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Places to Find Help for Anxiety

Schools do not teach many of the important skills that most people need to live life. Schools are excellent resources for increasing one's academic knowledge and are also minimally decent for imbuing children with a certain level of morality, however, what schools fail to teach are life smarts, or “street smarts” as many people call it. When has a school ever taught a person to seek help from a counselor, or how students can effectively manage a mental condition that many suffer from, such as alcoholism or anxiety? The only thing students learn about counseling in school is that only the most messed up and troublesome of children ever go to see the counselor, and therefore, the counselor is the place of last resort, when in fact, counseling is very beneficial to many people with varying difficulties in their lives (learn about the importance of counseling in ASN's Why Counseling and The Benefits of Counseling).

So, how do people go about learning where to find help for whatever problem it is that they find in their lives? Well, people are generally left on their own, and most people only seek help if their lives are affected by a particular condition, and many people are not aware how hampered their lives are until they begin to seek help. Most advice is that there is help out there, but where exactly is it and how can it be found? In the case of social anxiety, tons of resources exist in almost any region.

For those that live in metropolitan areas, the search for help is the easiest. The first place to look for help is to call a local counseling center, and it can be any kind of counseling center, such as an addiction or rehab center. These places have professionals who are in the know and would be able to start a person off in the right direction and push them toward places that would have anxiety counseling. Finding an anxiety counselor should be the first key for anyone with knowledge of that problem. The counselor will know where to find any and every anxiety support in the community that he or she works in, and this process can be so overwhelming at first that it can be very beneficial to have an experienced guide to help the newbie along the way. Reasonably priced counseling can be hard to find, but if one calls around at various counseling agencies and asks for a “sliding-scale” counselor, most counselors will be more than happy to show the client in the direction of a sliding-scale counselor. Another good place to call in order to get started would be the local social services department, as professionals there would know great places to go for support as well.

For those who want additional supports to a counselor, or for those who are interested in avoiding a counselor and doing the work themselves, the next place to search would be to look for some sort of anxiety support group. NAMI (The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill) has many branches in most metropolitan areas, and is typically involved in running general or specific anxiety support groups, depending upon the size of the community. Another option would be to check out the local library or community center, which might have some groups advertised on a bulleting board or website.

Another good option for anxiety support and help is through books. Books that are purporting to sell some miracle system that will help people conquer their anxiety in days, weeks, or months are sales scams and should be avoided. What seems to be most powerful for many people is books that are about a person's experience with anxiety – what caused it, how they got through it, and how their life is different now. It can be very comforting to know that many people have had the same, if not worse, experience.

The final place to look for anxiety support, and this always holds true, is the Internet. While it has many great online communities and anxiety forums, the Internet takes away from genuine interaction between two people (for more on anxiety forums, see ASN's The Purpose of Anxiety Forums). Anxiety forums are best viewed as part of a whole, and they should make up the smallest piece of the pie when looking for support. However, for many people, these are the only social outlets that they have, and they are better than no social support at all, although the long-term goal is to have these be the smallest piece of the pie as noted before.

For those in rural areas, unfortunately, options are more limited for anxiety support. Perhaps, if one is lucky, there is a counseling center that is nearby, otherwise, a great option is again the county or city social services, as they will know where to refer people who have difficulty with anxiety. In the case of those in rural and extremely rural areas, it might make more sense to have the anxiety forum piece of the pie be a little larger than those in the metropolitan areas, as social interaction comes at more of a premium.

In sum, this is the process one can follow to find social support for anxiety in any community. At worst, it should take a couple weeks to find all the possible supports in a given location. The real trick is finding which supports help a particular person better. Counseling, support groups, books, and forums make up a large part of the pie but not all of it (see ASN's The Anxiety Bible for more information about the rest of the pie), and the size of each pie that helps to heal the person is different for each and every person engaging in the recovery process. Good luck to everyone who is finding anxiety support!

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