How Therapy Can Help with Anxiety: Understanding and Breaking the Cycle
Anxiety can silently, or sometimes quite loudly, take over daily life. You may feel this as constant worry, persistent overthinking, physical tension, or even a panic response. It's a heavy burden that can affect every aspect of your wellbeing.
If you're experiencing these struggles, it's important to know that you're not alone. Pretty much all of us experience anxiety at some stage to different extents, and there is support available to help you navigate and manage these challenges.
This blog explores how therapy can help with anxiety by offering a space to slow down, reflect, and understand the deeper experiences beneath anxious feelings. Rather than focusing on quick fixes, we’ll look at how existential therapy can help you relate differently to anxiety, find clarity, and begin moving toward a more grounded and meaningful way of living.
What Does Anxiety Feel Like?
Emotional and Physical Symptoms
Anxiety symptoms can manifest in various ways, impacting both emotional and physical well-being.
Emotional - Persistent worry, irritability, a sense of being overwhelmed, difficulty concentrating.
Physical - Muscle tension, headaches, fatigue, panic attacks/difficulty breathing, digestive issues, rapid heartbeat.
These anxiety symptoms can significantly diminish quality of life, making even simple tasks feel challenging. Recognising these signs is the first step in seeking help with anxiety and reclaiming your wellbeing.
How Anxiety Affects Daily Life
Anxiety is deeply personal and affects everyone differently. For some, everyday tasks like sleeping can become difficult. People may find themselves constantly over-preparing for events, driven by fear of potential problems. Avoidance of social situations or responsibilities may become a common coping mechanism. These behaviours are common among people with anxiety disorders because they directly impact relationships, work, lifestyle and your ability to manage certain situations.
Understanding the Anxiety Cycle from an Existential Perspective
Anxiety often arises not just from external stressors, but from deeper internal struggles. This could be a sense of uncertainty, disconnection, or feeling overwhelmed by choices and responsibilities. From an existential therapy perspective, anxiety is not a flaw to be fixed, but a natural human response to life’s deeper questions: Who am I? What matters to me? What happens if I choose the wrong path?
Therapy can help you begin to explore these questions with compassion and curiosity. Existential therapy offers a space to reflect on what your anxiety might be pointing to, such as a loss of meaning, a disconnect from your values, or fear of making the wrong choice. This is how therapy can help with anxiety in a more personal and lasting way: by supporting you in making sense of your experience, not just managing it.
How Avoidance Reinforces Anxiety
When we feel anxious, it's natural to want to avoid the things that trigger it - difficult conversations, uncertainty, failure, or even self-reflection. But while avoidance may offer short-term relief, it can gradually narrow your world and strengthen the very fears you’re trying to escape.
From an existential perspective, avoidance often signals a deeper conflict: the desire to feel safe and certain in a world that is, by nature, uncertain. Therapy helps you gently turn toward what feels uncomfortable, not to force change, but to understand it more deeply. In doing so, you begin to expand your capacity to be with anxiety, rather than being ruled by it.
How Therapy Can Help You Break the Cycle
Creating Space for Honest Reflection
One of the most powerful ways therapy can help with anxiety is by offering a space where you can pause, reflect, and be honest about what you’re feeling and why. Existential therapy doesn’t aim to quickly “fix” anxiety, but to understand it as part of the human experience. In a safe, non-judgmental setting, you can begin to explore what anxiety might be saying about your life, your relationships, or your current path.
Over time, this reflective process can help loosen anxiety’s grip - not by eliminating it, but by changing how you relate to it.
Moving Forward Without Needing All the Answers
Anxiety often convinces us we need certainty before we can act. Existential therapy gently challenges that belief, helping you discover that growth often happens in uncertainty. As you build tolerance for the unknown, you may begin to feel more grounded. This is not because everything is solved, but because you're more connected to yourself in the process.
Therapy can support you in making decisions that align with your values, even in the presence of doubt. In this way, anxiety becomes less of a barrier and more of a guide, pointing you back to what matters.
What to Expect in Therapy for Anxiety
Creating a Safe Space
Entering therapy for anxiety involves stepping into a safe and supportive environment. Talk therapy provides that confidential space where individuals can openly express their fears, concerns, and experiences without judgment. This secure setting enables clients to delve into the root causes of their anxiety symptoms, fostering self-awareness and understanding. The therapist acts as a compassionate guide, offering validation and support throughout the exploration process.
Setting Your Goals
In therapy, goal setting is a collaborative process that respects your individual pace. The therapist works with you to identify specific, achievable goals that align with your needs and aspirations. Whether it's reducing physical symptoms, improving coping strategies, or understanding yourself better, goals are tailored to address your unique anxiety problems. This personalised approach ensures that you feel empowered and in control of your treatment for anxiety journey, promoting a sense of progress.
Building Long-Term Strategies
Progress in existential therapy doesn’t come from tools or techniques. It emerges gradually as you develop a clearer sense of yourself, your choices, and your relationships. As you make sense of your anxiety, you may notice:
A greater ability to sit with difficult feelings
More clarity around what matters to you
A deeper sense of agency in moments of uncertainty
Less avoidance and more presence
These shifts don’t happen all at once. They unfold at your pace, supported by a therapeutic relationship grounded in curiosity, honesty, and respect.
You Don’t Have to Do This Alone
Remember that anxiety can get better, and you don't have to face it alone. Therapy can offer a supportive space to begin understanding your experience, rather than trying to push it away. Many people find relief not through quick fixes, but through the process of being heard, seen, and supported as they navigate what feels unclear.
If you're struggling with anxiety, consider reaching out. Existential therapy offers space to explore what anxiety feels like for you; what it might be connected to, and how you want to relate to it moving forward. It’s not about strategies or solutions, but about reconnecting with your values, your choices, and a deeper sense of clarity.
If this resonates with you, therapy might offer the breathing space you’ve been looking for. It’s a quiet, supportive place to explore what anxiety feels like for you and what you need to feel more grounded. At Badashian Therapy, I offer a reflective, non-judgmental environment where you're free to take things at your own pace. You don’t need to have it all figured out; we can begin wherever you are.