Generalised Anxiety:
The NICE recommended treatment for generalised anxiety is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). During your treatment, your therapist will assess the components of your anxiety and they will work with you to set goals and develop a formulation of the problem. Your therapist will look at factors, such as your ability to tolerate uncertainty, ways that you behaviourally react to uncertainty and beliefs that you have about the function of worry. Your therapist will work with you to understand how your beliefs, behaviours and the function of worry are maintaining your anxiety. This formulation will provide a template for future work, such as bespoke behavioural experiments and in session cognitive methods. Relapse maintenance will form an important aspect of your treatment, to help maintain the gains you have achieved during therapy.
What to look out for:
Difficulty to stop or intercept a worry cycle.
Feeling constantly nervous and on edge.
Worrying excessively about different things.
Having difficulty relaxing or switching off.
Being restless, fidgety and on edge.
Becoming easily annoyed, irritable.
Difficulties falling asleep due to worry or fragmented sleep.
Having a constant sense of foreboding or fear of a catastrophe.
Treatment FOCUS
Type: CBT
Sessions: 10+
Length: 50 mins
Treatment Focus:
Assessment
Goal Setting
Formulation
Understanding the roll of uncertainty
Thought/worry monitoring
Belief modification
Problem solving
Behavioural Experiments
Exposure
Responsibility Appraisals
Relapse Prevention
Links
NICE Guidelines
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg113
NHS
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/generalised-anxiety-disorder/self-help/
