Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy deals with interacting with a mental health professional, such as a psychologist, psychiatrist or someone who is trained in counseling of mental health issues and conditions. They can help to find out what triggers anxiety disorders and panic disorders. They also work to see what is the best path to take in order to combat the symptoms.


Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, is very effective in the treatment of anxiety disorders. Thinking patterns are changed with the cognitive portion. The way people react to anxiety related issues is the behavioral portion.

People that have panic disorder can use cognitive-behavioral therapy to distinguish between heart attacks and panic attacks. CBT can also be used to help them overcome social phobia. It can help them to realize that everyone is not watching your every move, nor is everyone judging them.

There are techniques that they can learn to use for positive exposure. These techniques will also help them not to be so sensitive about anxiety triggers and symptoms.

Therapy for those who suffer from is to get them to have contact with germs or dirt on their hands. They should wait around a while before they wash them. The therapist will help them deal with the anxiety that follows before they wash their hands. The more they do it, the more the anxiety goes away.

If a person suffers from social phobia, their therapy would be to spend time with others in social situations. They should resist trying to leave when they start to feel uncomfortable. They won’t feel ashamed or feel that people are judging them.

If someone has PTSD, their therapy could be drumming up that event that caused them a lot of trauma and pain in their life. This can help to diminish the fear that they are feeling inside.

With cognitive-behavioral therapy, the therapists will provide ways of how you can implement deep breathing exercises and other exercises to get rid of anxiety. Exercises can help you to relax in tense and stressful situations.

Phobias have been treated with behavioral therapy that forces a person to expose themselves in a way that brings out their true fears and apprehensions. The face up to whatever it was that they feared.

It may be looking at photos or listening to voices on tape. It could also mean a face-to-face encounter with that person. The therapist will accompany them for support so that they can face their fears head on.

With CBT, this therapy must connect directly with the anxieties of the person and geared toward what they need. The only thing that will affect them is how uncomfortable they will feel because of the heightened anxiety. However, that is only temporary.

This type of therapy lasts for about three months or 12 weeks. It can be done as a one-on-one, or it can be with a group of people that are suffering from similar conditions. For social phobia, group therapy is better because a person will have to interact with other people. For certain anxiety disorders, medication may be required in order for the treatment to be effective.

Explain my Brain: Fear

Erene Stergiopoulos

Fear comes in many forms. Whether it’s the pre-exam jitters or a deathly dread of insects, fear can be an important factor in the way we interact with the world.

A healthy dose of fright is a natural part of any lifestyle. It can even be exciting—why else watch horror movies? But when fear starts to get in the way of everyday functioning, it becomes problematic. Psychologists group conditions resulting from overwhelming fear under a diagnostic class called anxiety disorders, which involve excessive apprehension and anxious behaviours.

Phobias are among the most common anxiety disorders. They involve an intense and irrational fear of an object or situation that does not actually present any kind of danger. Some of the most common phobias involve insects and animals, tight spaces (claustrophobia), heights (acrophobia), and water (hydrophobia)—but people can develop phobias for practically anything. Another type of phobic disorder is social phobia, which is the fear of social situations, meeting new people, and feeling embarrassed or humiliated in front of others.

The best treatment for phobias is exposure to the feared object or situation. Whether it’s snakes, balloons or public speaking, there’s no need for pills or extensive therapy. The most effective way to get over it is, well, to get over it. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. Individuals with phobias often experience panic attacks when they are exposed to their feared object, and in some cases suffer these attacks simply by thinking about it. Panic attacks are marked by an intense feeling of fear along with physiological reactions like trembling, palpitations, nausea, lightheadedness, and even a fear of dying.

Panic attacks are one way the body responds to a perceived threat. In general, this reaction mechanism is referred to as the fight-or-flight response. This response is regulated by the autonomic nervous system, which controls automatic and involuntary functions like heart rate and digestion. When a person encounters something that is frightening, the ANS responds by preparing physiologically to attack or flee. During a panic attack, a person’s heart rate goes up and digestion slows down so energy can be used for other, more immediate purposes.

Scientists who have studied the fight-or-flight response in animals have determined that the response has evolutionary significance. From the days when we faced the constant threat of becoming prey for a wide set of predators, humans adapted to deploy the body’s emergency resources as a means of survival. But in modern humans, this response is no longer beneficial, since most of the threats we encounter don’t require fighting or fleeing. In fact, the fight-or-flight response can work against us. It’s why your heart starts racing before writing an exam, or why your blood pressure goes up when you’re stressed out.

