Many individuals have found themselves in situations riddled with panic and asking for anxiety help in some form or fashion. Group behaviors are often quite unsettling for individuals with acute anxiety disorders. These people often struggle to simply be present, and serene, around other people. For such individuals, anxiety, in order to be conquered must be spoken of and put out into the light. I believe that group therapy is just the prescription for people who are suffering from an anxiety disorder.

Group therapy is recommended quite often for a variety of reasons. There are several common rationales listed for encouraging a person with an anxiety disorder to enter group therapy, including:

• Group therapy functions much like primary therapy in effectiveness however it is far less expensive as the cost is balanced throughout all the individuals participating in the group.
• Group therapy allows individuals with social anxiety to interact with others in the presence of a trained mediator who can make certain that stimulus levels do not reach overload.
• Group therapy allows individuals to confront their anxiety in a therapeutic setting, working through it and diffusing panic attacks before they begin.

Considering these facts, let us take a moment to examine why group therapy should be a treatment methodology of choice for patients of anxiety disorders. Anxiety can be a crippling affliction, however it is one that gets its power from being in the shadows. Anxiety functions in the same fashion as eating disorders. When anxiety is confronted, and called out into the open, it loses much of its power. Unfortunately, for people who suffer from anxiety, the anxiety symptoms are often very over powering and cause a deep shame since they inhibit normal function so severely. In layman’s terms, an anxiety attack is an embarrassing ordeal and the sufferers of anxiety go through great lengths to conceal their anxiety from others in order to avoid that embarrassment. Group therapy allows the sufferer to shine a light onto their anxiety thus reducing its power.

I have seen individuals who are so socially inept that they do not attend any social functions and have no friends come to grips with their social anxiety by facing it in the presence of a group therapist. In what can be the most rewarding element of group therapy, these individuals get a chance to interact with others who they do not know at all. Such interactions can at first bring up a lot of emotions. However, in time, they become accustomed to interacting with them and are able to do so with less severe anxiety symptoms.

However, while simply interacting socially in a safe environment can have many benefits for people who suffer from social anxiety, the true benefit of group therapy occurs when anxiety comes up for the patient during the session. Because anxiety is so often kept in the shadows, very infrequently do these people ever get the chance to talk about their anxiety while it is happening. However, with group therapy there is the opportunity, with a therapist, to discuss the anxiety symptoms in plain sight of everyone else and to do so in an emotionally safe fashion. Because of this, the anxiety symptoms, through a process that can be difficult to describe, actually diminish greatly. Talking about anxiety has the effect of limiting the power of the anxiety. But, since the stigma associated with anxiety is so potent, individuals rarely get a chance to discuss openly because they simply do not feel comfortable to do so. As a result the anxiety, thriving in the shadows only grows stronger. Therefore, it is the frank discussion of the anxiety in value neutral setting that causes the patient to see a decrease in anxiety symptoms in their outside life.

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