A couple of days ago, we wrote about exposure. The opposite of exposure is avoidance. We touch on the topic of avoidance fairly often in this blog, but it’s been years since we focused on the topic exclusively.

That’s too long because avoidance is arguably the most important thing for you to understand in order to successfully battle anxiety and OCD, or for that matter, most types of emotional disorders. Humans have an understandable desire to avoid feeling distress, anxiety, sadness, and upsets of all kinds. If you’re like most people, when you experience these feelings, you’ll do almost anything to get rid of them. Common strategies include:

• Abusing substances like drugs or alcohol
• Distraction
• Smoking
• Staying in the house
• Making great efforts to avoid the triggers for your upsets

Some kids love school and others are more reluctant. How should parents respond when children complain about school, start to cry about leaving home, or even have a tantrum rather than going to school?

If your child has reluctance about going to school, start with the following:

• Talk to your child about school. Is there a problem going on that you are unaware of? Sometimes kids will not really know why they don’t want to go, it’s just a feeling of unease. But in some cases, kids will identify specific reasons for not wanting to go to school. Common reasons include being teased or bullied by other kids or not understanding some part of the school work.

As you no doubt know, bad things happen to good people from time to time. There’s no rhyme or reason for it and it’s not particularly fair, but such things do happen. Sometimes these events are quite awful such as serious traumas or illnesses. And when these things happen out of the blue, people often experience a huge wave of difficult feelings.

Emotions such as great upset, distress, anger, and despair are quite typical and frankly, normal at these times. It’s also pretty typical to find yourself railing about the unfairness of it all and the fact that you don’t deserve what’s happened. When these thoughts and feelings occur, generally the person will take on a new role in life—that of a patient or even a victim. And friends, healthcare providers, therapists, and family generally pick up the appropriate role of helpers.

When people you care about or love have problems with anxiety, the most natural thing in the world is to help. You may find yourself wanting to reassure them that everything will be OK. That sounds good, but in other blogs, we’ve discussed how reassurance can boomerang and easily make things worse. No doubt, we’ll write about how reassurance works in more blogs down the road because people fall into that trap all of the time.

Alternatively, you may want to coach your loved one through the problem. That strategy actually works sometimes, but it’s very tricky and we recommend professional guidance for both yourself and your loved ones if you want to become their coach.

Coaching, like reassurance, can easily backfire, cause arguments, or be perceived as criticism by people you’re trying to help.

No doubt you’ve encountered or even read numerous blogs, articles, and/or books that extoll the virtues of optimism. Some research has shown that optimists tend to have better relationships, happier lives, and greater accomplishments. Some authors suggest that you can never be too optimistic and that, by implication, you should worry if you tend toward the pessimistic side of things.

I suppose I should be concerned about all of this hoopla over optimism. You see, as my wife will readily verify, I rather often take a different approach. It’s something that Dr. Julie Norem calls “defensive pessimism.” Sounds sort of awful doesn’t it? Does this mean that I walk around morose and glum and project nothing but doom and gloom? Not at all.

However, I do frequently imagine “worst case scenarios.” I run various “what if” scenarios through my mind such as:

Most people, who have more anxiety than they want, work hard to rid themselves of their anxiety. They try relaxation training, meditation, medication, and more, all in a desperate attempt to conquer uncomfortable, distressing feelings. And who can blame them? After all, isn’t that the goal of therapy—to rid yourself of anxiety, uncertainty, doubts, and discomfort once and for all?

Well, yes and no. Of course most therapists would love for you to be able to feel calm, relaxed, and peaceful all of the time. However, that goal isn’t possible for anybody. Life is full of unpredictable, often random, dangers, hassles, and perils. Therefore, if you have the goal of eliminating these things, you will almost certainly fail.

So, Laura responded to my blog on Six Reasons for Not Treating Your Anxiety or OCD with one of her own blogs that may have helped you rethink your “treatment interfering beliefs” in a more productive way. If so, you’re ready to move ahead, right? Well, not quite.

I think it’s also wise to take one more important step. Specifically, I’d like you first to consider accepting where you’re at, problems and all. That’s right; evaluate yourself as acceptable and OK as you are.

Realize that you didn’t ask to have problems with anxiety and OCD. Rather, you have these problems for lots of good reasons. You may have had genes that tilted you in this direction. Or perhaps you experienced one or more traumas. Maybe your parents were overly critical and overbearing. On the other hand, maybe they couldn’t provide the structure you needed as a child. Perhaps you grew up in an unsafe neighborhood. People acquire anxiety and OCD for these reasons and many more. They pretty much never become anxious because they “wanted” to have these problems.

Yet, many clients judge and evaluate themselves very harshly just because they have some problems that they didn’t ask for in the first place. They see themselves as weak, incompetent, and horribly flawed. Thus, they tell themselves that they absolutely MUST overcome their problems. In addition, they should do so quickly and completely.

A couple of days ago, Chuck wrote about why some people either believe they can’t get better or decide not to get treatment for their anxiety or OCD. Some readers had other ideas like having no money or not having access to good cognitive behavioral therapy.

Here are six ideas for overcoming such obstacles to change:

1. Money. Many people lack the financial resources for getting help. Some people can’t afford therapy at all, others have medical insurance that doesn’t cover mental health in a comprehensive way.

   Try contacting the nearest college or university. Most colleges have psychology clinics that have well supervised upper level students or graduate students work with clients in order to gain experience. Costs for such services are often modest and most use a sliding scale. Community mental health agencies also use sliding scales to charge for services.

   Continue reading… »

You read blogs all of the time exhorting you to get treatment for anxiety, OCD, and other emotional problems. But have you heeded that advice and gotten treatment? For many people, the answer is that they haven’t.

You might wonder why that would be the case. After all, if you have a problem, you should venture out and do something about it, right?

I’d like to suggest that if you’ve had significant problems with anxiety or OCD, yet avoided getting treatment for years, you’ve probably done so for some pretty good reasons. And it makes more sense to take a look at your reasons for not seeking treatment than to beat yourself up for not having done something about your problem. There are six major reasons or beliefs we’ve heard people give for avoiding treatment. See if any of these apply to you:

During the holiday season, many people find themselves hosting out of town guests. For the most part, these encounters go smoothly with people generally going out of their way to make those visiting comfortable.

However, for people who tend to be anxious, visiting others can be quite stressful. For those who host, here are some holiday tips for helping people who may worry too much feel welcome and at ease: