Helping Panic & Anxiety with Psychotherapy at 1066 TherapyÂ
covering East Sussex, Battle, Hastings, Bexhill, Rye, Heathfield, Hailsham, Eastbourne, Crowborough, Brighton, Tunbridge Wells, Tonbridge, Ashford and Kent.
I am often consulted for help for panic problems or disorders at my practice just outside of Battle, East Sussex. When a person needs help with a problem with panic, appropriate therapy can be very effective.
Panic and anxiety problems
People with panic problems usually have problems with anxiety too. The most common type of anxiety I am asked for help with is social anxiety. This is basically a fear of others judging, rejecting, criticising, laughing at, or humiliating us. As a result, we will tend to spend a fair amount of time worrying about what others are thinking about us. Almost as common as social anxiety is general anxiety or ‘generalised anxiety disorder’, GAD for short. It is when we feel anxious without there being an understandable (as in an immediate threat to life or limb) cause. We just feel ‘edgy’ a lot of the time without knowing why. There’s often a sense of ‘something bad about to happen. We may worry about a lot of things. Sometimes, we may even call ourselves ‘an anxious person’ or say things like ‘I am a worrier, I can’t help it’ or ‘It’s just the way I am’. None of those statements are true though. This is NOT something we have to live with or we can’t change. We aren’t ‘anxious people’. We just FEEL anxious or panicky when it’s not necessary or appropriate, and we can change that.
What Causes Anxiety?
Anxiety is, in fact, part of our survival response: it is our ‘felt’ experience of our brain’s ‘early warning system’ of impending threat or danger (to life and limb). All sorts of people, experiences and events in our everyday life can activate an anxiety response without us really being aware of the ‘triggers’. We are usually only aware of the result – feeling anxious, worried, or panicky. Of course, almost always there is no real threat or danger present, so why are we feeling anxious?
Neuroscientific research over recent decades has found that the feeling of anxiety is caused by having a dysregulated nervous system. Past experiences, most often in our earliest years, which have been negative, distressing, emotionally overwhelming, or traumatic in some way are the most common cause. Such experiences dysregulate our nervous system. A dysregulated nervous system causes inner discomfort and that sense of ‘something bad about to happen’, hence feelings of anxiety. Our system stays upset, often for many years, if we do not have appropriate support for how we are feeling and therefore cannot properly process what has happened, or is continuing to happen.
Our system stores the emotional memories of such experiences in a part of the brain called the limbic system. Parts of our limbic system activate our survival response when we are triggered. Our survival response causes the feelings of anxiety. Because many of these experiences happen in childhood, we are usually not able to connect the experiences to our current anxiety problems. Also, we will usually not even be aware that we have any inner discomfort or dysregulation, because the way we feel inside is our ‘normal’ and we have been living like it for many years.
What Causes Panic?
Sometimes anxiety may escalate to feelings of panic. The intense feelings of panic are caused when we are fully ‘triggered’ into our survival response. Usually this happens in an otherwise ordinary, everyday situation. Triggers are usually ‘sensory experiences’ (i.e. a sight, sound, smell, taste, action, or bodily sensation). These somehow remind the limbic system of our unprocessed emotional memories. Triggers can be diverse, so it can be difficult to pinpoint them. However, we can work on this. Of course, the vast majority of everyday situations are not actually life-threatening. As a result, we do not need an actual survival response. However once triggered, our limbic system will still ‘sound the alarm’ AS IF we are in real danger. We are vulnerable to all sorts of triggers until we properly process the emotions and the experiences that caused the overwhelm.
Panicking may well seem irrational and unhelpful in our adult life. However, there was a time when being in fight/flight (or even freeze/shut-down) was an adaptive response to some adverse events we experienced. The difficulty is that we can get somehow ‘stuck’ in our survival response even though the adversity or threat has long passed. Over time, anxiety or panic may increase to the point where it can have a significant impact on our life. Thus, it is quite common to gradually limit or control our lifestyle in an attempt to avoid, as far as possible, any situations which might ‘trigger’ our anxiety or panic.
Therapy help
Some therapies, including Suggestion Therapy, counselling, CBT, NLP and EFT (tapping), may offer some relief by aiming for a control of anxiety/panic symptoms. These methods usually achieve this by the input of positive suggestions, or teaching coping mechanisms or other tools/techniques. However, this often isn’t enough and many people prefer to aim for a resolution to the underlying causes. These are emotions and experiences which have yet to process properly.
I have in the past offered different approaches to help anxiety and panic. However, in recent years I have found Lifespan Integration Therapy to offer more predictable and effective results.
Call or text me now on 07722783490 to book your free 30 minute initial consultation.
