Dr. S. Faye Snyder

Well, this is a good argument for natural healing and a bad argument for pharmaceuticals. Maybe you can draw up a document taking responsibility for your safety as a forklift driver. I think you have to get off the medication, though. The body is designed to do natural healing, but the pharmaceutical industry is making a killing selling medications that numb out our feelings. Our feelings are there to help us heal. We have to work with them with bravery and courage. We need to go into our feelings and let them have their way with us: feel, cry, feel, cry, recall, rage, recall and cry, until we finish processing what is stuck that never got out. Now, if you have anxiety and depression all your life or as an underlying threat when things go wrong, it's probably because the first years of your life you were insecurely attached. If so, you need to get in touch with the feelings you had as an infant. I know that's a tall order, but you can allow yourself to acknowledge that you were a tiny baby and got left for a reason you couldn't yet understand (like Mommy has to earn a living). You have to sort of reason with yourself and let yourself know that those dark and anxious feelings are those of a little child, who believed he was worthless, because he was always being left. You can now correct that misinformation. You now know that Mommy going to work did not mean you were worthless to her and easy to leave. But, for argument's sake, let's say Mom was a worthless mom, it is still no reflection on you. Let's say you have a wife who leaves. It triggers the ancient feelings. You can grieve and then figure out how to choose better or do better next time. Let every failure be an opportunity to grow and learn. The way up is adapting. I doubt this pep-talk will work, because it's an attempt to represent a year's worth of therapy. But, that's the skeleton of the theory: You reprogram that baby within. Good luck.

OK, so first we have to establish that you have been a victim of trauma. Second, when you were a victim of trauma, you did not complete the healthy healing process of experiencing your feelings fully. You didn't acknowledge the end to the event that frightened you so badly. Thus, when humans store unprocessed trauma, such that we also expect more, we will be reminded that we didn't finish.
So, those of us who get reminded by panic attacks are reminded in situations we call "triggers". That is, you have a trigger that somehow is reminiscent of what happened just before or during or just after your injury, most likely, just before. So, if I were in your situation, I'd keep a pillow in my car or in a briefcase, and when I have my next panic attack, I'd go out to my car or into a private space and scream bloody murder fear screams into my pillow. I'd cry. I'd shake. I'd sit there and allow myself to feel every feeling and hear every thought. After exhaustion, I'd think about why this event won't happen again and how it's over. I'd feel the relief. I would reassure myself that I am truly safe now. Even fear doesn't hurt me. There is nothing to be afraid of now. I will not fear fear anymore. I will face fear and process what my body wants me to process, so I can be clear, current and forward thinking.
To answer your question, now, regarding what happens to your body, it saves the fear-alarm experience, putting itself on "hold", to be continued later. Perhaps you were rescued, and you jumped from alarm to gratitude. Whatever happened, your body is on standby.
Many physicians prescribe pills, because they, too, believe that we shouldn't have to feel fear or anxiety. They almost act as if there isn't a cause underlying the feeling. Instead the focus is on a belief that we shouldn't have to suffer these negative emotions.
When we are traumatized, the amygdala records and saves the trauma, so we can remain on alert, if need be. Remember, our bodies were designed over time by evolution, where threats to survival sometimes lasted and we shouldn't drop our guard.
Even when we don't specifically remember the threat, the amygdala does. The amygdala never forgets. However, the amygdala can let go of a fully processed experience. It is just that if we have put our process on hold (with medication, denial or stoicism), and the amygdala will keep our feelings at the ready for us, on a hyper-vigilant standby, alert mode. So, when we are triggered, the rest of the body goes into that alarmed state of fight or flight, as if we could die. Not only do we have the chemical release of the amygdala, but we have adrenaline and cortisol coursing though our body, because he brain believes we are revisiting our life-threatening experience again, and we have to save ourselves. It's up to you to finish the process and reassure yourself that it's over.

Life can be hard. It can be joyful. How hard it is depends upon how brave we are. If we take care of the hard things, we recover. If we avoid feeling the feelings, crying and grieving and self-reflecting on our part, we will be deviled for our incompleteness. I am concerned you will become a drug addict and your inadvertent dealer will be your doctor. If you were my patient, I would want to see why your constitution fears feelings. I would guess that you learned to fear fear as a child. What happened then? When you were an infant, did your mother leave you every day to go to work? Do you have abandonment issues from way back? Or, rejection issues that you never processed. Do you have behaviors that cause you to choose relationships due to flattery, not character. Do you do things in a relationship to push people away. If you face your feelings and the lessons within, you should be able to gradually withdraw. The thing is, you are becoming addicted, and withdrawal will bring up exaggerated versions of those old feelings. Now you really have to be brave. Good luck. There's a pot of gold around the corner (if I can mix a metaphor). .

The question is better asked, "What are the treatment methods of Humanistic Therapy?" That's because you bring the goals, we bring the techniques. I'm not very sure what is said to be the treatment goals of humanistic therapy, but I recall they are pretty much about being empathetic and modeling how kindness begets kindness. It's not my orientation, so I'm not qualified to answer.

Therapy helps with anxiety, but it also depends upon the type of therapy. If you want to get to the bottom of it, first consider whether you developed separation anxiety early in life. That is, did you have to attend daycare before the age of three or did your parent(s) have to leave you with someone else for awhile. That would be the foundation of your anxiety, and you need to get clear in therapy that that threat no longer exists, but that you are sensitive to rejection by others. If there was no such event in your early childhood, then your anxiety may stem from stress of high expectations and insufficient help as a young child. Figure out what happened to set the stage. Then, and only then, allow a therapist to get you to "think differently". I believe you need to understand the issue before you "think differently", or you will revert to old thought habits. Yes, if you have a competent therapist, you can get treatment for anxiety, especially since medication is not the long-term answer.

I am a psychologist and a marriage and family therapist. I often call myself a therapist and represent that I do therapy. Therapist is a generic term that covers a few licensed practitioners. Psychologist is a specific term. Psychiatrists are MDs that prescribe medication with less education in environmental causes of behavior than in medicine. Psychologists have the longest education, but they are often stuck in between genetic theory and behavioral theory, with some psychologists obtaining a credential in prescribing medication. However, psychologists probably have the most regarded education amongst therapists. They usually charge more, too. They are titled with doctor (Dr.). Social workers can make good therapists with a masters degree, especially for families in trouble. My personal favorite is a marriage and family therapist (MFT), because they/we have the most education in the impact of environment, especially family systems. MFTs understand best the transfer of behaviors from generation to generation, and the importance of addressing family systems. I also advocate the longterm harm of repressing the expression of thoughts, feelings and memories (witnessing) in a family, as well as another family practice of blaming versus self-reflection. The biggest mistake families make, with the most long-term harm, is contracting out their babies and toddlers for others to raise infants and small children. In my opinion, worse than abuse is failed attachments, repression and blaming practices. That's mostly the insight from family therapy. Of course, abuse is harmful, but requiring the child to keep it a secret or not complain magnifies the injury and creates scapegoating behavior. By the way, an MFT or some psychologists might consider depression and anxiety the result of a weak attachment, and anxiety the result of premature attachment breaks from a good attachment. There may be overlap. A psychiatrist and some psychologists might think depression is inborn and recommend medication.

