This mental health problem can pass between family members unless precautions are taken.
Stress and anxiety are normal parts of everyday life.
Stress and anxiety are normal parts of everyday life.
It is not normal for people to feel relaxed and calm at all times — stress and anxiety are part of everyday life.
However, stress and anxiety can play a positive role in our lives, if they are approached in the right way.
So says psychologist Dr Lisa Damour during a presentation at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association.
People tend to feel stressed, she says, when they are working at the edge of their abilities.
Although stress is a given, working through it can increase people’s resilience.
Similarly, anxiety, while also common in everyday life, can be protective.
Being aware that anxiety can motivate positive behaviours helps people make good use of it.
For example, anxiety can stop procrastination or help people take protective measures against threats.
Unfortunately, many find that the very idea of stress makes them feel stressed, said Dr Damour:
“Many Americans now feel stressed about being stressed and anxious about being anxious.
Unfortunately, by the time someone reaches out to a professional for help, stress and anxiety have already built to unhealthy levels.”
Anxiety has a vital, positive function, explains Dr Damour:
“Anxiety is an internal alarm system, likely handed down by evolution, that alerts us to threats both external — such as a driver swerving in a nearby lane — and internal — such as when we’ve procrastinated too long and it’s time to get started on our work.”
Naturally, stress and anxiety can be harmful if they reach chronic levels, says Dr Damour:
“Stress causes harm when it exceeds any level that a person can reasonably absorb or use to build psychological strength,.
Likewise, anxiety becomes unhealthy when its alarm makes no sense.
Sometimes, people feel routinely anxious for no reason at all.
At other times, the alarm is totally out of proportion to the threat, such as when a student has a panic attack over a minor quiz.”
Stress and anxiety levels that are too high, and remain untreated, can lead to psychological and medical problems:
“Anyone feeling overwhelmed by stress should, if possible, take measures to reduce his or her stress and/or seek help from a trained professional to learn stress management strategies.
For the management of anxiety, some people find relief through workbooks that help them to evaluate and challenge their own irrational thoughts.
If that approach isn’t successful, or preferred, a trained professional should be consulted.
In recent years, mindfulness techniques have also emerged as an effective approach to addressing both stress and anxiety.”
The research was presented at annual convention of the American Psychological Association (Damour, 2019).
Deal with anxiety and stress using ten techniques that psychological research has shown to be highly effective.
Deal with anxiety and stress using ten techniques that psychological research has shown to be highly effective.
The best way to deal with anxiety and stress is, of course, to identify the source and get rid of it.
If only this were possible.
You can try to avoid people who stress you out, say ‘no’ to things you know will cause you anxiety and stress, and generally do less stuff.
Unfortunately, this is often out of the question or you would have already done it.
So, here are 19 techniques you can use to deal with anxiety and stress that you can’t avoid.
This is the step most people skip.
Why? Because it feels like we already know the answer.
But sometimes the situations, physical signs and emotions that accompany anxiety aren’t as obvious in the moment.
Here are a few common symptoms of stress and anxiety:
So, try keeping a kind of ‘anxiety and stress journal’, whether real or virtual.
When do you feel anxious and stressed and what are those physical signs of anxiety?
When you can identify what’s stressing you out and how you react, you’ll know when to use the techniques below to deal with anxiety and stress.
The mind and the body each feed back to the other.
Taking conscious control of breathing sends a message back to the mind and helps you deal with anxiety and stress.
So, when you’re anxious or stressed, which is often accompanied by shallow, quick breathing, try consciously changing it to relaxed breathing, which is usually slower and deeper.
You can count slowly while breathing in and out and try putting your hand on your stomach and feeling the breath moving in and out.
Research has shown that deep breathing helps people deal with anxiety and stress.
Diaphragmatic breathing — colloquially known as deep breathing — involves contracting the muscles underneath the lungs.
Sometimes it is called ‘belly breathing’ because it feels like breathing from the belly.
In contrast, ‘chest breathing’ — using the muscles around the upper body — is less efficient.
This sort of shallow breathing is linked to anxiety, fatigue and muscle tension.
Belly breathing is best done by breathing in steadily for four seconds from the diaphragm, then exhaling for six seconds.
Some of the ways we react to stress are built on false conceptions of how the mind works.
