Therapy for Anxiety

      Winning the War Against Stress

      You've heard it and it's true: Stress Kills. Sometimes it is the Silent Stalker, slowly but persistently increasing your blood pressure, ultimately causing strokes and kidney failure. Other times it's the Violent Sniper, striking in a deadly flash with a fatal heart attack. But before it finishes us off, it can toy with us for a lifetime, creating unhealthy habits, headaches, insomnia, backaches, anxiety, addictions and a host of other nasty afflictions. Stress can be the villainous outsider, feeding off the jungle of city life -- relationships, work and everyday hassles.

      Stress can also attack us from within. Our own bodies can rebel against us with accidents and disease. The 'simple' process of aging or 'normal' body chemistry can produce stress in us. Our minds can also create stress. If we think negatively, we act negatively. It can be the always unwanted yet perpetually invited dinner guest who invariably ruins an enjoyable meal. We can never consciously admit to ourselves that we brought stress there to our table. And once stress has arrived to eat, we hear those internal critical voices. We wither have to leave the table or suffer through another unbearable dinner party of our own creation.

      The fact is, there is no way practically to eliminate stress. There will always be unrealistic deadlines imposed, appointments to be kept, decisions to be made, too many difficult things to do with too little time to do them. The more 'civilized' we become, the more stress we encounter in our lives. As a strategic psychotherapist, I am less concerned with the question of why stress exists and more concerned with the mechanics of how to deal with it. My aim is to teach people how to manage a stressful situation so that they can move on in their lives towards happy objectives and joyful goals. The key to managing stress is to identify it, assess it and decide how to act on it. For example, in learning to SCUBA dive I was taught that if something were to go wrong while I was 60 feet underwater, I should, "Stop, Breathe and Think." The same principle can be effectively applied on land. When something goes wrong, stop for a moment and simply breathe. We can then relax and think of a way to deal with the situation. I know from experience that doing this can avert a fatal accident at a depth of 60 feet below as well as from a height of 600 feet above sea level.

      Breathing, self-hypnosis, meditation and simple common sense are the most effective, time-proven means I have taught my patients. These methods refocus their energy and help them to regain positive control of their lives while reducing their negative thoughts. I now offer small groups which identify individual stress levels and teach the basics of awareness, self-hypnosis, yoga, relaxation techniques and meditation. Although ancient in origin, my methods are the most scientifically proven and time-tested techniques available to us in our fight to win the war against stress.