stuck

I tell you what's wrong with my clients, almost all of them. They're stuck. Their minds got stuck. I can't see what is wrong with their brains but I get to understand what goes on in their mind, and it's stuck.

I got back to work today and two of the folks are still having anxiety attacks. With anxiety, you're mind is stuck in worry and fear mode. Your body is tense and everything looks like a danger. Now, these are smart, insightful people, and they know that eating prepared food or driving on a highway, or walking to the back of a supermarket won't make them keel over, but to them, it sure feels like it. They want to turn their minds off, but they can't, it's stuck.

My job is to figure out how to get their mind out of the trench it is in, to break the loop that constantly repeats itself, and to free up their mind to do other, more fun, things.

To do this I have to create an experience that will detach the strong emotion of fear from the thought, whatever that thought is. Sometimes, medication will help do this, as it will, depending upon what it is, either relax the body, so that the emotion doesn't feel as strong,or slow the thought process, or keep the happy chemicals on the brain longer. Besides medicine, there are lots of experiences that I try to create right in my office, that will help people feel differently, and see that they can move out of their rut.

It is important that I don't get stuck. Everyone is different. Minds are different. There is a big movement on for 'evidenced based" treatments, which are pretty standardized for each diagnosis. I am not a big fan of those because, first the diagnoses are not too accurate, and second, everybody's case is different. Anxiety isn't like a broken nose.

Although it does have the similarity that when it is fixed, you can make it look prettier.

So, relax, don't get stuck. Things will work out. And don't say "What IF..... that only makes it all worse.