‘Venting’ — letting your emotions out in an angry, tearful and emotional rush — is a good example.
It’s commonly thought that emotions have to be ‘let out’ in order to reduce them.
This simply isn’t true and is not a good way to deal with anxiety or stress.
Venting emotions can actually cause them to become more powerful, rather than allowing them to subside or reduce.
None of this is to say that you shouldn’t talk to others about what is happening, it’s just that the form it takes shouldn’t be a blast of raw emotion.
One way to deal with anxiety and stress is to change the way you think about stressors.
You can do this by reframing the stressful tasks you have to do.
For example, giving a presentation is stressful but, on the other hand, it’s a chance to demonstrate your expertise to others and to network.
One study on how to beat stress had bankers watching a ‘stress-is-enhancing’ video which suggested that some people do their best work under pressure.
For example, Captain “Sully” Sullenberger landed his stricken airliner on the Hudson River and Winston Churchill successfully led Britain through WWII.
Those who’d seen the ‘stress-is-enhancing’ video did develop a more positive stress mindset.
This led to them reporting better performance at work and fewer psychological problems over the subsequent two weeks.
In addition, thinking that stress is enhancing was associated with lower levels of cortisol, a hormone closely associated with the stress response.
In other words, people’s physiological reaction to stress and anxiety was better when they endorsed the idea that stress is enhancing.
Sometimes, though, trying to find the upside of a stressful situation can be hard.
Some situations are what they are and there are no ways to fool yourself into thinking about them differently.
In that case it’s better just to accept the situation to cope with anxiety and stress, rather than fighting it.
Acceptance doesn’t mean it’s right, that you’re happy about it or that you ignore it.
It also doesn’t mean that you give up.
Rather it’s acceptance that something can’t be changed and it is wasted effort trying to work out how it can be changed, or how it could have been different.
The problem with feeling anxious and stressed is that it makes you feel less motivated to engage with distracting activities.
When unoccupied, the mind tends to wander, often to anxieties.
One answer is to have a list of activities that you find enjoyable ready in advance.
When anxiety hits at an inactive moment, you can go off and do something to occupy your mind.
Try to have things on your list that you know you will enjoy and are easy to get started on.
(A word of caution: being too busy is not a good idea, you want to be occupied, but not creating even more anxiety and stress for yourself.)
Much of the everyday anxiety and stress we face results from unwanted intrusive thoughts going around in our heads.
They could run from things as simple as “Did I turn off the cooker?” up to persistent worries about the future.
There are a number of techniques to get rid of intrusive thoughts, here are a few:
There are six more in this article on intrusive thoughts.
The most common type of relaxation therapy which psychologist teach may be familiar to you.
It involves mentally going around the muscle groups in your body, first tensing then relaxing each one. It’s as simple as that.
And, with practice, it becomes easier to spot when you are becoming anxious and the muscles are becoming tense.
The next stage is to cut out the tensing phase and move straight to relaxing each muscle.
Next, you learn to associate a certain cue, say thinking ‘be calm’ with a relaxed state.
You then learn to relax really quickly.
Finally you practise your relaxation technique in real-world anxiety-provoking situations.
Read more about relaxation techniques for anxiety.
One of the best ways to deal with anxiety and stress is to exercise.
Studies on mice, for example, have shown that exercise reorganises the brain so that it is more resistant to stress (Schoenfeld et al., 2013).
It does this by stopping the neurons firing in the regions of the brain thought to be important in the stress response (the ventral hippocampus).
Studies in humans show that exercise has a relatively long-lasting protective effect against anxiety (Smith, 2013).
Both low and medium intensity exercise have been shown to reduce anxiety.
However, those doing high intensity exercise are likely to experience the greatest reduction in anxiety, especially among women (Cox et al., 2004).
Exercise can reduce anxiety symptoms by 20 percent compared with those who do not exercise (Herring et al., 2010).
As little as 20 minutes can make you feel calmer right now — and it works on just about everybody.
More than around 30 minutes of exercise, though, seems to provide the best dose for anxiety.
Up to 80 percent of people experiencing depression say exercise improves their mood and anxiety most of the time, another study has found.
Stress and anxiety can lead to lost sleep.
So learn the most successful single intervention psychologists use to help people sleep well.
It is called Stimulus Control Therapy (Morin et al., 2006).
