Allay Anxiety|How to Deal with Anxiety, Cope without Drugs… Thrive!

At some point I need to start addressing anxiety medications because this is a subject that I am an expert on. I want to get out the disclaimer right at the top however that I am not a doctor and I do not take any personal responsibility for an decisions that you choose to make regarding your treatment. What I will do is to tell you what has happened to me and you will hopefully be able to learn from my story.

The first thing that you need to be aware of when talking to medical professionals is that, in the vast majority cases, they will not have had any personal experience with the medications that they prescribe. I would say that this is true in the vast majority of cases regarding psychiatrists and even more the case when dealing with your family doctor. Furthermore, doctors regard personal anecdotes from mental health consumers with suspicion and often your claims, if they fly in the face of the doctor’s convictions, will be entirely disregarded.

Also, it is pretty important that you remember that doctors make their living dispensing medications — certainly psychiatrists do. Most doctors will diagnose you with a mental illness with the expectation that you will then need to visit them on a regular basis (for the rest of your life) to manage the medications that you will need to take for life to avoid relapse. I do not say this to insinuate that doctors will not try to do what is in your best interest — they will. However they will predominantly pursue a course of treatment that is in BOTH your best interest (as they see it) and in their best interest. It is important that you be aware of this fact.

The main point that I discovered in being treated by more than a dozen doctors, psychiatrists and therapists — I have been seen by some of the top psychiatrists in several cities as well as been a patient in one of the most prestigious mental health clinics in the world — is that the professionals know a lot less about the medications than I do. The reason for this is that I have been prescribed more than a dozen psychiatric medications of many varieties. And I have made friendly with countless people who also take such medications. What I experienced myself and what I heard from others who have been prescribed psych meds does not fit with what I have been told by psychiatrists. This is because the doctors have NEVER taken the medications. They go on the reports from the manufacturers and clinical studies. At this point, I quite certain that I trust my own lying eyes more than I trust what comes out of Pfizer’s mouth or the mouth of a drug study.

I can not stress how important this fact is. Why would you take an anxiety cure from a person who has NOT used it to cure their own anxiety? In this way the mental health establishment is horribly flawed. In fact, I have always thought that AA (alcoholics anonymous) used a much better model whereby people who actually had personal experience in solving my problem could give me advice. Instead I pay a psychiatrist $200 an hour to have him explain to me how to cure a problem that he has never faced. At the end of the day I am not any better and he drives home in his Lexus. Clearly this is a good deal for both of us?!

I do actually want to talk a little bit about my experience with anxiety medications. When I was seventeen I started to have some serious social anxiety. I ended up being brought to my first shrink who explained that this was treatable with medication and that I should start taking a benzodiazepine daily. He started me on klonopin. This really helped for the first few months but after a while it stopped working. I mean I could not tell any difference in my anxiety levels when I took it. So I decided that I should get off it. However, this proved extremely difficult. I could not get off of it without having horrible withdrawal effects. I late learned that benzos have a horrible withdrawal syndrome associated with them. I actually had to be medically detoxed off of them with a course of barbituates. This was entirely unpleasant I can assure. Today, I do not take any benzos and my level of anxiety is certainly not any worse. In short I had to go through a very unpleasant withdrawal syndrome that lasted months (months and months of suffering) because… I am not sure why? Because my expensive doctor thought that they would help. He was entirely wrong.

I was also put on an SSRI to help with generalized anxiety. I have been on countless SSRIs and SNRIs. This turned out to be disastrous. Today, I am no longer on the SRNI (I was on effexor until recently) and I am grateful. However the process of getting off of these medications has been hellacious. I can not in good conscious recommend anyone get on anxiety medications at any time. There are ways to manage to anxiety without medication. There are countless techniques that you can use that will WORK better than anxiety meds.

The thing about anxiety medications is that they do NOT work. Not only do they not work, they come with horrific side effects that are, in most cases, far WORSE than the anxiety disorder themselves. Finally, the fact of the matter is that once you develop a dependence to any of these medications, you will need to continue to take them until you die or develop diabetes or go blind. And expect to weight 300 pounds when that happens.

If there is one thing that I would preach is that develop a sense of personal responsibility and begin to learn acceptance. Sometimes the best thing to do is to just stop making your situation worse. I know that in my case, there has been untold damage that has been the direct result of my taking anti anxiety medications. I hope that no one has to go through all of the pain and suffering that I have gone through — so needlessly — so that I could be a luxury consumer of mental health services.

Because of the fact that I was born into an affluent family, I have been able to consume mental health services that most people might not be able to do. I have been to clinics for many weeks that cost more than $1000 a day. I have spent more than $500,000 in my life on mental health services. All I can say is that I AM NO BETTER FOR IT. If you have not been able to afford such luxuries you may think yourself at a disadvantage. I would beg to differ. Because, the fact is, when you are at a renown mental health institution you naturally proceed under the illusion that the doctors there KNOW HOW TO TREAT ANXIETY. Because of this you are willing to try their prescription cures, despite the horror stories you may have heard from others, because you want to get better and you think that they can help you. The fact is that they CAN NOT HELP YOU. They do not know how.

I want to repeat what I have said. I have spent more than $500,000 in my life on mental health services and I honestly believe that I would be in better shape today had I never spent $1. Without exception all of the advice that I have been given has been wrong and all of the claims that were sold to me have been false. The worst part about it was that I desperately wanted to believe because in some cases I was hopeless. I wanted to ignore the fact that their promises were not coming true. But after ten years being passed around by doctors I simply have come to see the truth.

