Anxiety therapists in Rice Lake, Wisconsin WI
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
Sarita R. Schapiro, Ph.D., P.A.
Psychologist, Florida Licensed Psychologist PY4914, APIT Certified
Cognitive behavioral therapy to identify the triggers and work through reducing anxiety.
42 Years Experience
Anxiety or Fears
Johanna Isaacs
Psychologist, Psy.D., PsyPACT Participant
I help clients with anxiety identify their fear and worry patterns, understand where these thoughts may have come from in their lives, and create new ways of thinking that are more balanced and supportive. Creating anxiety management tools that help reduce physical anxiety symptoms in the moment means that my clients build realistic and useful coping strategies that help them feel better when anxiety peaks. We cannot eliminate anxiety or fear from our life but we can learn to understand our anxiety as a piece of us and ultimately appreciate who we are as a whole person.
13 Years Experience
Anxiety or Fears
Karen Queller
Art Therapist, M.A Expressive Arts Therapy
Fears are a part of life. Learn to act in spite of them.
5 Years Experience
Anxiety or Fears
Dr. Kevin Goldberg
Psychologist, Psy.D.
Anxiety and fear is our body's physiological reaction that "something is wrong." Sometimes it is important to look at what is wrong and to make sense of what our body is trying to tell us.
7 Years Experience