Re: Anxiety disorders

Many cognitive and behavioral factors have effects on anxiety disorders. Behaviorally, avoidance of a feared situation prolongs the agony because the fear is never faced. Cognitively, awfulizing about the situation, believing that something horrible is about to happen, and the fear of losing control or panicking can all help maintain anxiety problems. Also, the negative self-judgement about having the anxiety problem can be especially prevalent. I'm sure there are several factors I'm overlooking, but these are some of the basics.

Personally, I deal with a phobia about heights. At an REBT workshop, one of the peer counselors and Ray DiGiuseppe helped me immensely - I have stayed on the 12th floor of hotels twice and gone farther than that to see the view in the last 3 years. This would have been unthinkable to me a few years ago. It was removing the self-judgement and learning to realistically assess the situation, as well as removing the avoidance behavior that is helping. I'm not 100% anxiety-free, but much better than before.

I give the personal example purely to demonstrate how understanding the cognitive and behavioral factors that perpetuate my anxiety is helpful to me, and thus, hopefully, to my peers and clients.

Willie Deuel
Southern Illinois University

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