Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapist.
Therapy for anxiety. CBT treatment can help.
If you have ever experienced a full blown panic attack you will know that it is a very real terrifying experience. You will have had the most horrific bodily sensations and highly irrational thoughts such as the following:
Do you want to learn how to manage your anxiety, put an end to your worrying, and face your anxieties head-on? Therapy for anxiety. Here is how talking things out can help.
This is because when an attack strikes it engages your brain’s emergency system which tells you that you are in immediate danger. But like a fire alarm that goes off in the kitchen if you burn the toast, the emergency networks in your brain are sending out false alarms. This is actually a psychological response that is short circuiting and not a real life threatening event. A panic attack is a single episode of intense fear that usually peaks within 10 – 12 minutes and takes place in the absence of any real danger.
Anxiety is different to a panic attack. Anxiety is the pervading feeling that something bad is going to happen in the future, panic attacks are happening in the HERE & NOW that is why they feel so real.
Because panic involves the intuitive feeling of current or imminent danger, the brain sets in motion our fight / flight reflexes. These are the bodily processes that have evolved over centuries to help us escape life threatening situations.
When these processes kick in, you can start to experience some of theses symptoms.
When these symptoms manifest in a cluster it is not hard to see why Panic attacks are a very real life debilitating experience.
There are two categories of Panic attacks. Situational and Unexpected. Situational attacks are brought on by a particular scenario while unexpected can come at random out of nowhere. An example of situational panic attack would be going for an interview and having a strong fear of messing it up, you might experience an attack while on the way to the interview, this can be terrible because it might mean that you skip the interview and lose out on a great opportunity. An attack coming out of nowhere is even more confusing and frightening because there is no rational reason for it.
As you can see the major problem with situational panic attacks is that removing yourself from the feared situation usually will decrease the anxiety and bring the panic attack to an end. Unfortunately, when you keep avoiding these situations this can lead to longer term problems as you never get the opportunity to learn that you can actually overcome the panic.
The terrible thing about unexpected panic attacks is that you develop a fear of panic attacks themselves and then misinterpret the bodily sensations caused by anxiety as meaning that another panic attack is imminent. Alarming thoughts and sensations such as shortness of breath or a rapid heart rate, causes a chilling thought, such as “Oh no, I am having a Panic attack again”, which then causes a negative feedback loop with even more shortness of breath and an increasing heart rate., which then leads to another thought such as “this is getting worse, I am not going to be able to cope”, which then leads to even more anxiety-related sensations, and so on until the panic attack reaches a peak.
The following are thoughts that many people have when they are experiencing Panic. How many can you identify with?
“My Panic attack just happens, and I have no control over it.”
“I become completely frozen and can’t do anything about it.”
“My attack is different from everyone else’s.”
“I can’t control myself when the attack happens.”
“I don’t have time to spend on this. I want a quick fix.
“This problem will never go away.”
“I haven’t gotten better yet, so i am doomed forever.
“I have tried to deal with this in the past, its hopeless and I just want to take medication”.
“I want the panic to go away right now. I want a cure.”
.”
“Treating anxiety by having to face it will cause me more harm than good.
“If I have an attack during treatment I won’t be able to handle it.”
“If I open this can of worms, it will never close.It will just be too overwhelming.”
“If I treat my panic by facing it.I could have a heart attack, suffocate, go crazy, or faint.”
The most important thing to remember is that panic attacks are not life threatening. They are very treatable. Because panic attacks are so unpleasant and often seem like a physical medical problem, people can resort to taking medications such as Xanax or valium and while medication is appropriate and useful, in some cases the treatment of panic attacks themselves generally does not require medication. In fact, some anxiety medications prescribed for panic attacks have really bad side effects that can hinder your recovery in the long term.
Time limited offer
✔️ Receive training in all the major schools of psychology.
✔️ You can do the courses one at a time! You can even gift one to a colleague.
✔️ A Diploma Certificate is awarded for each course successfully completed.
✔️ There is no time limit for completion – take your time and enjoy the learning.
For the purposes of this article I wont be going into the full theories of CBT but I will try to explain how it is a very effective method to take control of your panic.
Cognitive is a technical word used to describe anything related to thoughts. CBT is concerned with how our thoughts influence our emotions and behaviour. Negative thoughts automatically lead to negative feelings and poor behavioural choices.
CBT involves responding to and modifying our thoughts—to help us cope better in our daily lives and feel less anxious
You can make your brain change!
When we modify thoughts, we actually change the brain!
Practicing various types of thought patterns over and over actually rewires our brain so that new, more effective and productive thought patterns emerge spontaneously. This doesn’t happen overnight, You won’t achieve it with occasional attempts. It takes consistent practice to make the brain function in a healthy way. The bodybuilder doesn’t build great muscle tone by going to the gym sporadically. It takes a lot of commitment to keep our brains healthy and fit but the rewards can be remarkable.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is not just about “thinking positively.”
