The other day I went down to my local Barnes and Nobles bookstore. As my wife was looking for books for us to read to our grandson (he has quite a book collection now at our house) I also went over to the Psychology section just to check out books on the topic of anxiety, PTSD, panic attacks, and agoraphobia as I am always open to any new ideas or research on the treatment of anxiety symptoms. There was a lot of discussion of techniques such as acceptance therapy, mindfulness, embracing the anxiety rather than fighting it, journaling about your anxiety, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and exploring your thoughts that make you anxious. I do use these in my own professional practice as a psychologist. This is all good, but I believe that they missed one all important tool – giving someone a tool that is actively taught and practiced during the first session that with a high degree of success a patient by the end of the session can effectively use to decrease their physiological experience of anxiety. For this reason, usually on the initial session, I teach relaxation skills and other exercises to help reduce a patient’s experience of anxiety and might even connect them to a biofeedback instrument to measure the physiological change that occurs as they are using a technique or exercise. This increases the individual’s confidence in seeing how the application of the exercise is helping them to reduce anxiety. Usually by the end of the first session the individual has something that they can immediately begin using to manage anxiety when they leave the session. In my mid-teens through my early 20’s I suffered from panic attacks. I thought I was going to die because of having shortness of breath associated with panic attacks even though I was assured that I wasn’t it sure felt like that I would. I was on medication for several years to treat my symptoms, but I began going to a therapist who taught me relaxation training skills and I no longer needed drugs to treat anxiety and haven’t over the past 40+ years. As a result of my experience in my own therapy and what I later learned about using biofeedback and other techniques to treat anxiety I am now able to help others in using effective techniques to treat anxiety without the use of medications. http://emapdrschulz.com