Anxiety
Introduction to Anxiety Counselling
Anxiety comes in many forms and there are a number of diagnoses and terms that are frequently used by health professionals.
Generalised anxiety, social anxiety, performance anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, panic attacks, phobias are some of the terms you may have come across or have been diagnosed with.
People with panic attacks for example often first have visits in an ambulance to an emergency department …believing their symptoms to be a ‘heart attack’. Very often symptoms of depression and anxiety go hand-in-hand.
How can we understand anxiety?
Anxiety is one way in which difficulty managing our emotions can be experienced. When any of our emotions becomes too intense we experience what is often described as anxiety…when this happens our ability to think and respond clearly is diminished or lost completely…. It is usually extremely confusing, frustrating and even frightening in itself.. because we lose our usual sense of control…
I see symptoms such as anxiety as reflecting underlying patterns of thinking feeling and behaving which are often life-long and which may have served an adaptive role at one point in life such as in childhood but no longer serve us in adulthood.
How do I assess patients with Anxiety?
As an experienced psychotherapist who also has practiced meditation for over 30 years I have long been struck by the similarities between the processes of psychotherapy and meditative inquiry.
When I assess patients I am interested to see how they process different aspects of their sensory experience…are they familiar with self-reflection and introspection…how in touch are they with their bodily feelings, including breath and emotions. I am interested to build on strengths and abilities that will help that person in meditative inquiry and self-awareness. Some of my patients are already meditators, others become meditators and others who are not interested in meditation are able to use their psychotherapy in a similar way to meditative self-inquiry.
How do I assess patients with Anxiety?
As an experienced psychotherapist who also has practiced meditation for over 30 years I have long been struck by the similarities between the processes of psychotherapy and meditative inquiry.
When I assess patients I am interested to see how they process different aspects of their sensory experience…are they familiar with self-reflection and introspection…how in touch are they with their bodily feelings, including breath and emotions. I am interested to build on strengths and abilities that will help that person in meditative inquiry and self-awareness. Some of my patients are already meditators, others become meditators and others who are not interested in meditation are able to use their psychotherapy in a similar way to meditative self-inquiry.
The Extended Medicare Safety Net….
An important piece in the puzzle of understanding the viability of long term psychotherapy for life-long mental health conditions.
As a GP treating patients with long term distress, I am fortunate to provide effective long-term therapy under Medicare. Some of these patients’ issues are complicated as in BPD or complex PTSD, others less so.
Because of my specialist practice I understand that the extended Medicare safety net (EMSN) provisions for patients with chronic health conditions can be applied to long term mental health conditions. It is possible for medical professionals to provide frequent and long term psychotherapeutic care which is absolutely affordable for most patients, even those on health care cards.
In contrast, patients seeing psychologists have limited sessions under Medicare in its present form. Unfortunately, psychologists in the private health system cannot provide affordable long term psychotherapy for their patients.
