Search Results for: mental health generalized anxiety disorder

How to Survive the Holidays with Social Anxiety

The holidays are hectic. While some people do enjoy being extra busy, and more social than typical, those kinds of experiences are difficult for those who have social anxiety. One cannot simply opt-out of all social gatherings. Here are some tips to help people who have social anxiety survive the holidays. WebMD says that social anxiety disorder is also called social phobia. They describe it as “an anxiety disorder in which a person has an excessive and unreasonable fear of social situations.” A person with social anxiety disorder is afraid that he or she will make mistakes, look bad, be … Continue reading →

Teen Anxiety Linked to Parent-Infant Relationship

Parents want the very best for their baby. They put a great deal of effort into understanding what their baby needs and making sure that he or she gets it. Things change a bit when a child turns into a teenager and becomes difficult. Now, many parents are bewildered by the behaviors they see in their teen. When did the teenager become so nervous? It turns out that the quality of the parent-infant relationship is linked to teen anxiety. A study was done that involved 165 European-American children. These kids were from middle to upper-middle-class families. Each child was recruited … Continue reading →

Anxiety and Therapy for Kids

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As my full time job requires I have a good understanding of community standards I try and keep up with what community centers are offering around the US. What centers accept Medicare, have sliding fee schedules, or provide outreach are things I keep an eye out for. These centers often provide great services to all via their websites, so they are good resources. In one of my recent quests I came across a center in Montclair, NJ. I don’t know anything about the center itself, but they had a great article in the “Montclair Patch” about children/teens with anxiety. My … Continue reading →

How False Assumptions Fuel Anxiety

If you are living with an anxiety disorder – such as generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) or panic disorder – you probably live with a deep-seated set of assumptions about life that simply are not true. Unfortunately, these are assumptions so ingrained in your belief system that you never think to question them. You take these assumptions for granted, giving them needless power over your life. The key to overcoming anxiety is to bring these negative assumptions out of the shadows and into the light. Upon close scrutiny, you can come to see assumptions for what they really are – false … Continue reading →

Anxiety: When Meds are OK

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My 18 year old daughter just graduated from high school. As we sat and discussed all of the plans for the weekend something jumped out at me: the anxiety she had been dealing with through her teen years was not getting better, and the impact on her day-to-day functioning was going to get worse. I have been noticing symptoms of anxiety in her for years, and spoke openly with her about options. However, as someone who spent years working with adolescents with serious emotional problems, I was leery to start her on medications before she became an adult. I wondered … Continue reading →

Why Is Narcissistic Personality Disorder So Little Known? (2)

In our last article, we looked at how a lack of knowledge about narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) keeps the children and the adult children of the narcissist in the dark as to the true nature of what is going on in the households in which they grew up. Clients often ask me why this condition is not well known and why it took them so long to discover that they were dealing with a particularly intractable problem with their parents. The answer is twofold: Mental illness of any sort is still largely a topic of taboo despite numerous campaigns to … Continue reading →

Bullying Can Affect Health Later In Life

A study from Finland has found that boys who bully and boys who are victims of bullies are at higher risk for mental health disorders in their late teens and early twenties. More than 2500 Finnish boys participated in the study. At the age of eight, the boys were asked questions about bullying: if they were bullied, if they bullied others, how often it happened, and more. Parents and teachers also answered questions about the boys. A decade later, the information was compared with psychiatric information from medical exams taken between the ages of 18 and 23 in preparation for … Continue reading →

Where’s “IT” at? Keeping your Child’s Anxiety Out of the Bag and on the Chain.

If you’ve ever had to enter into hand-to-hand combat with the witch under the bed or the bearded baddie at the window, then you already know that children’s anxiety can be disturbingly real to them. Just like adults, children can also suffer from free-floating and generalized anxiety or panic attacks. One in nine children are affected to the extent that it constipates their daily functioning and our nightly sleep. The witch or monster doesn’t just appear every now and then as part of normal chronological or problem solving development, they rarely leave and they will taunt the child at any … Continue reading →

What is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?

Kathleen cannot leave the house without repeatedly checking that she has locked the front door properly. She rattles the door over and over again to assure herself that the door is locked. She will start to leave the premises only to return up the front steps again to reassure herself that the door is, in fact, locked. She may repeat this more than once. Helen cannot bear to use a towel once it has already been used, even if it has only been used just once to wipe her own hands. It has to be replaced immediately. She also cannot … Continue reading →

Worry Time

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My line of work keeps me tuned in to anxiety. So does my home life. So when I come across information about anxiety I like to share. Let’s face it – even without a “formal” diagnosis of anxiety most of us experience it on some level at regular intervals. It only becomes a diagnosable condition when it negatively impacts functioning. Keeping it from becoming something that impacts your daily living can be work though. So today I saw an article about managing anxiety that jumped out at me. The article was about planning “worry time”. The basic concept is to … Continue reading →