Why Coping Skills Aren’t Always Enough to Heal Anxiety
Anxiety Therapy in Colorado Springs
Why Does My Anxiety Keep Coming Back?
Many people tell me, "I know a lot of coping skills, so why does my anxiety keep coming back?" The short answer is that coping skills help you manage anxiety, but they don't always address what's causing it. That's why you can become very good at calming yourself in the moment while still finding yourself anxious again tomorrow. Healing often requires going deeper than symptom management to resolve the source of the anxiety itself.
Not long ago I was deep into an EMDR session with a client. We were using the light bar and eye movements for bilateral stimulation during reprocessing. We were in a deep place. Movement was happening. Emotions were surfacing, but new perspective was emerging right there with all the feelings.
Then, mid-set of eye movements, they reached out towards the light bar. This is not standard, so it caught my attention - I looked up to watch them, seemingly outside of awareness, pluck an ant off the light bar, quickly crush it between their fingertips, toss it on the floor, and continue with eye movements without missing a beat.
This is truly a testament to how the mind engages in EMDR so naturally once we get past the initial weirdness that EMDR can feel like.
But in the moment, it took me a different direction… why is there an ant in my office?
The session ended and I went to the bathroom. When I returned, there were 3 more ants on my chair. I cleaned them up and prepared for my next session.
But in the next session I spotted yet another ant on the wall.
Where did they come from? Why now??
I have a second floor office. The windows don’t open and the door is sealed for sound proofing. I work in there, I don’t live there, so it doesn’t really get messy. I routinely clean it so that it’s fresh for the stream of clients who come in and out.
Each time I saw an ant that day, I addressed it and moved on. It helped in the moment, but more kept returning. I was managing the problem but I wasn’t solving the problem.
There wasn’t a whole lot more I could do in the moment. I had back to back clients and couldn’t launch a full scale ant extermination campaign. But over the weekend, I went back in with ant spray, thoroughly cleaned everything once over, and locked up until the following week.
I never saw another ant again.
This process - cleaning up individual ants vs removing them at the source - is a lot like the difference between using coping skills for anxiety, and resolving the root cause of anxiety.
Why Coping Skills Help Anxiety (But Don’t Always Solve It)
Coping skills for anxiety definitely have a place, and it’s important to have a handful that you know work for you consistently.
At the start of therapy, I help clients who come in with anxiety identify and start using coping skills within our first few sessions. I always say that it may take us time to resolve what’s causing the anxiety, but we can usually find relief for anxiety pretty quickly. Coping skills won’t solve the entire problem, but they can put you back in control of the problem - and when you feel a greater sense of control, everything else we do is a little bit easier.
Within a few sessions, nearly all of my clients experience significant relief from anxiety.
But relief is not the same as healing. It’s a first step, but it’s not the end of the process. Relief can lift the fog enough to get to the deeper work of resolving anxiety at the root, but without the next steps it can start to feel like always managing anxiety but never changing it. Managing each anxiety episode as it happens is like cleaning up individual ants, one at a time - they disappear temporarily, but since they haven’t been removed at the source they just keep showing up again.
You’re managing the problem, but not solving the problem. Over time, repeating this process day after day gets exhausting.
How Do You Heal Anxiety Instead of Just Managing It?
After we’ve stabilized anxiety with coping skills, we now need to follow up with a solution that addresses it at the source.
There are several evidence-based therapy approaches designed to address the root causes of anxiety rather than simply helping you cope with symptoms - the “ant spray” and deep cleaning process aimed at changing things at a deeper level so that you’re not constantly having to manage anxiety, it’s just not there in the same way anymore. The right approach depends on what's driving your anxiety in the first place.
In those same initial sessions where we’re identifying and using coping skills that bring relief and an increased sense of control, I’m also looking for what seems to be causing the problem - if we know what’s causing it, it’s a lot easier to know what to do about it. You may already have an idea, or you may have done past therapy that helped produce insight around patterns and triggers tied to your anxiety. Whether you have an inkling of the cause of your anxiety or not, we’ll collaborate together to share ideas, and then create a plan for the next steps aimed at resolving the root.
Many people don't realize that chronic anxiety is sometimes rooted in unresolved experiences rather than a lack of coping skills. Trauma isn't limited to catastrophic events - it can include childhood emotional neglect, perfectionism, chronic criticism, difficult relationships, medical trauma, grief, accidents, or other experiences that taught your nervous system to stay on high alert. When those underlying experiences are processed, anxiety often changes in a deeper and more lasting way.
How EMDR Helps Resolve Anxiety at the Root
Coping skills are designed to help you manage what you're experiencing in the present moment. EMDR has a different goal. Rather than teaching you how to calm anxiety after it's already been triggered, EMDR helps identify and reprocess the experiences that taught your nervous system to react this way in the first place. As those experiences are processed, your brain no longer interprets present-day situations through the same lens of danger.
This is one reason people are often frustrated before they begin EMDR. They tell me, "I know I'm safe," or "I know this doesn't make logical sense." They're right, and their thinking brain already understands that. But anxiety isn't always maintained by a lack of insight. Sometimes it's maintained because the nervous system hasn't fully updated. EMDR helps bridge that gap so that what you know intellectually begins to match what your mind and body experience emotionally.
EMDR therapy is often immensely helpful in resolving the experiences underlying anxiety. EMDR helps your brain reprocess distressing experiences so they are stored differently and no longer trigger the same emotional and physical reactions. These changes happen on a deep level, and most often free you up from the cycle of just managing your anxiety, creating true healing.
While EMDR is one of my favorite approaches for resolving anxiety at its source, it isn't the only tool we can use. Depending on your history and goals, we may also incorporate Internal Family Systems (IFS), somatic approaches, or insight-oriented therapy. Rather than forcing one method to fit everyone, I tailor treatment to what will help you move from simply managing anxiety to experiencing genuine, lasting change.
Can Anxiety Be Cured?
It’s important to know that we all experience anxiety from time to time, and we need it.
A healthy level of anxiety is:
Situation-specific - you can identify what’s causing it
Temporary - it passes within minutes or hours rather than persisting for days or weeks
Alerts us to potentially dangerous situations - it makes sense given something you are facing that requires action or a decision
That kind of anxiety is part of your hard-wired survival response, and you need it.
The kind of anxiety that comes up with certain triggers but feels out of proportion to the situation, or the sense of generalized anxiety that is always there even when you can’t pinpoint anything that’s wrong, can change in very significant ways as we address it in therapy. Together we can identify what approach will solve the problem, so that you can move forward feeling more free, and get out of the exhausting cycle of managing the problem instead of changing it.
I'm glad I didn't have to spend unlimited time walking around my office crushing ants one by one. That would have been overwhelming, and it never would have solved the problem. Removing them at the source changed everything.
Anxiety often works the same way. Coping skills are incredibly valuable, and we need to have them available when needed. But if you're tired of feeling like your life revolves around managing anxiety, it may be time to look beneath the surface. When we understand what's driving anxiety in the first place, real healing becomes possible - and life starts to feel less like constant maintenance and more like freedom.