Along with the autonomic nervous system, a number of systems in the brain contribute to the feeling of fear. The amygdala is a key structure for processing emotions like fear and anger. Researchers have found that activity in the amygdala increases when patients are exposed to frightening objects or situations. However, while the amygdala generates the fear response, another structure of the brain located in the frontal lobes can limit it by suppressing activity in the amygdala. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to control our emotions or fears. How’s that for a reason to panic?

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My Dad was a great father figure to me..Big, strong, paid the bills and fearless! He wasn't afraid of spiders, snakes, stray dogs or thunder! I was 13 at the time that it all changed! We didn't know then but my father was about to have his first Panic Attack!

What are panic attacks?

Panic attacks may be symptoms of an anxiety disorder. These attacks are a serious health problem in the U.S. At least 1.7% of adult Americans, or about 3 million people, will have panic attacks at some time in their lives, with the peak age at which people have their first panic attack (onset) being 15 to 19 years. Another fact about panic is that this symptom is strikingly different from other types of anxiety; panic attacks are so very sudden and often unexpected, appear to be unprovoked, and are often disabling.

Once someone has had a panic attack, for example, while driving, shopping in a crowded store, or riding in an elevator, he or she may develop irrational fears, called phobias, about these situations and begin to avoid them. Eventually, the pattern of avoidance and level of anxiety about another attack may reach the point where the mere idea of doing things that preceded the first panic attack triggers future panic attacks, resulting in the individual with panic disorder being unable to drive or even step out of the house. At this stage, the person is said to have panic disorder with agoraphobia. Thus, there are two types of panic disorder: panic disorder with or without agoraphobia. Like other major illnesses, panic disorder can have a serious impact on a person's daily life unless the individual receives effective treatment.

Panic attacks in children may result in the child's grades declining, avoiding school and other separations from parents, as well as substance abuse, depression, suicidal thoughts, plans, and/or actions.

"Like I said, I was 13 years old and we were on our way to my football game, like we've done for the past 3 years. We were pulling into the crowded parking lot and my dad just stopped the car, blocking everyone! At first we thought dad was just playing around because he was a bit of a comedian (he always made sure we kept a smile on our faces). However this was no joke, and I saw a look on my fathers face that I had never seen before...it was a look of shear Terror, and my mom actually had to change seats and drive into the lot."

What causes panic attacks?

According to one theory of panic disorder, the body's normal "alarm system," the set of mental and physical mechanisms that allows a person to respond to a threat, tends to be triggered unnecessarily, when there is no danger. Scientists don't know exactly why this happens or why some people are more susceptible to the problem than others. Panic disorder has been found to run in families, and this may mean that inheritance (genes) plays a strong role in determining who will get it. However, many people who have no family history of the disorder develop it. Often, the first attacks are triggered by physical illnesses, a major life stress, or perhaps medications that increase activity in the part of the brain involved in fear reactions. An increase in the frequency of panic attacks has been seen in some women during pregnancy.


Oprah Winfrey discuses Panic Attacks

"Football season was now over and we hadn't seen that look on my fathers face again, so we just chalked it up as just one of those things. However, things had changed! The weekends were always family time...we would always go to see the newest movie or go the mall and then end up at one of our favorite restaurants or just get our bikes, go to the park and make a day of it. But that all stopped and all my dad wanted to do was stay in the house and eventually just stay in the bed! He started calling off of work on a regular basis and eventually started to work from home! Although we didn't know then, that was a classic symptom of a Panic Attack. He was trying to avoid feeling like that again by staying in his safe zone"

What are the symptoms of a panic attack?

The symptoms of a panic attack appear suddenly, without any apparent cause. They may include

• racing or pounding heartbeat (palpitations);
• chest pains;
• stomach upset;
• dizziness, lightheadedness, nausea;
• difficulty breathing, a sense of feeling smothered;
• tingling or numbness in the hands;
• hot flashes or chills;
• dreamlike sensations or perceptual distortions;
• terror: a sense that something unimaginably horrible is about to occur and one is powerless to prevent it;
• a need to escape;
• fear of losing control and doing something embarrassing; and
• fear of dying.

A panic attack typically lasts for several minutes, is one of the most distressing conditions that a person can experience, and its symptoms can closely mimic those of a heart attack. Typically, most people who have one attack will have others, and when someone has repeated attacks with no other apparent physical or emotional cause, or feels severe anxiety about having another attack, he or she is said to have panic disorder. A number of other emotional problems can have panic attacks as a symptom. Some of these illnesses include post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), schizophrenia, and intoxication or withdrawal from certain drugs of abuse.

