Treating Anxiety Disorders with EMDR
By Robin Shapiro ‘EMDR Solutions’
Everyone needs anxiety: Anxiety can be an effective early warning that something is awry: that you’ve just left your wallet at the store or that the car ahead of you is swerving erratically. WATCH OUT! According to Daniel Siegel (2003), our bodies respond to fear-producing symptoms before we can name what’s happening. Our lower brain gets our body ready to move; then our brain tells us what to do. Anxiety can serve as a social control. (When’s the last time you picked your nose in public?) It can be a course corrector and the best kind of safety monitor. Gavin de Becker, in The Gift of Fear (1977), wrote that for most people, paying attention to our anxiety keeps us safe.
For other people, anxiety is PARALYZING. Panic attacks may storm through their bodies, creating racing hearts, tingling hands, hyperventilation, copious sweat, shaking, perceptual distortions, fear of dying, impending doom, and the next horrible panic attack. Generalized anxiety creates worriers in constant states of high arousal saying: “What if? What if? What if?” Social phobia, often linked with shyness, can make every public or social situation uncomfortable or unbearable. Obsessive-compulsive people are often crippled by their repeated rituals. Phobics know that their reactions are unfounded or out of proportion, yet are compelled to avoid the objects of their fears. None of these people are stupid; they’re simply terrified.
Here is what you need to ask yourself as a sufferer of Anxiety….
1. When did the anxiety start? As a child/teen/adult?
2. What was going on in your life when the anxiety started? ie. Death of a loved one?, Job promotion? Car Wreck? Divorce? Intense stress?
3. Does anyone in your immediate family suffer from anxiety related issues? Panic, OCD, Phobias, etc?
Anxiety can have a genetic component, which would most likely be treated by anti-anxiety drugs. However, many times anxiety is caused by a life event that can be treated with EMDR. EMDR clears posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It eradicates the anxiety that accompanies PTSD.
