How to Stay Committed Between Sessions with an An Online Anxiety Therapist: Practical Tips for Follow-Through
How can we take our goals and create sustainable, practical plans for action?
If you’ve decided to seek support from an anxiety therapist, it probably means you are tired of how anxiety has been chipping away at you for a while and are ready for some real change. Getting started with on-line therapy, or in-person sessions, is a commitment. It takes your time, your energy and financial resources. So, it’s wise to consider how to get the most of out of your investment!
Finding an anxiety therapist that is a good fit for you, is an important first step. And you’ll want to think about how to get the most of the sessions themselves. But, in my opinion, the biggest payoff comes from what you do between sessions.
why Follow Through Matters for Lasting PRogress
Time is a limited resource. Make the most of what you have.
There are 168 hours in a week. Most people come to therapy once per week, for one hour. I haven’t been in a math class in a long time, but even I know that this one hour is a very small percentage of your time in a week. So, what you’re doing in those 167 other hours in a week is a pretty big deal.
Anything that we are learning to do, do differently, or improve is going to take practice. That goes for learning a language, playing a sport or instrument, cooking, or managing your anxiety. It’s hard to get a lot better at something with just one hour per week. It’s way better than zero hours per week, but every little bit beyond that one hour helps enormously. I’ve taken up tap dancing again recently and go to a weekly, hour-long class. But it’s the little bits of practice at home that seem to be making a big difference. Even just 15 minutes, most days of the week, means that my feet and my brain are getting more familiar, faster and more confident. When I show up at class, I’ve already made progress from when I left class the previous week. There is no plan for me to “do” anything with tap. I’m not going to perform or teach. I just like it. And the better I get at it, the more I like doing it.
Consistency is KEY when it comes to lasting change. Doing things regularly, over and over, builds structure, routine, expertise, resilience and confidence. And these things build momentum. When we feel more skillful and confident, we take on more to keep growing and get better and better at what we’re doing. Sometimes people think that intensity is the most important thing for making progress: go all in/go big or go home/channel that beast mode. But consistency beats intensity every time. It’s the lesson of the old tortoise and hare fable: slow and steady wins the race.
Common reasons motivation wanes between sessions
Even knowing all the benefits of consistency, it’s completely normal for motivation to ebb and flow, and often wane between sessions. A client can finish a session and have every intention in the world to practice their anxiety management skills throughout the week, and still find themselves coming in the next week without having followed through with those intentions. There are lots of good reasons for this.
Stress builds during the week and it feels like there’s no time for this.
Working on anxiety skills can be hard and sometimes we avoid what’s hard or anxiety-provoking.
Self-doubt or perfectionism creep in and we stop doing things if we feel like we can’t do them “right”.
Motivation itself is always variable and we often count on it too much to make things happen.
We forget.
These are all extremely common reasons for why motivation and follow-through can bottom out between sessions. The good news is that there are ways of working on reducing all these barriers.
The role of an anxiety therapist in maryland in building accountability
Collaboration and teamwork help to provide encouragement, accountability and support.
Knowing that motivation ebbs and flows, it can be helpful to get support from others so we don’t have to just muscle through on our own.
Collaboration strengthens committment
Whether it’s about getting more physical activity, setting time aside to study, or working on anxiety management skills, most of us follow through with our commitments to these plans better when we are collaborating with someone else. It’s like positive peer pressure. We don’t want to be the one that’s letting down the team. We have some ego involved and don’t want to come back and say “I didn’t do the thing”. We can leverage these tendencies for our benefit.
Working with an anxiety therapist can provide some of this support, in a non-judgmental way. A client and therapist can partner together on what sounds like a reasonable plan for working on anxiety management skills between sessions and then follow-up the next time they meet. Knowing that the therapist is going to ask about it is sometimes enough of a nudge to prompt some action. But even if it doesn’t, it can help clients be honest with themselves and their therapist about their barriers to follow-through, which can then be discussed.
Personalized strategies that fit your lifestyle
There is no one-size-fits-all plan for working on reducing anxiety between sessions. As a Maryland therapist, I know that someone who has a 5-day/week commute around the beltway may need a different plan than someone that works from home. A college student with irregular hours will have different constraints and opportunities than someone with a very consistent work schedule. Collaboration between a client and therapist takes all these lifestyle factors into account to create and adjust plans for between-session progress, individually tailored for each person’s circumstances. I remember a client that was a busy working mother of a young child and the right plan for her at first was, literally, one minute per day of mindful breathing in the bathroom each morning. It was what she could reasonably fit into her hectic schedule. A good plan stretches a client a bit, but also sets them up for success.
