Anxiety: a case study

The Problem

“In August 2007 I took a call from a 79 year old woman called Sally Meyer. She had heard about my work with anxiety and wanted to see me about her severe agoraphobia. She had suffered from acute anxiety most of her life but had never gone for any treatment.

She had experienced her first panic attack sometime around her 18th birthday. It happened one afternoon without warning and for no reason that she could remember. Over the following months she had several more panic attacks and began to develop amore general anxiety.

At first she managed to continue life fairly normally and had married the following year, but her anxiety became progressively worse until, after two or three years, she rarely left home and then only in the company of a close friend or her husband. She avoided anything that might trigger her anxiety and so had developed full blown agoraphobia.

This lasted for the next 60 years of her life. She never once sought professional help because she didn’t believe any help could be given, until one day she saw an advertisement run by our clinic in the local newspaper and she called to speak to me.“

The Treatment

“When she arrived at the clinic she was understandably already in quite an anxious state and had a panic attack in my office. While she sat I asked her to look at the clock and count the seconds then every 15 seconds call out what she was feeling while I held her wrist and noted her pulse. Attacks can run into one another, but generally they have a very specific pattern, lasting around 8 to 12 minutes.

Understanding that anxiety attacks do not physically harm you and that by analyzing them or using different parts of your mind by counting the seconds for instance, you can distract yourself from their psychological effects and begin the process of reducing them and eliminating them.

We use six such techniques to specifically target and stop anxiety attacks. We also used hypnosis, though any good relaxation technique will do, to reduce overall anxiety and stress. Used every day (we supplied CDs to listen at home) Sally found that she could stop things getting on top of her.

At this point we also introduced a course of Tai Chi, which is a very gentle martial art that works for the young and elderly alike. Qigong is another option but really should be taught by a qualified teacher while the rudiments of Tai Chi can be learnt from watching a video.

It took six weeks for Sally’s anxiety attacks to completely disappear and another four months before she could leave the house alone for the first time in nearly 60 years. Support from her children and friends was enormously important at this stage and we helped to brief them to maintain conversation with her at first to help distract her and keep her thoughts positive. She later said, ‘I had to get better, just to shut them up’.”

The Result

“She now leads a different life, much more fulfilling, but she doesn’t have a single moment of regret about her past because she has learnt to live in the present, outside of the barriers she imposed upon herself for so many years.

She had thought for many years that she could not be helped. She assumed that was just the way she was, until she read that leaflet that came through her door and she picked up that phone.