You’ll be happy to hear it consists of six very straightforward steps.
If you follow these, it should improve your sleep which, in turn, should help you deal with anxiety and stress.
Here they are: how to fall asleep fast.
One of the best ways to deal with anxiety and stress is to think about situations differently.
Most situations can be re-framed and studies show that people who do this naturally — as opposed to trying to suppress their anxiety — feel less anxious in stressful social situations.
For example:
Reappraisal can be beneficial when anxiety becomes persistent and gets in the way of everyday life.
Using safety signals helps people to deal with anxiety and stress.
Safety signals can be anything from a picture linked to relaxing thoughts, to a piece of music or a place.
When in a situation that provokes anxiety, thinking about these safety signals can help.
Safety signals access a totally different network in the brain to those usually targeted by therapy or medication.
Therefore, they may help people who do not respond to other methods of treatment.
The smell of lavender can be effective to deal with anxiety and stress.
Lavender also has practically no side-effects in comparison to drugs like benzodiazepines and SSRI antidepressants.
Benzodiazepines, in particular, can cause headache, dizziness and an effect like being drunk.
Lavender, meanwhile, has a relatively quick relaxing influence and no other side-effects.
Improving gut bacteria decreases anxiety and helps people deal with anxiety and stress.
Both a balanced diet and using probiotics can help improve gut bacteria.
Foods that may help to improve gut bacteria include those high in fibre, such as vegetables, beans and legumes.
A diverse range of foods can also help many different types of ‘good’ bacteria grow in the gut.
It is better to avoid sugar, alcohol and artificial sweeteners as these can be detrimental to gut bacteria.
Prebiotics also improve gut bacteria.
Eating more fruits and vegetables lowers the risk of anxiety by almost one-quarter.
The study also found that anxiety disorders are more common in women, in those with low household income and those with other health problems.
Higher amounts of body fat were also linked to anxiety, Mr Jose Mora-Almanza, study co-author, said:
“This may also partly explain the findings associated with body composition measures.
As levels of total body fat increased beyond 36%, the likelihood of anxiety disorder was increased by more than 70%.”
Two different types of psychotherapy for anxiety disorders can change people’s anxious personalities dramatically which helps them deal with anxiety.
The study included 60 patients with generalised anxiety disorder who received either cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) or metacognitive therapy.
Metacognitive therapy involves targeting basic thinking processes, in contrast to CBT which concentrates on the content of thoughts.
A simple example of metacognition is realising one is prone to repetitive thinking of depressive thoughts — what psychologists call rumination.
The results showed that just 12 sessions of psychotherapy was enough for people to make large changes to their personalities and improve their ability to deal with anxiety and stress.
Yoga is an effective complementary way to deal with anxiety.
Yoga and breathing exercises reduce the symptoms of anxiety in both the short and long-term.
In fact, the more yoga practice people in the study did, the more their depression and anxiety improved.
Another study has also shown that practising yoga reduces the symptoms of generalised anxiety disorder.
A type of green tea called matcha reduces anxiety.
Matcha green tea, which has a long history of medicinal use in Japan, has a calming effect, a mouse study has shown.
The tea has an active ingredient that stimulates both dopamine and serotonin receptors — both of which are linked to anxious behaviour.
Matcha comes in the form of a finely ground powder derived from the same small tree that all teas come from: camellia sinensis.
Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) is currently the best treatment for anxiety.
It is better than just taking drugs and better than taking drugs as well as having therapy.
Cognitive therapy results in either a cure or significant improvement in 85% of patients and online CBT is also effective.
It is probably the ultimate way to deal with anxiety.
Anxiety disorders are more common in women.
Anxiety disorders are more common in women.
Eating more fruits and vegetables is linked to lowering the risk of anxiety by almost one-quarter, research finds.
The study also found that anxiety disorders are more common in women, in those with low household income and those with other health problems.
The study included 26,991 people who were part of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging.
Dr Karen Davison, the study’s first author, explained the results:
“For those who consumed less than 3 sources of fruits and vegetables daily, there was at least at 24% higher odds of anxiety disorder diagnosis.”
Higher amounts of body fat were also linked to anxiety, Mr Jose Mora-Almanza, study co-author, said:
“This may also partly explain the findings associated with body composition measures.
