Anxiety therapists in Calais, Maine ME
Anxiety or Fears
Dr. Jadah Petty
Psychologist, Ph.D., Licensed Clinical Psychologist
Many people experience worries and anxiety and seeking therapy for these concerns offers a great opportunity to make change. Using cognitive behavioral and acceptance and commitment therapy strategies, I will help you understand what brings on anxiety, how your thoughts might be unhelpful, and give you specific strategies to manage your anxiety.
5 Years Experience
Anxiety or Fears
Jayson L. Mystkowski
Psychologist, Ph.D., ABPP
While Cognitive-Behavior Therapy (CBT) is highly effective in the treatment of anxiety disorders (e.g., Panic Disorder, Social Phobia, and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder), clinicians do see some “return of fear,” or partial relapse, in some patients due to a variety of factors. Over the past two decades, treatment researchers, with whom Dr. Jayson Mystkowski had the pleasure of working with at UCLA for over 10 years, have studied “return of fear” and discovered some key variables that may optimize the effects of learning during CBT for anxiety disorders (Craske et al., 2008).
First, evidence suggests that focusing on tolerating fear versus eliminating fear yields better clinical outcomes in the long term. Namely, teaching clients that fear and anxiety are normal feelings, rather than attempting to “down-regulate” such feelings all the time, is more realistic and seems to engender “hardier” clients. Second, helping clients to generate an expectancy that “scary things will not happen,” is very powerful. To do this, it is important for clinicians to create more complex exposure exercises (i.e., tasks in which a client confronts a stimulus of which they are afraid), using multiple feared stimuli instead of one at a time. Then, the lack of a feared outcome becomes particularly surprising and memorable for a client and fear reduction is more potent. Third, increasing the accessibility and retrievability of non-fear memories learned during treatment are powerful factors in mitigating against a return of fear. Craske and colleagues demonstrated that exposure to variations of a feared stimulus, using a random schedule across multiple contexts or situations, is more effective than exposure to the same stimulus, on a predictable schedule, in an unchanging environment. The former paradigm, it is argued, creates stronger non-fear memories that are easier for a client to access when subsequently confronting feared objects or situations outside of the therapy context, than the later scenario.
In sum, clinicians have long been aware that some fear or anxiety returns following very successful CBT treatment. As mentioned above, there are some clear, empirically supported ways to modify the therapy we provide to further help clients generalize the gains made in therapy sessions to the real world.
20 Years Experience
Anxiety or Fears
Jillian Luz
Marriage and Family Therapist, LMFT, ATR
I have experience supporting clients in identifying, challenging, and replacing unhelpful, unwanted, and maladaptive anxious thought patterns.
9 Years Experience
Anxiety or Fears
Maria Maddalo
Psychologist, Psy.D., BCBA
Anxiety often occurs due to fear of the unknown, or a certain trigger that an individual may not be
recognizing. We can work together utilizing a combination of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Applied Behavior Analysis to address anxiety and fears in a structured manner.
6 Years Experience
Anxiety or Fears
Lisa Saponaro, PhD Inc
Psychologist, Ph.D
Each of us faces obstacles and difficulties in life differently, and at times we can all use help. Individuals frequently seek my services during times of transition, when decision making appears to have a greater impact on our future directions.
26 Years Experience