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Depression.
Ruminative worry, often with negative thinking, is one of the primary symptoms of
depression, along with sleep and appetite changes,
lethargy, isolation, and a loss of pleasure in everyday
life experiences. Fortunately, depression responds
well to psychotherapy or medication, and often to a
combination of the two.
Panic Disorder and Social Phobia.
A panic attack is worry taken to the extreme - a feeling of terror accompanied by rapid heartbeat and fast
breathing along with a need to run away from the situation. The person senses imminent doom. About 30
to 50 percent of the time, panic attacks are accompanied by agoraphobia, which is a fear of any public
place where a dreaded panic attack might occur, like
crowds, driving, stores, restaurants or elevators.
Social phobia, on the other hand, involves a fear of
being the center of attention, like speaking or eating
in public. These conditions can be treated with powerful psychotherapeutic tools, and sometimes antidepressant or antianxiety medications are a useful
adjunct to therapy.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
A person with OCD experiences unwanted and intrusive thoughts (obsessions) and may feel a compulsion
to engage in rituals as a way of handling these
unwanted thoughts. Strange thoughts are fairly common for most people, but when they are pervasive
and seem uncontrollable and distressful, psychotherapeutic interventions combined with antidepressant
medications can help to resolve the difficulty.
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Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
People with GAD lead fairly normal lives, but they
worry about things that most of us can brush off.
They find it difficult to let go of their worries, and
this may have a genetic or biological basis. For the
person with GAD, any event can prompt an automatic response to interpret things in a negative and fearful way, and this can lead to a cascade of worry.
Psychotherapy is very effective in helping a person learn
to think positively and to let go of distressing
thoughts, and, for some, an antianxiety medication
can be used judiciously as an adjunct to therapy.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
In certain cases old pain associated with tragic experiences is difficult to let go of, especially when these
experiences have threatened our sense of integrity
and safety. A trauma can set the stage for worry for
years after the original event. Coming to terms with
PTSD in psychotherapy usually involves learning to
talk about the trauma, grieving the losses associated
with the event and finding ways to forgive. Some
people with PTSD may also benefit from medication
during treatment.
Edward Hallowell, in his book. Worry, offers a
variety of practical methods for dealing with
excessive worry, a few of which are listed here:
- Find Connectedness. When we feel connected to
something larger than ourselves (a group of friends,
our families, work, a sense of the past, ideas, and
religious or transcendent faith), we are less likely to
worry.
(Continue...........)
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