There are more than 100 psychodynamic techniques these days. Everyone seems to invent another. There are also "evidence based" practices which are based on little pin-pointed studies. There are no studies to date on an overview. I have written one, but no scientist wants to take on an overview. It's too big to measure. However, my overview utilizes the best research available. That's my prelude.
The primary techniques stem from the primary theories. I break the theories down to two causes. Some would say nature versus nurture, but I'd say pro-parent versus pro-child. In other words, some ignore childhood causes and some depend on understanding them. Mostly, today, there is an emphasis on inborn causes that ignore childhood experiences: behavioral modification, pharmaceuticals, positive thinking approaches; problem-solving; cognitive therapies, frontal lobotomies, shock therapy, Late-Freud analysis, etc.
Pro-child techniques include parenting education and prevention, Early Freud analysis, trauma recovery techniques (EMDR, somatic processing, rage reduction, empty chair conversations with the parent or offender), relationship skills training, etc.

Yes, anxiety can cause pain, such as stomach aches, headaches, body aches (from tensing muscles), and even heart palpitations. However, before assuming this is from anxiety, I would get a physical.

Dr. Faye

I'd say he blew it. I'd ask him to leave. There are residences that offer beds for $500 a month. You can't be his only resource. This is a natural consequence. His idea of friendship give him no consequence, and you have the whole consequence for his behavior. If you feel real bad, buy him a tent.

CBT is a new solution for insurance companies to cut their expenses. CBT does not heal. It changes behavior, but it doesn't heal. If you were put in daycare before the age of three, you would have separation anxiety, now called anxiety as an adult. Thus, you have unprocessed fears of abandonment. Figure out what unprocessed fear resides within. You might have to meditate on the way you feel in order to get clear. When you finally get clear, see if you can scream the fear out of your body (into a pillow) or cry it out. Anxiety is a very old unprocessed emotion. Then, check to see what is causing you anxiety now. Does it make things better or worse. If you live in fear over things that most people would just handle, then you might have to find the courage to live the life you want to live and do what you must and then reap.

There are a few ingredients to lowering social anxiety. First, you need to identify from where it came. It's not inborn. If you can't remember then you have to let it go, but know this, whatever the cause, a child inferred s/he was inadequate. It isn't true. None of us are born inadequate, but when we think we are we can create such self-consciousness that it becomes self-fulfilling. You have to have that talk with yourself, that there is nothing wrong with you that you can't fix. Second, you need to get out of yourself. Perhaps, the greatest thing about life is that we get to live it. We get to witness and participate. To do that, we need to get curious. It is amazing out there, and being self-conscious will cause us to waste the miracle. Get curious about others. Get interested. The most worthwhile people are the ones who are curious and interested. Others appreciate it. Third, people of merit are interested in authentic people, as well as highly polished people. Some of us get a late start, and the best we can do is to just be ourselves. That is good enough, if you don't make yourself a burden. You can be humble. You can be a silent watcher who rarely speaks, one who sees, but you must be interested. That makes you appealing to others, someone people would like to get to know. You are interesting, as long as you share your real self without expectation.

They are, or they can be, because they believe they have skills to do great things or they do not. They alternate between these two extreme beliefs. Either/or. I emphasize beliefs over knowledge. They have such low self-esteem within that they have to convince themselves and the world outside that they are special. They were raised to believe they are special, because they come from a special family or a family of special expectations. However, they were not nurtured into the skills of success. They don't understand how achievement is created by perseverance and hard work. They have some magical thinking: If I believe it, it is so. They act "as if", and ultimately it backfires, so they hit bottom in despair over the alternate belief that they are worthless and will never matter. When the pain is too great, they dissociate and have a sort of "religious experience," and re-discover how magnificent they are. Then, they "act as" if to prove it.

That actually depends upon what you do. In one direction, you can entertain what you hated before, and hate it more, because the feelings of sadness, futility and/or worthlessness will be stronger than ever for awhile. When you hate the way you feel and judge it, as wells your thoughts, you make things worse. That's why you got depressed.

Most people don't know how to process dark feelings and thoughts, so they try to escape them. But, dark feelings and thoughts chase us down. The way to go is this: Go into your depression without judging it. Find the lies. Whatever is there in that depression that you believe is a lie. People may have failed to encourage you. You may have been the victim of rejection, neglect, abuse or something from unenlightened people (usually parents) who had bad childhoods and pass it on. You may have engaged hurtful relationships, because you never elected to chose better. Their thoughts were lies from their parents, passed down to you.

