Telemedicine

Anxiety Treatment

High-quality, affordable, and patient-centered online therapy for anxiety in the state of New Mexico and Kansas.

What Is Anxiety?

Anxiety is an unpleasant state where the individual constantly worries about the possibility of future dangers and threats, safety, or upsetting events. For some people, anxiety could manifest physically with increased heart rate, shortness of breath, chest pain, sweating, tremors, muscle tension, hyperventilating, and numbness and tingling (typically known as a panic attack). For others, it may manifest psychologically and behaviorally as pessimistic thinking and avoidance of certain places or situations that may trigger anxiety respectively.

Phobias are anxiety disorders that manifest as a persistent and excessive fear of a certain object, event, place, or situation. People may develop phobias to a variety of things including heights, flying, pain, open areas or crowds, needles, riding in a car, darkness, spiders, germs, etc.

Despite being unpleasant, anxiety itself is not necessarily a negative thing. Anxiety is our body’s normal reaction to allow us to foresee possible negative events so that we can take measures to avoid them. Anxiety becomes a problem or is diagnosed as a disorder when it becomes very extreme and excessive, and it interferes negatively with important aspects of functioning.

How Is Anxiety Treated?

Individuals with anxiety disorders have abnormalities or exaggerations in the way they process alarm signals in the brain, causing them to develop irrational beliefs and poor coping mechanisms that, although was intended to avert negative outcomes, but now causes distress and dysfunction.

Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy is considered first-line treatment for anxiety disorders. Cognitive behavioral therapy is the most effective for anxiety disorders and helps patients identify these maladaptive ways of thinking so that they can work on alternative coping mechanisms.

Medications

In some cases where psychotherapy is not sufficient to alleviate anxiety, patients may require medications.

Antidepressants, typically selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Sertraline (Zoloft), Paroxetine (Paxil), Fluoxetine (Prozac), Citalopram (Celexa), and Escitalopram (Lexapro) are considered first-line treatment for anxiety disorders.

Other medications include Buspirone (Buspar), Propranolol (Inderal), Gabapentin (neurotin), and Hydroxyzine (Vistaril). While benzodiazepines such as Alprazolam (Xanax), Lorazepam (Ativan), Diazepam (Valium), and Clonazepam (Klonipin) are very useful in providing immediate relief of anxiety symptoms.

These are only used on a short-term basis as problems may emerge with long-term use of these medications. Benzodiazepines can cause psychological and physiologic tolerance, meaning that patients will need larger and larger doses of the medication to achieve the same results, leading to problems with abuse and addiction. Furthermore, benzodiazepines may cause memory impairment, cognitive dulling, dizziness, falls, and sedation.

Contact Blissful Minds for online psychiatry mental health treatment in New Mexico

Anxiety Treatment At Blissful Minds

The goal of treatment is not to eliminate anxiety totally, as a life completely free of anxiety is probably problematic and impossible. The goal is to restore a balance where anxiety is now helpful to the individual instead of being hurtful. Our providers combine psychotherapy with medications to treat anxiety. Treatment is individualized and patients are encouraged to play an active role in their plan of care. Blissful Minds does NOT prescribe benzodiazepines on a long-term basis to patients. Patients who are already on benzodiazepines must have the willingness to wean off and try alternate non-benzodiazepine medications to treat their anxiety on a long-term basis.