Generalized Anxiety Disorders: A Case Study

Anxiety disorders are some of the most common disorders in the United States. Generalized Anxiety Disorder is when excessive anxiety and worry is not limited to any particular object. A common treatment for this disorder is cognitive-behavioral therapy. This is a usually a very successful treatment for people struggling with GAD by taking their thoughts and behaviors into consideration. Cognitive-behavioral therapy incorporates the client's thoughts and behaviors into the treatment process. This is a very common form of therapy used for treating anxiety disorders and is sometimes used in cooperation with drug therapy. The cognitive portion of CBT is to examine how the negative thoughts affect the client. The behavior part of this therapy is to examine how the client reacts in a situation that triggers anxiety. CBT focuses on how a client may feel about a situation and would act on that feeling. This is considered to be a short term therapy that can last around ten to twenty sessions. This type of therapy is best used on people aged 14

The client may want to identify the stressful or troubling situations in life. The situations that could possibly cause them anxiety, anything that may have triggered the anxiety to start, and their own feelings are what they need to examine. The client should take control and be aware of their own thoughts. Analyze what they say to themselves and compare the negative thoughts with the realistic thoughts. The client can get to a point mentally where they would want to face what gives them anxiety. This steps into exposure therapy, which is a type of CBT, that puts the client in an anxiety invoking situation. In a stressful situation the client with either conquer the anxiety or the client will choose to run from the situation. The client may have more personal goals such as, dealing with their anxiety, and being more