We are all divine within, if we use it. Our design is immaculate, but we must not waste it. Go on in. Take a look around. The body heals from facing, not escaping. Find the lies, and recognize them as lies. Feel the feelings. Curl up, cry out loud. Go to your car with a pillow and scream. Any feelings you release are gone forever, leaving memories with insight. That's how healing works. The body is designed to honor courage and attention (internally and externally). Repressing and judging feelings is a vicious spiral down to nowhere but what you invent in your mind.

Were I sitting alone with you in my office and you told me that, the first thing I would want to know is whether you were exposed to something threatening, probably as a child, that now wants your attention, given you are now safe. We don't get to ignore something traumatic indefinitely. If we do, it chases us down. Facing it, feeling it, crying or screaming to let it out, is healing. You sound ready to face it.

You were not born with anxiety. Anxiety is from repressed fear that has become generalized to your life experience. First you need to figure out from what experience the anxiety stems. Usually it comes from early childhood separation anxiety, especially when your parent(s) left you with someone else at an early age (before age 3 or 4). If something like that happened, you should know it is terrifying to a small child who doesn't get why parents left. They could think, I'm not lovable. How can I take care of myself? As an example, that would have terrified you. You wouldn't have understood why you were left.

So, after you figure out what buried fear you have, the next thing is to get that fear out of your body. If you were not free to express your fear as an infant/toddler, you need to get it out now. Sometimes that means you need to scream (maybe in your car into a pillow). The problem is, you may have learned a tendency to repress your feelings. So, next you need help getting in touch with old feelings that need to be released. Of course, this adventure requires some trust and safety that your psychologist needs to create. It takes a little time to create comfort. A fair warning, not all therapists know how to help a person process anxiety. You might want to ask them in advance how they help you process repressed feelings. Some will say they make a referral for medication. That is a last resort, because it is temporary and sometimes the side effects are worse than the problem. Learning to express your feelings is important. There is no healthy person who successfully buries fear, anger or emotional pain.

Dr. Faye
S. Faye Snyder, PsyD
PSY 24806 & MFT 29816
15650 Devonshire Street, Suite 212
Granada Hills, CA 91344
(661) 476-9076=20

Nightmares are a source of wisdom. In my opinion, dreams and nightmares are your higher self talking to your lower self (the self in denial). They are telling you to wake up and deal. You have been repressing something that needs your attention. If you don't face what your nightmares are protesting, you can expect more of the same.

Now, not every nightmare can be easily interpreted. For example, I had a five year old client brought to my office because his parents thought he was developing schizophrenia. He said, "I see dark men." He saw them in dreams, and sometimes he hallucinated a dark man. I read in his paperwork that he was adopted by his grandparents, because his father beat him as an infant. He doesn't remember. The next time I see him we will talk about what happened to him as an infant. I can observe that he is Caucasian with blond hair, so I believe the "dark" is a reference to something frightening. Even though he doesn't remember, he may cry, because it touches truth in him. If he cries, we can have self-awareness, empathy and perhaps, he can heal some or all of this injury.

In another case, I had a grown client who hallucinated about the Ice Lady. She was white and cold. It turned out that she too, was taken from her mother, because her mother left her in the crib for days without feeding or changing her, even though she was in the room. This woman was white. Her father was black. No reference to color.

Jeffrey Dahmer, the Cannibal of Milwaukee, craved skin contact, because his mother refused to touch him. When he was old enough to climb out of his crib, he would try to get to her, and she would push him away and yell furiously at him if he cried. As an adult, he dreamed that he was in a hotel where all the beautiful people lived. Everyone was gathered in the lobby. All the beautiful people were wearing leather jackets, kneeling on the floor pounding and screaming. His dream was telling him that he craved skin, or rather, touch. (We all need to be touched, and if we aren't, we don't know physically that we fully exist. Touch is essential for the brain to map the parameters of our bodies.) His wise subconscious mind was telling him that beautiful (healthy) people get to have their feelings, too. So, as you can see, I believe all of us have this internal guidance system, without exception.