As levels of total body fat increased beyond 36%, the likelihood of anxiety disorder was increased by more than 70%.”
Scientists have linked anxiety, as well as other mental health problems with bodily inflammation, said Dr Davison:
“Increased body fat may be linked to greater inflammation. Emerging research suggests that some anxiety disorders can be linked to inflammation.”
One-in-nine women had an anxiety disorder compared with one-in-fifteen men, the study found.
Those with household incomes below $20,000 per year had double the incidence of anxiety.
Dr Hongmei Tong, study co-author, said:
“We were not surprised to find that those in poverty had such a high prevalence of anxiety disorders; struggling to afford basics such as food and housing causes relentless stress and is inherently anxiety inducing.”
Having three or more health conditions increased the risk of anxiety by five-fold.
Mr Shen Lin, study co-author, said:
“Chronic pain and multiple health conditions make life very unpredictable and can be anxiety producing.
One never knows whether health problems will interfere with work or family responsibilities and many activities become more challenging and time consuming.”
Dr Davison said:
“It is estimated that 10% of the global population will suffer from anxiety disorders which are a leading cause of disability.
Our findings suggest that comprehensive approaches that target health behaviors, including diet, as well as social factors, such as economic status, may help to minimize the burden of anxiety disorders among middle-aged and older adults, including immigrants.”
The study was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (Davison et al., 2020).
The anxiety-provoking effects of the sweetener continued across two generations.
The anxiety-provoking effects of the sweetener continued across two generations.
The common sweetener aspartame, used in many foods and drinks, is linked to anxiety, research finds.
The study on mice found that the anxiety-inducing effects of the artificial sweetener were passed down over two generations, despite subsequent mice not being exposed to aspartame.
Aspartame, which has been controversially linked to a range of problems, is used in almost 5,000 foods and drinks that are promoted as ‘diet’.
The drug was approved by the FDA in 1981, but there are limits on how much can be used.
For the study, mice were fed the equivalent of 15 percent of the maximum daily intake of aspartame each day over 12 weeks — roughly equivalent to six to eight cans of diet soda for humans.
The results showed that the mice began behaving anxiously.
But it was not just the mice originally exposed to aspartame, it was also their children and their grandchildren that continued to display anxious behaviours.
However, when treated with diazepam, a drug marketed as Valium and used to treat anxiety in humans, their anxious behaviours disappeared.
Ms Sara Jones, the study’s first author, explained:
“It was such a robust anxiety-like trait that I don’t think any of us were anticipating we would see.
It was completely unexpected.
Usually you see subtle changes.”
The transgenerational effects of aspartame are striking, said Professor Pradeep Bhide, study co-author:
“What this study is showing is we need to look back at the environmental factors, because what we see today is not only what’s happening today, but what happened two generations ago and maybe even longer.”
The study was inspired by previous research that found that nicotine had transgenerational effects on mice.
The negative effects of smoking have been found to carry on down the generations, causing asthma and chronic lung disease in people who never smoked.
Professor Bhide said:
“We were working on the effects of nicotine on the same type of model.
The father smokes.
What happened to the children?”
Aspartame has also been tentatively linked to depression, weight gain and behavioural problems in children.
The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Jones et al., 2022).
Weighted blankets for anxiety and insomnia may mimic the experience of being held or hugged.
Weighted blankets for anxiety and insomnia may mimic the experience of being held or hugged.
Weighted blankets may be an effective way of treating insomnia in adults, research finds.
Weighted blankets are simply blankets with added weights — usually between 2 and 14 kg (about 4 to 30 pounds) — for sleeping under at night, or any time.
A randomised controlled trial found that patients using weighted blankets experienced less insomnia, improved sleep and less daytime sleepiness.
Weighted blankets also reduced the symptoms of other mental health disorders, such as depression and anxiety.
Weighted blankets may work by providing the basic need of touch, which is calming and comforting — they are thought to mimic the experience of being held or hugged.
Dr Mats Alder, study co-author, said:
“A suggested explanation for the calming and sleep-promoting effect is the pressure that the chain blanket applies on different points on the body, stimulating the sensation of touch and the sense of muscles and joints, similar to acupressure and massage.
There is evidence suggesting that deep pressure stimulation increases parasympathetic arousal of the autonomic nervous system and at the same time reduces sympathetic arousal, which is considered to be the cause of the calming effect.”
