Stress Therapy
Has Chronic Stress Begun To Overtake Your Life?
Are you too stressed out to enjoy the activities you normally love?
Do you suffer from racing thoughts, insomnia, fatigue, and irritability?
Does your mood seem like it’s inconsistent and all over the place?
Stress is a natural part of life, but if it starts to control your decision-making and affect your ability to enjoy yourself, that’s a sign that it may be too powerful for its own good. When you can’t control your stress, it can impact your physical and mental health. You may experience muscle tension, rapid heart rate, lack of appetite, and a chronic inability to relax. Perhaps you have difficulty focusing at work or in school. As a result, you may be considering therapy for stress reduction.
Unmanaged Stress Can Prevent You From Having Fulfilling Relationships
The more stressed out you are, the harder it is to be present for the ones you love. Because you feel anxious, keyed up, and on edge, you may find yourself more irritable and impatient than usual. You might have a short fuse and snap at other people over seemingly insignificant things. In this way, your unmanaged stress could lead to strained relationships with friends, family, and coworkers.
If you want to learn to manage your stress more effectively so that you can focus on what’s truly important to you, we encourage you to connect with us. Here at Rocky Mountain Counseling Collective, our goal is twofold: to help you enjoy more stress-free moments in life and hone your coping strategies for regulating stress when it arises. We’ll empower you with the skills to both tolerate and reduce difficult emotions, enabling you to feel lighter, freer, and more confident in yourself.
It Is Impossible To Live A Stress-Free Life In Today’s World
In our busy, fast-paced modern world, stress is as common as apple pie. There is significant pressure to get ahead and be successful. Chronic stress and anxiety are an understandable response to the environment around us. Most of us juggle many roles—spouse, friend, partner, colleague—and have little time to focus on self-care. Chronic stress becomes such an ever-present facet of daily life that we hardly notice it and can hardly imagine a life without it.
The truth is that a little bit of stress can be adaptive, helping us stay safe in potentially dangerous moments and reminding us to prepare for challenging situations. But when stress starts to inhibit our functioning and prevent us from focusing or getting things done, that’s when it becomes maladaptive. Unmanaged stress can consume anyone if left unchecked. That’s why it’s so important to seek support and learn skills for de-stressing and regulating painful emotions.
On Our Own, We Often Turn To Maladaptive Strategies To Cope With Stress
Many of us try to escape stress as soon as it presents itself. We try to “numb” our feelings instead of trying to work through them. We might be tempted to turn to drugs, alcohol, excessive screen time, and other unhealthy coping behaviors. But in the end, these habits only reinforce stress. Since they don’t address the root cause of stress, they allow it to fester, grow, and maintain its hold on our lives.
A mental health professional can help you get to the core of your stress and understand why, how, and when it arises. They can support you in developing strategies that are adaptive in nature and allow you to stay more grounded during life’s stressful moments.
Therapy Can Help You Achieve Stress Relief And Feel Like Yourself Again
The very act of discussing and externalizing something challenging can be immensely liberating. This is the true power of therapy—it provides a safe container for you to verbally process difficult emotions. Therapy can help you take a bird’s eye view of your life, empowering you to achieve a healthier perspective and understand yourself and your emotions on a deeper level. In collaboration with your therapist, you will gain tools, skills, and strategies to reduce the negative impact that stress has on every area of your life.
Think of therapy like going for a walk—it’s a chance to regularly prioritize and work on your emotional wellbeing just as going for a walk can help you improve your physical wellbeing. Your therapist will be with you every step of the way to hold you accountable and make sure you meet your goals for stress reduction.
What To Expect In Stress Treatment Sessions
First, we will look at the direct causes of your stress so that we can understand what creates a stressful environment for you. Once a full and clear picture has been established, the work will shift toward developing and honing specific skills that reduce your stress. Along the way, we will help you reacquaint yourself with a mindfulness and self-care routine.
Ultimately, our therapists recognize that each client has a unique set of circumstances that lead to overwhelming stress. Therefore, we take an individualized approach to helping you manage and lower your stress levels. Some of the main approaches we use include Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which can help you reframe the negative thought patterns fueling your stress, and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), which focuses on learning to tolerate and reduce difficult emotions.
For many clients, we also utilize knowledge from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). The goal of ACT is to help you define and prioritize your values so that you can achieve a more mindful way of being in the world. When you can live according to your values, it becomes easier to accept what you can’t control and commit to changing what you can.
Over the years, we’ve had the opportunity to see many clients enter therapy feeling overwhelmed, only to take back their power and feel like themselves again. Our goal is for you to experience the same level of empowerment. We want to help you get your life back and start thriving instead of just surviving.
You May Have Some Concerns About Therapy For Stress And Anxiety…
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We understand that you are overwhelmed and feel that nothing can change this current moment in your life. Whether you’re dealing with a new baby, a new job, a new diagnosis, a breakup, or any other stressful situation, the fact that you are feeling overwhelmed is perfectly normal. Therapy may not be able to change what’s happening around you, but it can help you stay calm, centered, and present in the midst of life’s storms.
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Your time is one of the most precious commodities you have. We understand and respect that. Nonetheless, many of our clients find that going to therapy actually helps them feel more balanced and reduces the amount of time they spend engaging in negative habits. The therapeutic process supports a reprioritization toward your needs, goals, and values, and that is work that’s worth making time for.
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Many clients tell us that they begin feeling relief as soon as they reach out. Taking that first step and asking for support can be the beginning of your journey toward reducing your stress and living the life you desire. That said, it’s important to note that the therapeutic process can take time. Our practice will work with you collaboratively to ensure that your needs are being met in a way that honors your time and resources.
Let Us Help You Get Back To Thriving
If you want to learn more effective stress management skills and take back control of your life, we’re confident that our evidence-based approach to therapy can help you do so. To connect with us, call 720-252-0345 or email us today to schedule a free 30-minute consultation.
