Panic Anxiety Education
Management Services
What is so great about Cognitive Behaviour Therapy? (page 1
of 9)
We have been receiving quite a number of questions about the effectiveness
of medication vs the effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).
As these questions are so important, we have decided to deal with these
issues in an article rather than post them separately on our
Question and Answer page. As part of
this article, we are going to use a series of emails between Bronwyn Fox, a
partner in PAEMS and author of the book, Power over Panic, and Lorri who
had Panic Disorder/Agoraphobia for 18 years. The emails discuss Lorri's
experience with CBT and her final steps into full recovery.
We know that when you read Lorri's emails and her Journal, you will be as
inspired as we have been in reading them and we would like to thank Lorrie for
allowing us to publish them on our website. It is a great gift Lorrie, thank
you.
What is so great about Cognitive Behaviour Therapy?
We have been receiving quite a number of questions about the effectiveness
of medication vs the effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). Some
people have also been commenting about how neither medication or CBT completely
stops the anxiety and panic.
As part of this article, we are going to use a series of emails between
Bronwyn Fox, a partner in PAEMS and author of the book, Power over
Panic, and Lorri, who is in the final stages of recovery. Lorri had Panic
Disorder/ Agoraphobia for 18 years. For ten of those years as she says "I
could not even go 10 miles from my house with out anxiety and panic and
experienced panic at least 5 or 6 times a day and continual anxiety."
Lorri recently began using a cognitive technique which Bronwyn also used
during her recovery. The emails contain extracts from Lorri's journal which
show the incredible progress Lorri has made over a very short time. Lorri's
emails and Journal really demonstrate what CBT is all about and really show how
CBT can be such an effective technique in long term recovery.
As a prelude to the emails and Lorrie's journal, we would like to comment on
the medication vs CBT debate and we are going to draw on one of our answers to
a question we have already posted on our website.
Anyone reading our website will know we are pro CBT, but this does not mean
we are anti-medication. We're not. Medication can be, and is, sometimes very
necessary in the treatment of Anxiety Disorders. We do not dispute this in
anyway. Bronwyn used medication during her own experience with Panic
Disorder/Agoraphobia and we know it can be effective in breaking through the
crisis many of us go through with our own disorder. But we also know from
personal experience, along with 15 years experience working in the field of
Anxiety Disorders, that medication is not an effective long-term treatment
option for many people, whereas CBT is.
Besides this, many of us don't want to rely on medication indefinitely to
keep our Disorder 'under control' and many people are searching for another way
of managing their disorder. Some people can try one type of therapy after
another, mainstream and/or alternative, only to find they come back to where
they first started. Most of us feel completely disempowered by our disorder and
completely disempowered by the perceived lack of effective therapies.
We can also feel disempowered when we are told we will be on medication for
the rest of our life and/or we need to learn to live with our Disorder. There
is an interesting contradiction in this. Our culture praises physical health,
and as a society, we are pro-active in working to prevent heart disease,
various forms of cancer, etc. Yet, in the mental health area, peoples'
determination and motivation to work through their mental health problems are
negated when we are told that medication is our only answer and/or we should
'learn to live with it'. We feel disempowered by our disorder and our
disempowerment is inadvertently supported by the prevailing biological view of
Anxiety Disorders.
We do agree there is definitely a biological component, but that doesn't
mean there is nothing we, as individuals, can do to help ourselves. We know the
arguments and debates which compares Anxiety Disorders with diabetes. People
are told when they are given medication for their Anxiety Disorder, that like
people with diabetes, they will also need to be on medication for the rest of
their life. And, of course, there is a form of diabetes which does need to be
controlled by medication. We are not disputing this. But there is another form
of diabetes which can be controlled through diet. It does mean changes to
peoples' eating habits and it does take discipline, but people with this form
of diabetes are prepared to do this. And there are many of us who are prepared
to control our disorder ourselves, but many of us are never even told there is
another option in CBT, let alone given a choice in treatment, or given a
choice, at the very least, in trying CBT.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy can teach us to change the way we perceive and
think about our various fears and symptoms of our Anxiety Disorder. When we can
change our perception of our experience, we lose our various fears and the
anxiety and/or panic disappears simply because we are not fueling them by the
way we think. This is what Lorrie will be discussing in her emails and journal.
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