The study included 120 people who had all been diagnosed with clinical insomnia, as well as other mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety.
The trial had people take home chain-weighted blankets of various weights, between 6 kg and 8 kg (about 13-18 pounds).
The control group used a blanket that only weighed 1.5 kg (3 pounds).
The results of the four-week home trial of sleeping with weighted blankets revealed that 60 percent of weighted blanket users responded positively.
Their insomnia decreased by an average of 50 percent or more.
In comparison to the control group, in which hardly anyone went into remission (4 percent), 42 percent of those in the weighted blanket group felt their insomnia improved.
A follow-up tested various weights and designs of blanket, with most people eventually choosing a heavier blanket.
After 12 months, fully 92 percent had responded to the treatment and 78 percent were in remission.
Dr Alder said:
“I was surprised by the large effect size on insomnia by the weighted blanket and pleased by the reduction of levels of both anxiety and depression.”
A number of other studies have also found that weighted blankets may be beneficial for sleep and anxiety (Baric et al., 2021; Becklund et al., 2021; Danoff-Burg et al., 2020)
However, most of these were small studies and more research will need to be done.
Weighted blankets are also not recommended for children under two.
Since there have been reports of children suffocating under them, they may not be suitable for children at all.
For adults, though, the general rule is to choose a weighted blanket that is around 10 percent of your body weight.
For example, for a person who is 80 kg or 180 pounds an 8 kg or 18 pounds is about right.
The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine (Ekholm et al., 2022).
Intrusive thoughts can be stopped using focused distraction, paradoxical therapy, acceptance, self-affirmation and more…
Intrusive thoughts can be stopped using focused distraction, paradoxical therapy, acceptance, self-affirmation and more…
It’s one of the irritations of having a mind that sometimes it’s hard to get rid of negative, intrusive thoughts.
It could be a mistake at work, money worries or perhaps a nameless fear. Whatever the anxiety, fear or worry, it can prove very difficult to control.
The most intuitive method to get rid of intrusive thoughts is trying to suppress them by pushing them out of our minds.
Unfortunately, as some studies have shown, thought suppression doesn’t work.
However, the latest research has suggested that thought suppression may have benefits.
So, what alternatives exist to get rid of intrusive thoughts we’d rather not have going around in our heads?
In an article for American Psychologist, the expert on thought suppression, Daniel Wegner, explains some potential methods to get rid of intrusive thoughts (Wegner, 2011).
The natural tendency when trying to get your mind off, say, a social gaff you made, is to try and think about something else: to distract yourself.
The mind wanders around looking for new things to focus on, hopefully leaving you in peace.
Distraction does work but, oddly enough, studies suggest it is better to distract yourself with one thing, rather than letting the mind wander.
That’s because aimless mind wandering is associated with unhappiness; it’s better to concentrate on, say, a specific piece of music, a TV programme or a task.
Another intuitive method for avoiding persistent thoughts is to put ourselves under stress.
The thinking here is that the rush will leave little mental energy for the thoughts that are troubling us.
When tested scientifically, this turns out to be a bad approach. In fact, rather than being a distraction, stress makes the unwanted thoughts come back stronger, so it certainly should not be used as a way of avoiding intrusive thoughts.
While continuously trying to suppress a thought makes it come back stronger, postponing it until later can work.
Researchers have tried asking those with persistent intrusive thoughts to postpone their worrying until a designated 30-minute ‘worry period’.
Some studies suggest that people find this works as a way of side-stepping thought suppression.
So save up all your worrying for a designated period and this may ease your mind the rest of the time.
What if, instead of trying to suppress a worrying repetitive thought about, say, death, you head straight for it and concentrate on it?
It seems paradoxical that focusing in on a thought might help it go away, but some research suggests this can work.
It’s based on the long-established principle of ‘exposure therapy’: this is where, for example, arachnophobes are slowly but surely exposed to spiders, until the fear begins to fade.
This approach is not for the faint-hearted, but research suggests it can be useful to get rid of negative thoughts when used by those tackling obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviour.
Along similar lines, but not so direct, there’s some evidence that trying to accept unwanted thoughts rather than doing battle with them can be beneficial.
