Anxiety

Kirsten has a special interest in the treatment of Anxiety. She takes a very tailored approach whether the anxiety is short-lived or very treatment resistant. While she does incorporate mindfulness and acceptance skills, arousal reduction strategies and cognitive restructuring into a treatment plan, the key focus of any approach she takes to anxiety is always the elimination of safety behaviors. Safety behaviors are actions people take to reduce their anxiety in situations they find threatening. While these behaviors may provide temporary relief, they ultimately maintain or exacerbate anxiety in the long run by preventing individuals from learning that the feared outcomes are unlikely to occur or that they can cope with the outcomes even if they do occur and that their anxiety will diminish. The treatment of these safety behaviours can be summarised as follows:

​

1. Identification: The first step is to identify the safety behaviors individuals use to manage their anxiety. These can include avoidance of anxiety-provoking situations, seeking reassurance from others, indecision, or using substances like alcohol or drugs to cope.

2. Understanding Their Function: Safety beahviours are used as a way to manage anxiety and reduce discomfort. However, they also prevent individuals from fully experiencing and learning from situations, reinforcing the belief that the feared outcomes are truly dangerous.

3. Gradual Reduction: The approach involves gradually reducing reliance on safety behaviors. This might involve experimenting with facing feared situations without engaging in the usual safety behaviors. This gradual exposure allows individuals to learn that they can tolerate anxiety without the feared consequences occurring. It is always done in a graded way, that enables clients to work through their fears in a way that feels doable,

4. Replacing with Adaptive Coping Strategies: As safety behaviors are reduced, individuals are encouraged to develop and utilize more adaptive coping strategies. These might include relaxation techniques, cognitive restructuring (changing thought patterns), or problem-solving skills to manage anxiety more effectively.

5. Challenging Beliefs: This might involve examining the evidence for the feared outcomes and developing more realistic and balanced beliefs about the situations causing anxiety.

Overall, the approach to safety behaviors aims to help individuals gradually reduce reliance on ineffective coping mechanisms and develop more adaptive ways of managing anxiety, leading to greater long-term resilience and well-being.