Anxiety therapists in Scottsboro, Alabama AL
Anxiety or Fears
Amy L. Holdbrooks, LLC
Counselor/Therapist, MA, NCC, ALC, BSW
Fear is an emotional reaction to a specific, real danger; while anxiety is an excessive and unfocused fear that may be triggered by various stimuli. Anxiety caused by stress may persist long after the trigger is removed.
8 Warning Signs of Anxiety:
1) Feeling nervous, restless or tense.
2) Having a sense of impending danger, panic or doom.
3) Having an increased heart rate.
4) Breathing rapidly (hyperventilation)
5) Sweating.
6) Trembling.
7) Feeling weak or tired.
8) Trouble concentrating or thinking about anything other than the present worry
6 Years Experience
Anxiety or Fears
Allen Wood
Psychologist, Psy.D.
As a psychologist specializing in anxiety treatment, I integrate Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) with Internal Family Systems (IFS) to create a comprehensive structure of support and healing. I draw upon principles of Interpersonal Neurobiology to understand how anxiety activates our nervous systems, and how our situation, relationships, internal conflicts, and past experiences all work together to help and hinder our ability to manage. In our work together, you can expect a high level of collaboration, deeply compassionate understanding, and an abundance of metaphors as we tailor the therapy process to your needs, strengths, and situation.
6 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
Mariana Carabantes, Psy.D.
Psychologist, Licensed Psychologist
Are you constantly tense, nervous, and/or fearful? Do you have unexpected episodes of panic, feeling of desperation, or other overwhelming sensations? These are all symptoms of an anxiety disorder, and fortunately there are methods to control these symptoms and feel better.
14 Years Experience
Anxiety or Fears
PSYCHe, PLLC
Psychologist, PhD, LPC, PsyD, MSW, Marriage and Family Counselor, LCSW
We treat everything from General Anxiety Disorder (GAD), panic attacks, phobias, OCD, etc, each one requiring a trained eye to recognize in order to treat them properly. No matter what it is you're dealing with or how severe, we will help you take back the reins and gain control over your worry once more.
10 Years Experience