Here are the instructions from one study which found it decreased participants’ distress:
“Struggling with your target thought is like struggling in quicksand. I want you to watch your thoughts. Imagine that they are coming out of your ears on little signs held by marching soldiers. I want you to allow the soldiers to march by in front of you, like a little parade. Do not argue with the signs, or avoid them, or make them go away. Just watch them march by.” (Marcks & Woods, 2005, p. 440)
Similar to acceptance, Buddhist mindfulness meditation promotes an attitude of compassion and non-judgement towards the thoughts that flit through the mind.
This may also be a helpful approach to get rid of negative thoughts.
There is a basic guide to mindfulness meditation.
Self-affirmation is the latest psychological cure-all. It involves thinking about your positive traits and beliefs and has been found to increase social confidence and self-control, amongst other benefits.
It may also be helpful to get rid of negative, intrusive thoughts, although it has only been tested experimentally a few times.
In contrast to self-affirmation, expressive writing—writing about your deepest thoughts and feelings—has been tested extensively and it does have various health and psychological benefits (although generally only with a small effect).
Writing emotionally about yourself, then, may help to get rid of intrusive thoughts.
A note on how to get rid of intrusive thoughts from Daniel Wegner:
“The techniques and therapies explored here vary from the well established to the experimental, but it should be remembered that, on balance, they lean toward the experimental…these assembled solutions for unwanted thoughts should be taken as hypotheses and possibilities rather than as trusty remedies or recommendations.”
That said, none of these techniques are likely to do any harm and all of them are probably an improvement on thought suppression.
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Arachnophobia, or the fear of spiders, makes them seem much more threatening than they are, however it can be cured relatively quickly.
Arachnophobia, or the fear of spiders, makes them seem much more threatening than they are, however it can be cured relatively quickly.
Arachnophobia, the name for the fear of spiders, is one of the most common phobias, and largely irrational given that we are much more likely to kill them than they are to kill us.
People with severe arachnophobia are so scared of spiders they can’t even bear to look at a picture of one.
Arachnophobia is relatively common, with up to 50 percent of women and 18 percent of men being arachnophobes.
The arachnophobia rates vary from study to study — the exact figure probably depends on whether you draw the line at people who are absolutely terrified of them or at people who find them somewhat creepy.
Below is the psychological research on the roots of arachnophobia, what it does to the mind and how it can be quickly cured.
It may be no accident that so many people have arachnophobia, or a fear of spiders.
One prominent theory of arachnophobia states that early on in human evolution, spiders posed a threat, so we’ve developed a sort of hair-trigger reaction to them.
You can see this in children as young as three.
When they are shown pictures of either spiders or cockroaches, the children are much quicker to spot the spiders (LoBue, 2010).
This is unusual since cockroaches are also unattractive creepy-crawlies.
Not everyone agrees with this evolutionary theory about arachnophobia, though, and some argue that we actually learn arachnophobia at a young age.
However much the fear is learned, there does seem to be an innate component: we can all learn to be afraid of spiders very, very quickly.
“OHMYGOD, there’s a MASSIVE one in the bath!”
Except to other people it doesn’t look that big.
For those with arachnophobia, the fear of spiders actually causes the spider to appear larger than it really is.
In one study, people with arachnophobia were asked to look at various sized tarantulas, then estimate their size (Vasey et al., 2012).
The more scared of spiders they were, the more they overestimated its size.
Naturally, this perceptual distortion hardly helps people with arachnophobia.
Similarly, people with arachnophobia perceive them as closer, if they come towards them.
One study had participants watching a video of spiders coming towards them.
They then estimated the ‘time-to-collision’ (Vagnoni et al., 2012).
The more scared they were of spiders, the more they underestimated this distance.
Co-author, Stella Lourenco, explained:
“The more fearful someone reported feeling of spiders, for example, the more they underestimated time-to-collision for a looming spider.
That makes adaptive sense: If an object is dangerous, it’s better to swerve a half-second too soon than a half-second too late.”
Unlike, say, a bull, though; a spider is unlikely to charge at you.
It’s possible to be cured of arachnophobia in one brief session.
Six months after a single session of therapy for arachnophobia, twelve people who were too scared to even look at a picture of a spider, could still hold a tarantula in their hands (Hauner et al., 2012).
The arachnophobia therapy itself involved slowly being exposed to a tarantula and having some mistaken thoughts corrected.
