Purpose of Anxiety Support Groups

Support groups for those with anxiety disorders fall into two distinct types: therapy and social support. The two distinct types of support group also have distinctly different purposes as regards to the kind of support and assistance they provide to those suffering with anxiety disorders. Therapy groups have a specific structure; whereas social support groups have a loose structure or may even have no structure at all. Both have some level of educational component involved; but otherwise the focus differs between these two types of anxiety disorder support groups.

Distinctions

• Therapy groups deal in a more formal mode of assisting the anxiety disorder sufferer with actual approaches to managing the disorder through specific therapeutic exercise. Social support groups, however, provide more of a haven where the group addresses the psychological and social impact of suffering from an anxiety disorder. Social support groups have a twofold purpose of education and social support for the anxiety disorder sufferer as described at the Socialanxiety support website.

Education

• Social support groups primarily deal in disseminating educational information. Further, social support groups restrict themselves in these educational efforts to educating only those who suffer from anxiety disorder. A common situation among sufferers from anxiety disorders is a perception that they are alone in their experience, which is far from the case. This disorder has become quite common in our modern world. Alleviating that sense of alienation has considerable value in supporting the recovery of those with anxiety disorders; and social support groups for anxiety disorder sufferers seek to promote that circumstance by bringing together individuals who suffer from anxiety disorder as described at the Bodymindandhealth website.

Social

• Social support groups also have a purpose of building up sufferers from the disorder by way of validating their experience through a common context of sufferers. Nonsufferers find understanding the disorder next to impossible, and may impose well-meaning but devastating interactions with the sufferer, such as being firm and advising the individual along the lines of "just get over it." Social support groups have as a purpose raising individual awareness that such reactions are, indeed, among the worst ways to approach an anxiety disorder sufferer, in doing so, validating the individual's own experiences.

Bevahorial

• Therapy support groups have a different purpose. A therapy support group seeks to provide anxiety sufferers with the tools to manage their disorder more effectively. The focus in such groups is on repetitive practice of behaviors for appropriately dealing with situations that engender anxiety crises; and providing a safe group setting for the practice of such coping behaviors.

Coping

• The primary purpose of the therapy support group for anxiety disorder is to assist the afflicted individual in developing coping mechanisms. Therapy support groups for anxiety use a method known as cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) in a group environment to treat individuals afflicted with social anxiety disorder.