Anxiety & Depression Counseling
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The Dynamic Duo
I grew up in the 1960’s when Adam West and Bert Ward played the Dynamic Duo on the hit TV show, Batman. While compared to today’s television or movie standards that show seems quite corny, but it was fun and often intense as Batman and Robin battled their villains. However, they always found a way to work together, compounding their efforts and winning out in the end.
The Not-So-Dynamic Duo: Anxiety and Depression Together
Separately, anxiety and depression can be formidable mental health diagnoses. The beginnings of anxiety can start with young children and sometimes grow and become more problematic as one gets older. Common anxiety concerns are separation anxiety, worry, fears, phobias, social anxiety, panic, PTSD, agoraphobia, generalized anxiety, and compulsive disorders. The anxiety or fear takes over a big part of the person’s focus—constantly thinking about, worrying or believing that something bad will happen. A person may say, “I just can’t turn my mind off.” And the more a person becomes focused on what bad may happen, the bigger the fear becomes, to the point that it feels overwhelming.
The onset of depression is typically later than that of anxiety and is often (but not always) preceded by anxiety symptoms that that a person has struggled with and been unable to overcome. Struggling with anxiety, or any mental health concern, and not finding relief can lead a person to feel hopeless that they will ever get better. They may even lose a desire to try to get better. This is when depression sets in. Depression can be identified by thoughts of hopelessness, despair, low self-esteem, worthlessness, sadness, excessive or inappropriate guilt, feeling angry and thoughts of self-harm or suicide. The person may be irritable, agitated, have angry outbursts, low energy, struggle with sleep or not being able to sleep, and an inability to concentrate or make decisions (DSM IV, American Psychiatric Association, 2013).
Anxiety or depression by itself can be overwhelming, each one presenting its own challenges. When occurring together (co-morbid diagnoses), anxiety and depression take on a “compounding” impact—playing off of one another and enhancing their individual effects. Only in this case it is not a “winning outcome.” Anxiety and Depression become the dark side of a Dynamic Duo—as when the villains would gang up on Batman and Robin.
…but there is hope. You can fight back!
Some relief from these villains can be found with medications like Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Lexapro, BuSpar, Valium, Xanax, Klonopin or others. But research tells us that medications alone are not the answer. The most helpful “winning combination” is pairing medication with counseling. Therapies like cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), mindfulness, somatic/mind-body strategies, Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and clinical hypnosis present an effective way to relieve symptoms and move your life forward with life skills and strategies that can keep these villains at bay.
Ray Sibert has specialized in helping clients win the battle over anxiety and depression for more than 30 years. To request a free consultation about your specific concerns, fill out the form on the the For New Clients page. Together we can become the new Dynamic Duo against the anxiety and depression villains.