Anxiety disorders
Many people simply donʼt know what anxiety is. Our awareness of depression is often better than our understanding of anxiety. Fear to the point of terror is the source of anxiety. The many faces of fear include social anxiety, separation anxiety, generalized anxiety, obsessions and compulsions, phobias, tics, insomnia or nightmares, an endless list of psychosomatic ailments (real physical illnesses like irritable bowel, headache, asthma or eczema), and panic attacks. Panic attacks are especially frightening. These attacks may include feeling sweaty, faint, tremulous, inability to breathe or having chest pain and fear of a heart attack. We feel completely out of control like we are dying or going insane. In a single word, panic attacks are hell! Panic attacks begin insidiously, last minutes to hours, often come and go in waves and nearly always feed on themselves. Once we have our first attack, the fear of another attack can easily trigger
future episodes.
Psychopharmacological treatment of anxiety centers on serotonin (SSRI antidepressants similar to Prozac). However, SSRI drugs take a few weeks to work and may initially even increase anxiety. Therefore, conjointly prescribing valium type drugs like Klonopin or Xanax, which can later be tapered, can immediately stop panic attacks.
Psychotherapy that uses support and education like dialectical behavior therapy and insight oriented therapy are the most effective ways to both supplement and potentially replace medication. Anxiety symptoms, as terrifying as they are, are defenses against facing repressed or minimized real life traumas and stresses that lie hidden behind our symptoms. Whenever we summon enough courage to shine the light of understanding and acceptance on the roots of our anxieties, they lessen. The key to the psychotherapy of anxiety lies in the recognition that anxiety is ʻjustʼ a feeling. Our identity and lives are inherently more stable and far richer than any passing feeling, no matter how powerful those feelings are.