Why Anxiety Treatments Fail and How to Make Them Work
My experience with anxiety is both personal and professional. After a great deal of exploration as a young man to find the cure, I stumbled upon a concept that relieved the amount of suffering I seemed to be experiencing from anxiety.
Later in life, when I became a psychotherapist, I recognized anxiety as the number one complaint for which individuals sought mental health care. I have been taught a number of different techniques throughout my formal training and the gold standard was always considered Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).
Why CBT and Standard Anxiety Treatments Often Fall Short
CBT sometimes seemed to be a powerful technique to help people limit their suffering from anxiety. I quickly discovered that this gold standard, more often than not, did not seem to provide any form of permanent relief — in fact, in many cases, it was a complete failure. Clients would return with escalated anxiety months sometimes years later, but most often, they would return.
Over decades I explored various other formal techniques through continuing education, Hypnosis, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Exposure Therapy, Narrative Therapy, Rational Behavioural Therapy, Meditation, Somatic (Body Based) Skills training (i.e. Breathing Exercises), TAPPING, and a whole lot more. The result was the same, some worked well or not at all, and none seemed to last.
Everything seemed to not do much more than put a band-aid on the problem!
So what happened in my office in those days and continues to happen in almost all therapist offices today?
The Real Reason Anxiety Treatments Don’t Stick
First, we need to recognize our brains are all wired differently. No two of us think alike, so it’s not reasonable to assume that there would be a one-size-fits-all solution.
But when a solution seemed to fit, why did it never seem to stick long-term? Good question, read on…
Second, and this is the magic bullet. (Read carefully because we really need to find the humility and curiosity to embrace this magic bullet….)
If our differences mean there is no one-size -fits -all solution, our commonality is where we find the key to why that which seemed to work, never lasts.
Buckle in, there is a little nerdy neuroscience here, but you deserve to know where this is coming from as it makes it easier to embrace. If science is not your bag, don’t worry, I promise to make this palatable!
At the base of our skull is a small region of the brain, the amygdala, often called our ‘Flight/Fight Centre.’ It is a primal region of your brain that is fully developed at birth and does not continue to learn beyond that. This small but mighty system you can consider a ‘stand-alone system’ whose job is only three-fold. It’s not complex, and it’s not linked to the bigger part of your brain that does all your smart thinking and reasoning.
Here it is, just THREE things it does in a never-ending loop:
- It scans for potential danger
- It alerts you to the incoming danger
- It gets your body to run or fight.
That’s it!
Ok, so what does this mean to us who are frankly sick and tired of being sick and tired? We experience everything from uncomfortable feelings, to horrible body sensations (heart pounding, sweating, dizziness, brain fog), and full-on panic attacks. I know many of you have wound up in the emergency only to have your anxiety escalate and as team of docs and nurses worked you up for a possible heart problem, then tossed you out when your ticker proved fine with the unhelpful admonishment. “It’s just a panic attack.” Arrrrrgh!
So here is the magic bullet:
The part of your brain that causes all these fight-and-flight thoughts and feelings IS YOUR FIGHT centre, AND since this part is not linked to the rational part of your brain.
ANYTHING YOU DO TO FIGHT OFF THESE FEELINGS, FROM MEDITATION TO CBT IS A FIGHT!
And that is all this part of your brain notices — it senses you are in a fight, so does more of what it does to get you ready to fight — and you feel more of those feelings. It is a nasty circle.
STOP THE FIGHT! BREAK THE CIRCLE!
So how? This is where it can get a bit tricky. We have been wired to run from and or fight off things that hurt. This includes these anxiety symptoms. We have seen therapists and tried all the tricks and tips to fight these feeling off! Stop the fight and break the circle.
And since you’ve had a lot of practice fighting this off, maybe even with a ‘professional’ this can be a hard habit to break.
Find ways, perhaps with the help of an informed therapist or coach, or even by simply naming the part of your brain something cute and simple. Use any of the multiple tools or a good book you may know to comfort and coddle this little primitive part that is only trying to do its job. I call mine Homer. Homer is like a colicky baby, you may have no idea why he is screaming, but fighting with an infant never calms the little one down. A warm bottle may do the trick, but only as a pacifier, not as a weapon! Use your tools with kind and loving intentions.
Likely, you have been fighting this for years, and fighting these feelings is a well-ingrained habit. Breaking habits can be hard, it takes a ton of ‘Intention, Repetition, and Gratitude’ to break a habit, and the same is true here. This is where a good coach or therapist can come in — helping you reframe your opinion of this powerful little life-saving part of your brain, from a problem to an asset. Be kind to Homer, he’s just doing his job. He will respond in kind.
What I Built Around This Principle
After years of watching every standard treatment produce the same cycle — some relief, then a return — I stopped looking for a better way to fight anxiety and started building a way to end the fight entirely.
That work became the Anxiety Release Protocol (ARP™).
ARP is a structured 12-week process built specifically around what you just read. Instead of training your brain to push anxiety away, it guides you step by step through a process that works with that primal amygdala response rather than against it. Every component — from the foundational mindset work through to the self-regulation skills — is designed with one principle at its core: stop the fight.
The results I have seen over many years of practice are why I specialize in this method above all others. Clients who had spent years in CBT, on medication, or cycling through other modalities found lasting change — not because they learned to manage anxiety better, but because they stopped fueling it.
If what you’ve read here resonates, the ARP page walks through the full five-step framework and what the process actually involves.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does CBT fail for anxiety in so many people?
CBT teaches you to identify and challenge anxious thoughts — which sounds logical, but it requires engaging your rational brain to fight a response that originates in a part of the brain that has no connection to rational thought. The act of challenging, resisting, or trying to reframe the anxiety is registered by the amygdala as a threat response, which amplifies rather than reduces the anxiety cycle. CBT can be genuinely useful for many things, but for deeply ingrained anxiety it often produces short-term relief followed by a return of symptoms.
If fighting anxiety makes it worse, how do you stop it without fighting it?
You work with the nervous system instead of against it. That means learning to recognize the amygdala’s response without reacting to it as a danger signal, building self-regulation skills that calm the system physiologically, and gradually retraining your relationship with the sensations anxiety produces. This takes time and proper guidance — it is a process, not a technique.
How long does it take to see real results from anxiety treatment?
It depends on how long the pattern has been ingrained and which approach is used. Techniques that suppress or manage symptoms can produce quick short-term relief but rarely address the root pattern. A structured protocol that works at the level of the anxiety response itself typically requires consistent work over several months before lasting change sets in. In my experience with the ARP, clients begin to notice a meaningful shift within the first few weeks, with deeper change consolidating over the full 12-week process.
What makes the Anxiety Release Protocol different from other anxiety treatments?
Most treatments are built around reducing or controlling anxiety. ARP is built around ending the fight with it entirely. The distinction sounds subtle but the outcome is very different — one produces managed anxiety, the other produces freedom from the cycle.
Ready to Stop the Fight?
If you have spent years trying to manage anxiety and keep finding yourself back where you started, the problem likely isn’t your effort. It’s the approach.
I work with individuals across Ontario — in Toronto, Collingwood, and virtually across select provinces — who are ready to stop cycling through treatments and commit to a process that works differently.