“Talk Therapy Turns Hysterical Misery Into Mundane Unhappiness.” – Sigmund Freud

Talk therapy has been of great help for several anxiety sufferers in the easement of their emotional and mental challenges. There have however been several cases where anxiety has actually worsened due to talk therapy and eventually resulted in other emotional and mental issues.

Below are some of the ways in which anxiety group therapy or anxiety talk therapy can make the anxiety worse

Continually talking about one’s past problems with a group or a therapist can re-traumatize the anxiety sufferer.

Before treating any kind of mental condition, such as anxiety, therapists typically carry out a psycho-bio-social examination of people with anxiety. Such assessments involve talking to the sufferer about their past, which typically begins at the first vivid memory of an event in their lives, and gradually moves forward from one event to another till the present situation.

Therapists have been trained to follow the above method to alleviate anxiety and other emotional and mental challenges as it is believed that only resolution of the past problems can help effectively resolve current anxiety triggering issues.

“The continued insistence by conductors of an anxiety group therapy or by certain therapists on anxiety sufferers to keep talking about past events in detail can cause so much discomfort, distress, and pain that the sufferers either stop the therapy or seek the assistance of some other therapist.”

Repeated re-living of the past trauma has been known to cause more distress and grief to the sufferers as compared to the pain experienced during the traumatic incident of the past. And since tools that encompass visual imagery and emotion (the language of the subconscious mind) are not utilized, it’s quickly understood how change doesn’t occur simply by using words.

There is no doubt about the fact that only acknowledgement about the presence of an underlying mental and/or emotional issue can help find a solution and an effective treatment. However, when the approach about talking about the past becomes unbearably persistent while the anxiety sufferer continues to deal with his/her current problems, then it will most likely worsen the underlying anxiety and other mental and emotional issues.

Talking about one’s anxiety with an incorrect anxiety therapy group or support group can worsen anxiety.

Talk therapy or group talk therapy in an incorrect support group has been known to aggravate anxiety in a sufferer. For instance, if an anxiety sufferer who illegally uses marijuana to ease his/her levels of anxiety gets put by the authorities in a talk therapy/support group that is made of a several heroin addicts, then the sufferer is at greater risk to experiencing exacerbation of his/her anxiety and other mental/emotional problems.

The fact about support groups is that constant and continuous engagement with a talk therapy group makes the participants of that group become more like the vibe of that group. It’s not a solution, it’s maintenance.

This means that consistent engagement in any environment causes the participants of that environment to become more and more symbiotic to the environment that they have to consistently and regularly be a part of.

Thus, continuous exposure to an incorrect group talk therapy will cause anxiety sufferers to become more like the environment of that group leading to worsening of their anxiety. For example look at social media today and the forums and groups that people suffering from anxiety find themselves in. Practical solutions are never discussed, only the ailments, which further adds to the problem.