Psychotherapy Combined With Pharmacological Therapy For Anxiety
Anxiety problems are very common among the general population, but unfortunately not everyone considers remedying them in an effective way with long-term effects.
On many occasions, the priority is to “get by,” putting patches on what bothers us at the moment, without thinking about the psychological wear and tear that comes with feeling that way for many months or even years. For this reason, it is common for people to go to the doctor when faced with anxiety problems with the idea that the professional will limit themselves to prescribing psychotropic drugs against anxiety.
In this article we will see why it is important that this treatment is not limited only to the consumption of medications and also incorporates psychotherapy and specifically cognitive-behavioral therapy.
What are the most used anti-anxiety psychotropic drugs?
There is a wide variety of anti-anxiety drugs, and here we are going to see the most used ones. Of course, we must keep in mind that the most popular ones do not have to be the most useful or effective for a specific person, and that it is always the doctor who supervises the particular case of each patient who has the necessary knowledge and criteria to select the drug to use.
Having said that, the most frequently used anxiolytics are these:
What are its effects?
Each type of anxiolytic psychotropic drug acts in a different way on the nervous system, since there are different ways to produce similar effects in the human body. All of them cross the blood-brain barrier that separates the circulatory system from the central nervous system. and they interact with our neurons, triggering reactions in them that together usually go hand in hand with a decrease in anxiety or its associated problematic symptoms.
However, since the active ingredients of these drugs are not intelligent entities that are clear about the objective of the treatment, they sometimes interact in an unexpected way with nerve cells or other parts of the body and give way to unwanted side effects. That is why the treatment of anxiety through psychotropic drugs should always be prescribed and supervised by doctors.
And what is cognitive-behavioral therapy?
As its name indicates, cognitive-behavioral therapy is a therapeutic intervention model in which action is taken on both the person’s observable behaviors and their system of ideas and beliefs (that is, their cognitive processes).
Through this type of techniques and strategies that act through the double means of the physical and the mental, psychologists We help people develop patterns of thinking and behavior that promote mental health and the ability to regulate one’s own emotions effectively.
Advantages of combining psychotropic drugs with cognitive-behavioral therapy for anxiety
These are the most notable advantages of resorting to the treatment of anxiety using anxiolytic-type psychotropic drugs and, at the same time, carrying out treatment through cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy.
1. Learn to know yourself better
Cognitive behavioral therapy involves knowing oneself better and one’s own and contextual processes that are influencing the maintenance of the problem to be treated. We achieve this both in the psychologist-patient meeting sessions and through the tasks to be carried out by the latter between sessions.
Thus, by seeing in a more detailed and realistic way those aspects of daily life that were reinforcing the problem without us realizing it, we gain power to influence our mental health and combat the discomfort and its associated symptoms more effectively.
2. Stop depending on the schedule of drug consumption
For many people who try to overcome anxiety through the use of psychotropic drugs, knowing when the effects of these medications begin to diminish gives them an extra reason for worry and fear.
For example, there are cases in which these people are more predisposed to experience anxiety problems just because they know that in about 20 minutes the effects of the anxiolytics they took will have practically disappeared, despite not being able to take more pills until a certain time. because of the doctor’s instructions. It is to a certain extent understandable that this occurs in those cases in which psychotropic drugs are seen as the only remedy for the psychological disorder that has developed.
Fortunately, If we combine pharmacological treatment with psychotherapy, the recovery of health status becomes “two-legged” and the idea that the effects of anti-anxiety medications will fade do not cause as much concern.
3. Modify habits to promote psychological well-being
Cognitive-behavioral therapy rarely addresses only the symptoms for which the person has come to see a psychologist. As a general rule, the aim is to produce a global change in the patient’s psychological well-being. Ultimately, the self-care and emotion regulation skills that patients enhance in therapy will not be applied only to that specific problem that made them feel very bad, but will be put to work in the rest of the areas of life. your day to day.
Furthermore, even when this is not explicitly stated, in most cases The remission of the symptoms that caused the most discomfort produces a domino effect in other areas of life of the person, which favors the ability to be happy and feel in harmony with oneself.
4. Being able to adapt behavior if circumstances change
Psychotropic drugs do not react to the transformations that our environment experiences: if we go from suffering anxiety about not having a job to suffering anxiety about having a new job that we do not want to lose, probably the action of the medication will not adapt to this new circumstance. This is partly why it is common to find the need to change medication, starting again with another product.
Instead, With cognitive-behavioral therapy, these sudden changes in daily life do not mean a stop. since the transition from one series of exercises and habits to another occurs much more smoothly, so that the patient does not stop benefiting from the accumulated progress that he has managed to achieve up to that moment.
5. It does not mean exposing yourself to serious side effects
Cognitive-behavioral therapy applied to anxiety problems does not present a significant risk of serious side effects in the vast majority of patients, something that clearly differentiates it from pharmacological treatment, in which there is always a risk to be taken into account (although the danger is attenuated by the fact of having medical supervision and being able to modify the treatment quickly following your instructions).
Are you looking for psychological assistance?
If you think you are suffering from anxiety problems and want to remedy them by going to professionals, I invite you to contact me.
I am a psychologist specialized in the cognitive-behavioral model and I have been helping both individuals and companies for many years; Through a process of several sessions, I can “train” you to learn to manage your emotional states and the negative behavioral consequences of complications such as generalized anxiety, work stress, phobias, etc. In this way, you will learn to modify your habits and behavior so that the problem you are experiencing loses strength until you can overcome it in the short or medium term.
You can count on my services both in person at my office in Madrid and online through video calls; On this page are my contact information.