Anxiety attacks that take place while sleeping, also called nocturnal panic attacks, occur less often than do panic attacks during the daytime, but affect about 40%-70% of those who suffer from daytime panic attacks. Nocturnal panic attacks tend to cause sufferers to wake suddenly from sleep in a state of sudden anxiety for no apparent reason and can have all the other symptoms of a panic attack. The duration of nocturnal panic attacks tends to be less than 10 minutes, but it can take much longer to fully calm down for those who experience them.

"We knew that something was definitely wrong and begged him to go to the doctor and get checked out, but the mere thought of leaving the house, let alone seeing the doctor brought that look of terror back! It wasn't until one of my friends emailed me this video of Grover and said "this sounds like what your dad is going through!" And he was right! We were finally able to put a name to what was happening to my father...he was suffering from panic and anxiety attacks! Now we just needed to find away to take the Panic Away!"

This video is not meant to make fun of people with panic disorder. On the contrary, it is merely a fun tool to show those who don’t know what a panic attack feels like. Enjoy it and share it!

What is the treatment for panic attacks?

Thanks to research, there are a variety of treatments available for controlling panic attacks, including several effective medications, and specific forms of psychotherapy. In terms of medications, specific members of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) and the benzodiazepine families of medications are approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat panic disorder. Examples of such medications include sertraline (Zoloft) and paroxetine (Paxil) from the SSRI group and clonazepam (Klonopin) from the benzodiazepine group. Although alprazolam (Xanax) is often used to treat panic attacks, its short duration of action can sometimes result in having to take it several times per day. Medications from the beta-blocker family (for example, propranolol) are sometimes used to treat the physical symptoms associated with a panic attack.

Before SSRIs became available, medications from the group known as the tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) were often used to address panic disorder. Although TCAs have been found to be equally effective in treating panic attacks, SSRIs have been proven to be safer and better tolerated therefore; TCAs are used much less often. When used in the appropriate person with close monitoring, these medications can be quite effective as part of treatment for panic disorder. However, as anything that is ingested carries risk of side effects, it is important to work closely with the prescribing doctor to decide whether treatment with medications is an appropriate intervention and if so, which medication should be administered. The person being treated should be closely monitored for the possibility of side effects that can vary from minor to severe and in some cases even be life-threatening. Due to the possible risks to the fetus of a mother being treated for panic attacks with medication, psychotherapy should be the first treatment tried when possible in pregnant women.

"Finally...we knew what was happening with my dad and we had some treatments to consider, but it wouldn't be that easy. You see, my dad is a natural type of guy...meaning that he would always use natural ways to treat everything. So getting him to take medicine actually caused more panic attacks! So we had to find a treatment without the use of medication...and that's just what we did!"

What happens if panic attacks are not treated?

Panic attacks tend to continue for months or years. While they typically begin in young adulthood, the symptoms may arise earlier or later in life in some people. Complications, which are symptoms that can develop as a result of continued panic attacks, may include: specific irrational fears (phobias), especially of leaving home (agoraphobia); avoidance of social situations, depression, work or school problems, suicidal thoughts or actions; financial problems, and alcohol or other substance abuse. Panic disorder also predisposes sufferers to developing heart disease.

If left untreated, anxiety may worsen to the point where the person's life is seriously affected by panic attacks and by attempts to avoid or conceal them. In fact, many people have had problems with friends and family, failed in school, and/or lost jobs while struggling to cope with panic attacks. There may be periods of spontaneous improvement in the attacks, but panic attacks do not usually go away unless the person receives treatments designed specifically to help people with panic attacks.

"I am Grateful, Happy and Delighted to report that the all natural treatment worked!! My dad is returning back to normal and has a new respect for life and the things he/we all took for granted, like walking the dog, or just being able to take the trash out (2 less chores for me..yea!) I'm 19 now and I got my dad back!! We took his Panic Away!!!!!"

Other symptoms and side effects may include: weight gain, weight loss, depression and poor mental health.

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You Must Learn To Break The Fear Of Having Another Panic Attack Or You Will Never Experience Complete Freedom From Anxiety!

If anyone of you or anyone you love have panic attacks or have symptoms of anxiety click here to begin the road back to recovery...just like my dad and countless others!