:
CBT is a form of treatment that aims to restructure your thinking, allowing you to notice in advance the thoughts and thought patterns that can cause social anxiety. By becoming aware of these negative thoughts and patterns at their onset, you may be able to stop them before they progress to the more damaging thoughts that cause the worst of your anxiety.
- Exposure Therapy:
Exposure therapy, on the other hand, is where you will directly face the things you fear. Normally, this will start with you just facing the fear or the anxiety-causing situation in your mind, and will progress slowly over time to you facing the same fear or situation in person. Through this slow, steady face-to-face confrontation with your most fearful situations, the negative effects these fears have on you may fade and eventually disappear altogether.
Social Anxiety Disorder Medication:
The medication you may be offered if your doctor believes you will benefit from them will typically be of two types - sedatives (usually a benzodiazepine of some sort), and an anti-depressant (usually an SSRI).
Sedatives are normally only prescribed for short-term use, often to treat severe periods of anxiety. Anti-depressants of the SSRI variety are usually prescribed for longer-term use, and will often be used for periods of 6 to 12 months or longer.
A Fresh Approach To Treating Social Anxiety and Social Phobia:
Perhaps you’ve already tried the methods mentioned above and had no success. Or perhaps, like many people, the ideas of anti anxiety medication and counsellors are not pleasant ones for you. If that’s the case, I’d really like to encourage you to try my 5 part video course, Beat Panic Today.
When you sign up for my free course you’ll also receive my weekly newsletter that’s published every Friday and contains new and fresh ways to combat all forms of anxiety.
Learn More About Social Anxiety Disorder Treatment:
There’s a great resource for learning more about social anxiety disorder treatment at the WebMD website. If you’d like to do some further reading on the subject, check out the WebMD’s page on Social Anxiety Disorder Treatment.
You can also read more about anxiety treatment in general by taking a look at my anxiety treatment page.
