Ontario Anxiety Clinic
Are you tired of living in fear? Do you feel that your anxiety is constantly holding you back? Do you second-guess your decisions? Are you spending a great deal of time and effort hiding your anxiety? Do you start your day hoping that you won’t have a panic attack, or that you will not encounter a social situation? Do you have unwanted, intrusive thoughts? Are you sick and tired of avoiding anything that may make you anxious?
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Anxiety is a growing problem in today’s society. An increasing number of children live in a constant state of worry. They turn into even more anxious teens and grow up to be highly anxious adults.
Our educational system tries to address this by speaking about the kids’ academic and social achievements (or the lack of those) in a confusing “positive tone” in order not to hurt their and their parents' feelings. University professors are forced to give "trigger warnings" to allow the students to step out of the classrooms if they feel the oncoming information may make them anxious or distressed. In fact everybody on campus seems to be walking on eggshells these days. Writers, bloggers, and therapists talk endlessly about ways to relax, develop higher self-esteem, and engage in positive affirmations. But, the prevalence of anxiety continues to rise. Why is that?
While all those strategies are directed at reducing the immediate symptoms of anxiety, they do little to create a shift in the person's perception of anxious thoughts and feelings. Not only those band-aid solutions fail to achieve any meaningful change, more often than not they lead to worsening of the anxiety in the long-term as they increase the perception of the anxiety being harmful, uncontrollable, and unbearable thus, making the sufferers even more anxious.
By trying hard to get rid of anxious thoughts, you make those thoughts even stickier. As you have probably already found out, what you resist, persists.
Anxiety requires a special approach in which a person needs to first understand how the anxiety operates and how it tricks him or her to avoid triggers and constantly seek out certainty. After that, the individual learns tools and techniques for confronting anxiety and facing his or her fears.
Here at Turning Point, we specialize in the treatment of anxiety disorders by using a combination of effective, evidence-based treatments. We treat panic, agoraphobia, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety, and OCD.
Our main approaches for anxiety
- CBT - Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
- ERP - Exposure and Response Prevention
- ACT - Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
If you have already seen therapists for anxiety and are sceptical about the treatment, here’s a list of things we will and will NOT be doing at our sessions.
(If you are interested to know why so many anxiety treatments don't work, please read this article.)
- There will be NO constant anxiety checklists and manualized treatments.
The therapist will talk to you, understand your specific unique problem and build a specialized treatment for you.
- You and your therapist will NOT be sitting with a book and reading chapter after boring chapter together.
Your therapist may give you materials to read at home. These materials will vary from person to person and will only be directed to a specific anxiety disorder or a unique issue that you are struggling with.
- You will NOT receive an overwhelming amount of handouts created for the general population.
When you get homework or handouts, they will be tailored very specifically to your problem. After that, the homework will be reviewed and further modified to address your issues even better.
- You will NOT spend the sessions completing endless thought records.
The sessions are dynamic. You will be taught strategies to help you learn how not to take your thoughts so seriously and instead to concentrate on living your life the best way, regardless of the thoughts, fears, or anxiety.
- There will be NO trigger warnings.
Yup. That’s right. The goal is not to teach you to be even more fearful of any triggers and to see yourself as a person who is unable to cope. The goal is to help you develop confidence and use tools to successfully cope and live the rich, connected, meaningful life, despite any external or internal triggers that may make you temporarily anxious.
Want to know more about our treatment approach or to start learning about anxiety? Read this 7-parts article about anxiety.
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