Anxiety Panic Attack & Agoraphobia--Impact of Personality

This article is mainly written for the professional treating anxiety panicattack via hypnosis, biofeedback, psychotherapy, psychiatry� However,the sufferer may use the information to guide his/her therapist. Basedon a stress management model, the technique is different than generallyassociated with main stream stress management training. Let me clarify.It is often assumed that a stress management model is synonymous withbody awareness techniques that utilize inward focus. The othertechnique is outward focus initially used by Lacy, a psychologist. Itis the one most effective for all anxiety/panic attacks. It likewise iseffective for all other maladies, but because it is less defined, it isgenerally only used in more advanced training and left out of theprotocols for initial training sessions. In this article Iwant to focus mainly on the why's that contribute to one developinganxiety issues as opposed to some other stress related issue such asulcers or colitis--not that some individuals don't develop both. Generally anxiety/panic/agoraphobia is found in those who
� Have less than healthy eating habits or
� Are taking medications that contribute to panic and anxiety as a side effect. Most are in the first category and it's contributed to a high sugar or refined food diet.They generally drink caffeinated beverages and eat lots of snack foods.If they were to correct their eating habits in advance, they wouldnever develop ofanxiety panic attack for anxiety is simply a hormonalresponse to large blood sugar changes. However, once the pattern ofanxiety has generalized or developed into panic and agoraphobia, thensimply changing eating habits usually isn't enough because the mind hasbegun a conditioning process-more later. And likewise the sameconditioning process affects the second group for even once the medscausing anxiety are stopped, the symptoms continue. But the main question is, �Why do anxiety panic attack sufferers develop Anxiety and others who likewise are hypoglycemic develop muscle pains and aches, or hypertension, ulcers, colitis�? Theanswer is in one's personality. Effective treatment of an anxietysufferer requires that the therapist understands the personality thatcontributes to the development of anxiety. I first beganworking with anxiety clients in the late 70's under the supervision oftwo psychologists for the World Health Medical Dental Center in theWorld Trade Center, NYC. Dr. Joyce Brothers was one of the consultants.I asked my superiors for advice in how to work with anxiety sufferers.My main treatment modalities were biofeedback and hypnosis. I askedthem for the protocol that they wanted used and was told somethingsimilar to, �Anxiety patients are basically babies. They use anxietygenerally for secondary rewards. We don't expect you'll have muchsuccess. Simply teach them body awareness techniques and hold theirhands. They are generally an irresponsible group of patients.� Iwas too young to dispute what I was told and accepted it as truth.Needless to say, I didn't have very much success hand holding and mostclients came three or four sessions at most and then stoppedcoming-they could never get their muscles to relax with biofeedback, much less their breathing. Twoyears later I opened the Biofeedback Center of NJ in Middletown, NJ andafter about four years of poor results-only 30% improvement (no betterthan placebo)--with anxiety/panic attack clients I hired apsychotherapist to work with them. My thinking was that it must besomething deep rooted causing the problem and I wasn't qualified to dotherapy nor did I want to. After another five years weevaluated her success and even though the clients came for many moresessions than they did with me-she was better at hand-holding-theresults were no better. The only consolation was that I wasn't the oneseeing the clients-I could focus on clients with stress related healthissues that brought me much greater success rates. OneSaturday afternoon I received a phone call from our psychologist whowas doing an intake with a new client-I'll call her Jane. He informedme that Jane wanted biofeedback for her panic/agoraphobia and nothingelse. She was dictating her treatment. She and her husband drove somedistance and they very much wanted to start immediately and refusedpsychotherapy as he recommended. It was his opinion that herhigh motivation and expectation would be instrumental (pun intended) inbiofeedback working. Reluctantly I agreed to see Jane and her husbandhoping to convince them that psychotherapy was the route to go. Shemade it clear she wanted nothing to do with psychotherapy and it wasbiofeedback or nothing. I didn't waste much time trying to convince herre psychotherapy. Instead after twenty minutes of getting to know her,I began her with basic �close your eyes inward focus breathing exercises,�and observed her go into a panic attack within minutes. She opened hereyes. She and her husband were quite apologetic, paid their fees, andleft quite abruptly. Personality? I'll jump ahead and sharewith you what I leaned about personality. First it was easy for me tosee Jane as the classic attention getting irresponsible secondaryreward getting individual-a no brainer so to speak which was a totalerroneous assumption as were all clients suffering from anxiety that Ihad ever seen. Contrary to what I was told and learned to believe, anxiety sufferersare Type A perfectionist individuals. They are totally responsible (insome or many areas of their lives) and don't use symptoms for secondaryreward (even though it appears that way). They need to be right. Youmight ask, �Who doesn't?� Contrary to most of us who like to be right,they really need to be right. In fact it's this universal need to beright ofanxiety sufferers that makes waking hypnosis work. They arethe kind of person you would want to have as an employee-minus theanxiety which may totally incapacitate them. In fact it's their highsense of responsibility that works against them in contributing todevelopment of anxiety issues whereas someone suffering fromhypertension is also a type A individual, but be more of a driven, lesspatient person than the responsible one who develops anxiety. Althoughthere are many more issues such as diet, handling disappointments, thegeneral adaptation syndrome... this is the first program of its kindthat takes personality factors in consideration. A survey of theparticipants indicated an 80% success rate in overcominganxiety panic attack and agoraphobia.