Generalized Anxiety Disorder Treatment

Do you find it impossible to stop worrying?

Is it hard for you to tolerate uncertainty?

Do you hate having to make decisions?

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) can best be described as having an excessive amount of worry about a wide range of topics which you find very hard to keep under control.

Here’s a typical GAD worry scenario:

“What if my car breaks down and I have to use a rental car? What if the problem with the car is more extensive than I thought? What if I have to dip into my savings for my holiday and pay for it? What if that means I can’t go on holiday? What if that means I’ll have no chance for a stress break? What if that means I can’t perform well at my job? What if I get so stressed I have to take a leave or get fired? What if I can’t find another job? What if I have to move back in with my parents?”

OK, I know this sounds like George Costanza, but this is quite an accurate depiction of the spiraling effect that can happen with the “chaining” of worries in GAD. These thoughts lead to unpleasant physical symptoms like racing heart, stomach symptoms, tight muscles, sleeplessness, concentration problems and exhaustion.

You can learn to stop worrying!

To put it plainly, GAD can put a real damper on life – and believe me – I know. I’ve suffered with it myself, so I really get it! It’s not a lot of fun. But let me assure you, there is hope. Effective, well-researched cognitive behavioural therapy tools have been designed to help you bring these worries under control – and they do work. And guess what, sometimes these exercises are even fun!

Effective worry-management tools

At a gradual pace, I will lead you through a series of cognitive and behavioural exercises designed for general anxiety disorder treatment that will help you identify and control your mind-body experiences. We begin with mindfulness based relaxation techniques, and I provide you with reading materials to help you understand GAD. This is followed by keeping a worry diary to keep track of your worry topics and categorizing them into types. Then we move onto evaluating the usefulness of worry and uncovering positive beliefs about worry. We continue by strengthening your decision-making skills and problem-re-orientation, practicing tolerating uncertainty exercises, and finally, a worry script to help you realize you can handle the worst-case scenario!

What was I worried about?

After learning these cognitive, behavioural and physiological coping skills, you may look back one day and wonder how you could have ever found something as overwhelmingly worrisome as you did. I look forward to helping you get off the “worry train” and start feeling in control of your life again!

Symptoms of GAD

• Excessive, uncontrollable worry
• Intolerance of uncertainty
• Avoiding making decisions
• Reassurance seeking
• Perfectionism
• Procrastination
• Avoiding delegating tasks
• Excessive information seeking
• Avoidance
• Depression
• Sleeplessness
• Tight chest and racing heart
• Exhaustion and demoralization
• Muscle tension

Tools to help manage GAD

• Relaxation techniques
• Worry diary
• Identifying worry types
• Intolerance and behaviour exercises
• Challenging positive beliefs about worry
• Problem re-orientation and problem-solving skills
• Worry script
• Creative visualization

“I’m so glad to finally be off ’the worry train’! Jenny has a great way of teaching so many tools for coping with worry. I learned so much from her. I feel way less stress in my life and have so much more energy to do what I want in life. I highly recommend Jenny for anyone who worries a lot!”

– Paula S.