Dr Katherina Hauner explained:
“They thought the tarantula might be capable of jumping out of the cage and on to them.
Some thought the tarantula was capable of planning something evil to purposefully hurt them.
I would teach them the tarantula is fragile and more interested in trying to hide herself.”
The usual treatment for phobias is slowly exposing people to their fears until they get used to them.
This is done in a graded way, starting with photos and moving on to live ones.
For those looking for a home cure for arachnophobia, here are three quick tips:
Imagining spiders can also help people get over arachnophobia.
Repeatedly imagining something you are afraid of can set you free from it (Reddan et al., 2018).
The process of imagining an anxiety or fear leads to what psychologists call ‘extinction learning’ from arachnophobia.
Extinction learning means getting used to something you are exposed to repeatedly.
This study, though, found that imagining the threat, like a spider, is just as effective as being exposed to it in reality.
Professor Daniela Schiller, who led the study, said:
“We found that imagined extinction and real extinction were equally effective in the reduction of threat-related neural and physiological responses elicited upon re-exposure to real-world threatening cues
More specifically, neuroimaging results indicated that imagined extinction, like standard extinction, activated a network of threat suppression involving the ventromedial prefrontal cortex as a central hub.”
More advanced methods have been discovered for curing arachnophobia faster.
For examples, when people are exposed to their fears in time with their heart beats, the treatment works even better (Watson et al., 2018).
Professor Hugo Critchley, who led the study, said:
“Many of us have phobias of one kind or another — it could be spiders, or clowns or even types of food.
Treatment usually involves exposing the person to their fear, but this can take a long time.
Our work shows that how we respond to our fears can depend on whether we see them at the time our heart beats, or between heartbeats.
You could say we’re within a heartbeat of helping people beat their phobias.”
For the study, 53 people with a fear of spiders were shown pictures of them on a computer screen.
Some were shown the pictures in time with their heart beat, others when the heart was resting and a third group randomly.
The results showed that spiders flashed up when the heart was beating led to the greatest reduction in fear of spiders.
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Anxiety has a strange effect on this critical social ability, study finds.
How to deal with panic attacks, the signs, symptoms, causes, treatment and how it differs from a heart attack.
How to deal with panic attacks, the signs, symptoms, causes, treatment and how it differs from a heart attack.
What psychologists call ‘panic disorder’ is a little different from the everyday use of the word panic.
Sufferers experience these panic attack symptoms:
This article covers:
Physical symptoms include:
That is why many people think they are having a heart attack.
Of course, thinking you are having a heart attack contributes to the panic.
This is all in the face of very little real danger — although it feels very different to the person experiencing it.
Often people experiencing panic attack symptoms feel there is a physical problem. This is possible. That is why it is sensible to get checked out by a physician.
If they, or perhaps other people, suggest it could be more psychological, then panic attacks are a possibility.
Panic attacks are quite common among people who experience a lot of anxiety.
It is not known exactly why some people have panic attacks and others do not but it is likely the following factors are important:
It is estimated that around 1 in 10 people experience at least one panic attack in a year.
They may not be frequent, but can be triggered by a situation or object that provokes deep fears.
For example, people who are fearful of social situations may have a panic attack at a party.
Or, people who are fearful of enclosed spaces might have a panic attack in a lift.
People who primarily have a panic disorder, though, can experience panic attacks apparently in response to little more than being afraid of being afraid.
It is often the fear of having a panic attack that starts the attack itself.
There is a kind of swirl of thoughts at the heart of panic attacks.
One of the first steps in addressing panic attack symptoms is understanding and breaking down what is happening.
Anxiety attacks should be treated because when they are severe they can interfere with quality of life.
Panic attack symptoms can leave people in a constant state of fear.
Some of the complications related to panic attacks include:
More severe panic attack symptoms are best treated by a psychologist or other mental health professional.
Cognitive behavioural therapy is the best treatment for panic attacks.
They will recommend a variety of approaches, which might include:
Doctors may also recommend medication, such as an antidepressant or antianxiety drug, although therapy is a better treatment for panic attacks.
Therapy does not have serious side-effects, like drugs, and it is not addictive or habits forming, as drugs are.
However sometimes a combination of approaches is recommended.
A range of lifestyle changes may also be beneficial to anxiety attacks.
These can include:
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