Unless your nightmares have been all your life, you don't have that same obstacle or early childhood trauma. You can remember, but you are probably not taking seriously an event that you have dismissed. The nightmares will have clues to the event. After you realize what it is, feel sorry for yourself for long enough to process, whether you journal, cry, rage privately or tell someone. Then, do something to prove to yourself that you are on duty, taking care of business. That should eliminate your nightmares.

Dr. Faye

In order to handle anxiety, we need to be curious about others and not be wrapped up in ourselves. If you have social anxiety, it means you are using the Third Eye (of Eastern Religion) to judge. The Third Eye evolved to give us the gift of overview. It is a gift that enables us to think of two things simultaneously. One part of our brain can observe the other part of our brain in an overview. In other words, I can be talking to you, and at the same time, I can observe how what I am saying is received. I can be observing myself as I talk to you and whether what I am saying is true or for effect. The Third Eye is a holy gift of evolution, the way I see it. The Third Eye sees, and seeing is change. When we observe ourselves hating, we can minimize it. If we observe ourselves lying, we will naturally reduce our lying. If we observe ourselves jealous, we will gradually reduce our jealousy. Another way of saying this is self-awareness creates self-correction without even trying.

However, the Third Eye only sees when we are not judging. One cannot observe clearly when we judge. We taint what we see. Judging actually blinds us to seeing. We can judge others or judge ourselves by misusing the Third Eye. So, social anxiety is the result of judging ourselves. However, you should know this: People who judge ourselves judge others. If you stop judging yourself, you can stop judging others, and visa versa. All this is to say, let go of how you look. Be authentic. Be curious about others. That way you will be your most attractive self.

Dr. Faye

It usually means you feel defenseless and weak about expressing your feelings and anger in general or in particular. It's your higher self reminding you that you matter.

Don't. Just go. Tell the truth and get to the point. If you have insurance, bring your card and your driver's license. You are all you need.

So, if I want to have steak for dinner, but you are vegan, you don't have to say, "How many times do I have to tell you I don't eat me?" Instead, you say something smarter and less offensive, "I guess you don't really believe that I'm a vegan." There are differences in the presentation. To begin with, the former is domineering and demeaning. The latter is humble and a little playful.

You may say, "You never listen. I already told you that I have an appointment Friday night at 6:30." It would be better to say, "I know there are so many things to remember, you probably forgot. I have an appointment 6:30 Friday."

I remember telling one client to "Complain nicely," and he said to me, "That would be no fun." Sometimes we just want revenge. I have a new business partner. She was helping me out by doing the billing, and I was helping her out by switching over to her as my biller for 8% of my earnings. She called last night to apologize for having forgotten to send in my billing for over a month since she finished it. I took it as an opportunity to prove to her that I am safe. Anyone who apologizes to me for anything is safe. I said, "Oh, that explains things. It's OK. What did you tell Robert about our new deal?" In other words, after the apology, I changed the subject to clarify that it was over.

You will argue until you discover how to treat each other the way you want to be treated, such that you always leave the other better than you found him or her. To over-simplify, when I say "Ouch," you say, "Whoops." "Whoops" can mean, "I will have to give that some more thought," or "I'm really sorry. I'll try to do better."

So many people go to therapy for a mediator. You need to learn how to treat each other and how to talk to each other. Most of us are on some automatic formula we inherited from our childhoods. We have to revise our MO in order to transcend. You can figure it out together, find a therapist who teaches relationship skills, or you can buy my new book when it's out, hopefully before Christmas. It will be entitled: I, Thou: Our Rights and Responsibilities to One Another in Our Relationship.

Dr. Faye