Help with Anxiety disorders

Anxiety disorders are very common, whether they present themselves mostly as bodily-felt anxiety like panic attacks and muscle tension, or racing thoughts and excessive worry that just won’t stop. At GSWC we can help you identify the type of anxiety you experience (such as a panic disorder, agoraphobia, generalized anxiety disorder), understand experiences that maintain and reinforce anxiety, and offer you effective ways of managing it.

Generalized anxiety disorder

Generalized anxiety is a common anxiety disorder where an individual worries about a wide variety of concerns, typically for hours a day, and out of proportion to the actual likelihood of these events occurring or causing harm. Sometimes these individuals worry about multiple topics at once, and other times, they tend to dwell on one specific issue until another one comes along. GAD sufferers are often described by those who know them as “worry warts” or “the sky is falling” kind of people. Continuous worry tends to leave these individuals drained, unfocused, sleepless, tense, and irritable. Effects of GAD can range from inconveniencing self and others to a very significant impairment in various areas of the person’s life.

There are various treatments available for this disorder. A typical course of cognitive behavioral therapy aims at identifying and interrupting the pattern of rumination and worry through engaging in various exercises that help to direct attention in a more constructive direction so less time is spent on unproductive mental “spinning of wheels”.

Agoraphobia

Agoraphobia is a disorder where individuals avoid certain places because they worry if they need to leave it might be difficult or embarrassing, they may get a panic attack, and sometimes they are not sure why, only knowing they have anxiety about going. These places may include malls, grocery stores, bridges, tunnels, buses, taxi rides, and so on. Often individuals with agoraphobia avoid going to these places unless it is absolutely necessary, or bring a trusted person with them to reduce their anxiety. In most extreme cases the individual tries to manage their anxiety by avoiding these places altogether to such an extent that they never leave their home. Agoraphobia commonly develops secondary to difficulties like post-traumatic stress disorder or panic disorder.

Cognitive behavioral treatment of agoraphobia involves identifying the pattern of thoughts and beliefs which keep the individual fearful of leaving their “safe” space and helping the individual to gradually venture out in the world, learning to tolerate and manage their anxiety as they do so, so that it eventually diminishes and they can resume their life in the wider world.

Panic disorder

Individuals with a panic disorder fear having yet another panic attack that hits out of nowhere: that is, breathing very hard and fast (hyperventilating), having their heart jump out of their chest, shaking, sweating, fearing they will have a heart attack or lose their mind, and so on. Panic attacks are very common, and most people experience at least one in their life. Individuals with a panic disorder however become so worried about having another panic attack that they start to rearrange their lives around their fear of it, which usually makes the problem worse in the long term. A common consequence of a panic disorder is agoraphobia, where individuals are reluctant to leave their house to avoid having a panic attack somewhere in public.

Recurrent panic attacks require a careful evaluation because they can have many different causes. Once your therapist helps you establish that the panic disorder is due to a psychological cause, rather than something like caffeine or a medical problem, then we can initiate a psychological therapy. A cognitive behavioral treatment of panic disorder involves helping the individual identify how they interpret their internal bodily senses (e.g. thinking that a normal heart palpitation is a sign of impending panic attack and then panicking), and helping them with exercises aimed at learning to interpret their bodily sensations in more accurate ways, learning to tolerate them, and so on, with the eventual goal of helping these individuals go about their business while leaving their fear of having a panic attack behind.