Everyone can relate to feeling anxiety, but when it crosses the line and effectively paralyzes a person’s ability to live their lives, there’s a name for it. Crippling anxiety affects a person’s mental health and can cause physical problems as well. In addition, it makes living a happy life and fulfilling their potential impossible to achieve. Renewal Oasis understands the intricacies of crippling anxiety and designed a program to help treat it. We provide residential care and outpatient programs that address anxiety in real-time and teach people to regain control of their emotions. Our menu of therapies targets the issues that contribute to anxiety and helps people put healthy coping skills into practice.
What is Crippling Anxiety?
Crippling anxiety is a step beyond when a person has some anxiety in their life but can still function fairly well. While not a clinical diagnosis, crippling anxiety is a term used to describe someone who experiences severe anxiety or has an anxiety disorder. Someone who deals with this finds everyday tasks challenging due to their level of anxiety. For instance, they may have difficulty doing well on their job or even showing up for work. They often avoid situations that may trigger their anxiety, which can lead to isolation and leave a person unable to participate fully in life. Someone who has crippling anxiety needs to seek professional help from a mental health expert or a physician and explore options for therapy and prescription medications.
What Does it Feel Like?
Crippling anxiety causes a person to feel out of control. They want to enjoy a sense of calmness and an ability to handle any situation without panicking. However, their level of anxiety makes it impossible to do this. The individual often anticipates feeling anxious in certain situations and finds it harder and harder to participate in life. As they rule out going to certain places or doing specific things, their circle begins to close in on them. The person feels isolated and like no one understands how they feel. Crippling anxiety robs people of feeling comfortable and leaves them worrying that they will never find relief.
Signs & Symptoms of Crippling Anxiety
People who have crippling anxiety experience symptoms that indicate they have this condition. Common signs and symptoms include:
- Panic attacks
- Daily or almost daily feelings of anxiety
- Shallow breathing
- Rapid heartbeat
- Shakiness
- Racing thoughts
- Inability to ground one’s self
- Feeling agitated or irritable
- Difficulty sleeping
- Withdrawing from relationships with loved ones
- Difficulty performing well on the job or at school
- Abusing drugs or alcohol to alleviate anxiety
- Unexplained physical symptoms, including body aches, headaches, and gastrointestinal distress
Ways to Cope With Crippling Anxiety
Seeking therapeutic treatment for crippling anxiety is an important first step. It often includes options for FDA-approved medications that ease the symptoms of anxiety. In addition, people can do at-home activities to help them cope with their anxiety. Breathing exercises provide a way to help regulate a person’s breathing, which results in feeling calmer. They can be used when feelings of anxiety surface or as a way to prevent the onset of them.
Many people find that expressing themselves creatively provides a wonderful outlet for releasing stress. Activities like drawing, writing, dancing, and other creative acts help people stay in touch with their feelings instead of being overwhelmed by them. Finally, writing in a journal regularly can help cohesively process emotions and fears. Journal entries can also be used as a jumping-off point for subjects to discuss during therapy.
Is There Treatment for Crippling Anxiety?
People with crippling anxiety find they can make great progress in minimizing their symptoms when they get the right program for their needs. Talk therapy provides an opportunity for the person to open up about what their anxiety feels like and how it impacts their lives. Working with a therapist one-on-one in individual therapy allows them to explore the source of their anxiety. From there, they can develop a plan of attack, including healthy coping skills to prevent panicking.
Two other kinds of talk therapy provide people with an opportunity to confront and reduce their crippling anxiety. These include Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). Both types of therapy help people identify and regulate their emotions and cope in positive ways. Holistic therapy can provide wonderful results when it comes to treating anxiety. This type of therapy includes engaging in activities that help center the mind and allow people to be active or express themselves. During treatment, other options for therapy services will be explored to make sure the person gets the targeted help they need.
Contact Our Anxiety Treatment Center in Palm Springs, CA
Do you live with crippling anxiety and want to find your way out of it? Renewal Oasis offers multiple levels of care to meet the needs of a diverse population of people. Our residential center provides a cozy home atmosphere for those who need to get away from it all. As well, our outpatient programs are located in comfortable facilities that help people learn to manage their anxiety. We believe in treating each person as an individual so we can understand how to provide them with optimized treatment. We include access to prescription medications that ease the symptoms of anxiety and help you feel more like your old self.
Contact us today to talk about how we can keep crippling anxiety from affecting your life. Our friendly admissions staff can answer any questions you have about how to get started.