Practical steps to stay engaged in online anxiety therapy
Remembering, as noted above, that consistency is key to steady progress, it can be helpful to think about regular weekly and daily habits that can help you keep making progress in your anxiety treatment, between sessions. Here are some possible suggestions:
Schedule therapy “homework” time weekly, if there’s a specific task you’re working on like employing CBT skills for anxiety.
Use quick mindfulness check-ins. Feel free to use this quick (5 minute) guided mindfulness recording of mine.
Journal challenges and wins throughout the week. Most of us forget to take enough credit for our wins and progress.
Review session notes before the next meeting, if you like to take notes during/after therapy sessions.
Wise use of digital tools to track progress
Most of the time, I think that we need to spend a whole lot less time on our digital devices. But, used wisely, they can also make it easier to track our progress between session and over time. For better or worse, most of us have a device with us practically at all times. So, it’s readily available resource for reminders and keeping track of info in real time. The How We Feel app is a free tool that can help people name and understand their emotions, and keep track of emotional trends. This can be really helpful because if I ask someone how they have been feeling over the last week, they are most likely to remember to big, standout, high and low emotions. But someone tracking their emotions more regularly might notice patterns that are incredibly helpful to understand.
As noted in the list above about why follow-through on plans can be challenging, it’s easy to just forget even heartfelt plans. We get to the end of the day, or week, and think, “Shoot! I was going to do that thing”. Scheduling in reminders, or time carved out in our digital calendars, can help prompt us to remember the plan we made and agreed to.
Overcoming obstacles to consistency
Even when we know better, it can still be a challenge to do better. Since we’ve agreed that actually being consistent with follow through is just HARD, let’s go over some ideas to help try and make things a little bit easier.
As mentioned above, it’s easy to just forget things. Have a prompt that works for you. Some people like a visual cue (I put my phone on top of an item that I have to remember to bring with me), some do well with an alarm that goes off. Play around with this and see what might jog your memory.
Getting new habits to stick is often made easier by pairing them with well established habits (when you brush your teeth or make coffee every morning, etc). More about making and breaking habits in this older blog post.
Focus on progress, not perfection. If your goal is to do something three times a week and you only get to it once a week, take the win that it’s better than zero times per week. Look at what helped that time be successful. Change is often slow, and can go through setbacks, so pay attention to the effort along the way, not just outcomes.
It can be discouraging to acknowledge that you weren’t able to follow through with a plan you had made, or that you are finding it challenging to address what isn’t working for you in your life. Please treat yourself kindly and focus on self-compassion. Guilt and shame are terrible motivators. Kindness and compassion can help keep us engaged for the long haul of growth and change.
The benefits of online anxiety therapy for maryland clients
While some clients really enjoy coming into the College Park therapy office for in-person sessions, others have found that the option for online anxiety therapy has been a game changer. Clients can join their therapy session from anywhere in the state of Maryland, which means they don’t have to factor in commute times, weather or traffic delays when setting aside time for therapy. This leaves more time for other things that can help make a difference in reducing anxiety too, such as time for physical activity, rest or having fun with others. That greater flexibility and convenience also makes it easier to stay consistent with therapy, even if it’s pouring rain, you have a cold, or there’s construction on Route 1 (again!). Other benefits of online therapy also include being able to choose the right therapist for you from a wider pool of possible choices.
Partner with a maryland Anxiety Therapist
Are you ready to make meaningful progress towards reducing your anxiety? I offer specialized anxiety therapy appointments in-person, located in College Park, MD. Online anxiety therapy appointments are available anywhere in Maryland. Contact me to schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation to get started towards a life with more peace and less anxiety.
Other services I offer include hypnotherapy, mindfulness-based therapy, life coaching, and support for LGBTQIA+ clients. Additional information is available on my home page.
About the author, an anxiety therapist:
Beth Charbonneau, LCSW-C, is a Maryland therapist, specializing in anxiety therapy and treatment. With over 20 years of experience, she brings a holistic approach to calming both the mind and the body, and helping her clients feel empowered to find more joy in their lives. Learn more about her counseling practice here.
