Our therapists offer counseling for anxiety & depression in Cleveland, OH

My go-to approach for treating anxiety is cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavior therapy after, and psychoeducation. I prefer these approaches as I see the best benefit in providing the coping tools in these approaches; they help lessen anxiety and psychoeducation helps my clients understand where the anxiety is stemming from and how these tools work to lessen the anxiety. My go-to approach for treating depression is first exploring if there is a source to the depression. If there is a source, from there I approach it with mindfulness, behavioral activation, challenging to find positives, and practicing gratitude. I prefer to use these methods because they help with rewiring how the brain is thinking and challenging it and they teach the mind to seek out good things.

I teach the following tools in anxiety therapy:

• Thought-stopping techniques: These techniques are used to redirect thoughts that distract from the thoughts causing anxiety. These can be category games, naming the 50 states, or other activities that force a focus on something else.
• Self-soothing: This can be done with a beverage of choice normally or with food of choice. This tool involves blocking out everything else and focusing on the sense of smell, temperature, the texture and feel of what's in your mouth, and taste while slowly drinking or eating the beverage or food.
• Cold shock: This tool involves squeezing an ice cube, running hands or arms under cold water or taking a cold shower, or going outside into the cold to pull away from the anxious thoughts by being distracted by how cold the ice cube, water, or air is. This helps cool the brain down as it gets warmer when dealing with anxiety.
• Correction of automatic thoughts: This involves writing down a list of automatic thoughts in one column and the plausibility of that thought being true or a reasonable outcome in the next column. It also involves analyzing if there is evidence to back up the thought or not, and if there is evidence against the thought.
• Write down what the client can and cannot control.

• Gratitude-seeking
• Listing off at least 5-10 positives in the client's life
• Behavioral activation: Movement helps the body fight depression
• Celebrating small things: This helps keep our brain from getting lost in negatives which increases depression

I know a client is making progress in anxiety therapy when they begin rating their anxiety down 3-5 steps depending on where it was when we began; say it began at a 9 or a 10 as extremes and came down to a 6 or 7 or a 4 or 5. We aim to get anxiety down to a 4 or 5, with 6 being a manageable level, while still having anxiety. The client will be using their tools and effectively managing their anxiety with the skills they have learned. I know a client is making meaningful progress in treating their depression in counseling when they are rating their depression around a 3-5 in severity compared to a higher level of severity on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being extreme).

Clients can supplement their time in anxiety therapy with journaling, engaging in meditation, working out, spending time with friends, spending time in nature, and doing something they enjoy such as reading/playing games/watching shows/etc. I always encourage the use of the Calm app or looking up meditations on YouTube. For depression counseling, clients can engage in seeking the positives in each day and examining what they are grateful for outside of counseling. I also encourage clients to exercise, eat healthy, drink water, and try to establish good sleep habits in addition to spending time with people that love them.

To prepare for your first anxiety therapy or depression counseling session, you can make a list of the sources of your anxiety or depression (if you can identify one) so that you can discuss them in the session.