In fact, some situations are really bad. The goal of therapy is to Examine the Evidence and practice reminding ourselves of this evidence when we are in a challenging situation, in order to cope with with that situation in a healthy manner..
We want to avoid the snowball effect that takes place when negative thoughts, avoidant behaviors, and uncomfortable feelings take over.
Thoughts can serve to make our anxiety worse and even cause more problems for us, especially if they convince us to avoid what makes us anxious.
Let’s take an example of the student who has a fear of public speaking. She has to present a paper for her class. She has niggling negative thoughts about speaking in public that arise when she starts to write out his speech. These thoughts cause her to jump up away from her laptop and do anything else other than write the paper. She starts to procrastinate, leaves everything to the last minute. This leads to her to being inadequately prepared or trying to skip out of the class altogether. Some of her thoughts will be:
“They will think I am stupid”
“I will be panic stricken.
“I’m just a loser”
“I”m not cut out for this”
“I am going to fail this class.”
“I may even have to drop out of school.”
” Where is the point”
“I will hyperventilate”
“I’m a useless student”
“I should just drop out of school.”
In CBT this is called the “Thought Cascade”
When we are feeling anxious, it is common to have a thought that leads to a more disturbing thought, which then leads to an even more disturbing thought, and so on until it becomes unmanageable. This “domino effect” of negative automatic thoughts is common.
When she has these thoughts it increases her anxiety and makes him want to avoid the speech even more.
Responding to and modifying these negative thoughts so they are more realistic can help to keep us from triggering the anxiety over and over again. Most importantly, they can help to keep us from avoiding things that are important to us. For example, if the student avoids her class, it could impact her grade, her program, and ultimately her career.
Cognitive Restructuring & Automatic thoughts.
A major concept in CBT are Negative Automatic Thoughts, (NATS). These are thoughts that pop into our heads uninvited. Sometimes they persist in our heads for hours.
Automatic thoughts are ‘unconscious’ for instance they can operate without our awareness of them.
NATS are a stream of thoughts that we can notice, if we pay attention to them. They are negatively framed interpretations of what we think is happening to us. They usually have an impact on our mood and our feelings, that isn’t positive.
NATs can lead to self-doubt, depression, anxiety, anger, irritability and low mood. They are not helpful, or useful and yet we all have them.
Some of the ways you can challenge Automatic Thoughts.
Ask yourself……
Why do we have NATS!
When we are anxious, the brain alerts us to potentially dangerous things in our environment for our safety. We need to have this radar to be sensitive to actual real dangers. Imagine what would happen if we did not have negative thoughts when we were in danger…we probably wouldn’t try to protect ourselves! It is helpful to have this inbuilt automatic response.
The trouble is this system malfunctions due to a myriad of reasons related to our early developmental experiences. For the purpose of CBT therapy it is not important as to how this happened, what is important is how you deal with this in the here and now.
If we constructed our unhelpful view of the world, we have the power to deconstruct it and construct a more helpful view instead.
The first step to begin “restructuring” or responding to negative thoughts is to identify the thoughts that cause us distress.
Time limited offer
✔️ Receive training in all the major schools of psychology.
✔️ You can do the courses one at a time! You can even gift one to a colleague.
✔️ A Diploma Certificate is awarded for each course successfully completed.
✔️ There is no time limit for completion – take your time and enjoy the learning.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is based on the concept that our thoughts can affect how we feel and behave.
In this article we discussed the most important concepts of CBT for panic and anxiety:
Cognitive skills are best used in combination with behavioural skills such as exposure.
If we can understand the level of danger of a situation, we can make positive decisions about whether or not it would improve our lives if we were to stop avoiding a situation or over-protecting ourselves, which can be self limiting.
We covered how to identify Negative Automatic Thoughts and the “worst-case scenario” thoughts that are often connected with them. Identifying Negative Automatic Thoughts is the first important step in using CBT.
We also covered Cognitive Distortions, such as “All-or-Nothing Thinking,” which are unhelpful patterns of negative thought. It is vital to understand whether or not we have some of these thought patterns in order to more effectively tackle our Negative Automatic Thoughts.
The Examining Thoughts Worksheet is one tool that can help you to organize the evidence you gather when you are starting out. Writing down evidence about a thought helps you to see things more objectively and remind yourself of information that is hard to remember when you are feeling anxious.
As you develop higher levels of awareness you will be able to remind yourself of the evidence quickly in the course of daily life, without needing these types of aids.
Other skills you will develop when you are working with a CBT therapist are: