By: Justin Tobin LCSW

A lot of clients come to my office saying, “I need your help! I need you to get rid of my anxiety!” I explain that I cannot get rid of anxiety or that even if I could, it would be quite unethical for me to do so. Our body needs the ‘fight/flight response’ in order to participate in healthy daily functioning. That is, if someone did not have any anxiety or could not recognize the symptoms of anxiety, then they would never know not to walk down an alley at 4am by themselves, get too close to a barking dog, or put themselves in any other type of harmful situation. The truth is we all need our anxiety. We just don’t want anxiety that we can’t control and we want to be able to control the anxiety within us. (more…)

By: Dr. Linda Sapadin

If someone gave you a magic pill to calm your fears, (I’m talking real magic here, not a pill from the pharmacy), how would you live your life? If you weren’t so careful and didn’t play it so safe, what would you do? What would you say? Where would you travel? What would delight you? Who would you be? (more…)

By: Lisa Brookes Kift, M.A.

Adult anxiety has many faces, manifestations and levels. The anxiety disorder I’ve had the most contact with in my experience as a therapist is Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and from here on when I speak of “anxiety” I will be referring to this. I work from a family of origin perspective, in that, I believe that people’s emotional and/or psychological distress as adults can partially be the result of problematic core beliefs developed in early childhood. A primary hallmark of GAD is pervasive worry. “Fear of the fear” is how some of my clients have described the feeling. If I look back far enough in a client’s history I’ve typically found a childhood experience laced with chaos, high expectations and/or a highly anxious parent. (more…)

By Jeanine Austin, Ph.D.

We’ve all been there! We’ve begun the process and we are making headway, and then we hit a plateau. It might be weight loss, a spiritual practice, a career endeavor or a home makeover. You feel stuck and you don’t want to regress back to how things were before, but you feel discouraged, and perhaps bored and uninspired. What should you do? (more…)

By Jon Rhodes

What is a panic attack?
It is normal, natural and common to get panicky from time to time.  You may be late for work, think you can hear a burglar downstairs, or be ready to sit an exam.  These feelings are normal and pass fairly quickly.  They are simply down to our ‘flight or fight’ responses that our body has been equipped with to prepare for potentially threatening situations.  The heart beats quicker and the digestive system closes down in order to allow the body to concentrate on the perceived threat. (more…)