If you are struggling with anxiety, I can save you a lot of time and money with the following word: Acceptance. Accept that you have an anxiety disorder and take steps to treat it. However, if you get involved with anti anxiety meds just be prepared for your life to get a whole lot worse.

For a long time I suffured from anxiety and did not realize that there were many social anxiety disorder treatment options. And that although there were many options for me to try, and I did try everything to treat my anxiety disorder, I realized after a while that there were many treatment options that simply were not that effective. But, before I get into all of that, let me tell you that I realize what it is like to suffer from a social anxiety disorder. I know how much you can find yourself dreading and panicking about social situations well in advance of when you have to go to them and participate socially. You start to worry about the social situation weeks, even months, in advance and by the time the social occasion arrives you are so panicked that sometimes you don’t even bother attending. I know this feeling. I suffered from social anxiety for years, from when I was 15 until I was 25 and I can tell you that it is a terrible feeling. It produces a feeling of shame that there is something wrong with you. I get it. I have been there. And, as readers of my blog know, I have been free from social anxiety for many years. I simply do not have anxiety symptoms anymore. I do not panic before social events and I don’t get sweaty palms or nervousness and have difficulty making proper social interaction anymore. I would not say that I am cured of my social anxiety disorder, it is more like I can’t believe that I ever had one. Now, I have explained numerous times, the steps I took in overcoming anxiety once and for all in my life. And since you can read about that all over the place in this blog, I am not going to go ahead and retell the steps that I took to find the anxiety cure though I invite you to look through the articles that I have written on those topics. Instead, today I am going to write about Social Anxiety Disorder Treatment Options. Because, let’s face it, if you found my blog by typing in Social Anxiety Disorder Treatment into a search engine then you probably want to know what I have to say about anxiety treatment options and, luckily I have a lot to say.

There are many social anxiety disorder treatment options available to you these days. I personally have been through every social anxiety treatment form that there is so I have some perspective on the things that you can do to try an control your anxiety. Before I discuss the several main options I want to tell you that I simply do not believe that any of these options can really eliminate your social anxiety. These things can help but, honestly, they are not terribly sophisticated and if you ever are able to eliminate your social anxiety disorder it will probably be because of breakthroughs that you have had and will probably have very little to do with the standard social anxiety disorder treatment options. However, that does not mean that social anxiety treatments do not work entirely. I believe that many of the people who work in social anxiety fields are truly well-intentioned people and some of their methods will help you with your social anxiety some. It’s just that some people think that if they pay a bunch of money or hire a bunch of experts that they will be able to cure their anxiety easily and permanently. I have to tell you that I think you are putting too much faith in these experts. Anyway, back to the matter at hand, let’s look at some social anxiety disorder treatment options.

1. Take medication. There are many anti-anxiety medications out there and I have tried just about all of them. I do believe that some anxiety medications can help, but only in very specific situations. For instance, take the benzos. If you have a severe panic or anxiety attack and you need immediate relief because you are hyper ventilating then a benzo like Xanax or Klonopin can be very effective. However, if you suffer from daily, chronic anxiety then a benzo is probably the worst thing for you. These classes of medication are terribly addicting and have an awful withdrawal syndrome when you are forced to come off of them, and quite simply they don’t work very well for chronic anxiety. If you have a chronic anxiety disorder and you take a Xanax everyday within a few months you will get no relief for your anxiety from the medication and you will be addicted to xanax and still having anxiety. Does that sound like fun? And while there are other anxiety medications not benzos they are not that effective in treating severe anxiety I have found. And believe me, I have tried them all. So, if you think that you need an anxiety medication try buspar or something like that. Don’t expect much and stay away from the benzos if you are smart.

2. Another social anxiety disorder treatment option is therapy. Now, I do believe that therapy can be helpful for anxiety, however not one on one therapy with a therapist. That simply doesn’t really work for a number reasons. While therapists tend to be caring people they are not really anxiety sufferers themselves usually. Because of this they don’t really know how to cure anxiety or treat anxiety from any first hand experience. They usually just know what they read in a textbook twenty years before. Really, I think one on one therapy for anxiety is a complete waste of time and money. If you want someone to talk to because you are stressed or need a mediator for a relationship or what have you then fine go see a therapist but one on one therapy will not help with anxiety. However, there is another social anxiety disorder treatment that I believe can help and it involves therapy. Find yourself a good therapy group. With group therapy you get to experience situations that will arouse your social anxiety and force you to confront it in a supportive environment. You will actually get better at dealing with social anxiety if you do group therapy. It will take a long time, probably years and you will need a good facilitator/group leader but if you find this then you will be able to actually see some results. However, realize that you will do most of the work on your own, the group therapist won’t actually help you much if at all. But the environment does help quite a bit and because of this I wholeheartedly recommend group therapy.

3. Another social anxiety disorder treatment option is to check into an inpatient treatment center. This is the most expensive method you can take and it is also the most intense. However, it is among the least effective options for treating social anxiety disorder mainly because you are working with a bunch of highly trained individuals that have never dealt with social anxiety, have only read about it in books and simply think all the text book things about curing anxiety. They are simply not that helpful. Also, be advised you spend a lot (and I mean a lot) of time working on DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) training which I don’t believe is very helpful unless you are a very low functioning human being. If you have trouble, like extreme trouble, with very basic tasks then you might find DBT useful, but if you have higher level difficulties you will simply be annoyed with this type of stuff. Though the experts (who read the textbooks) will tell you how great it is. So, as a social anxiety disorder treatment I don’t think inpatient treatment centers are as effective as they would need to be to justify spending that kind of time and money.

So, that’s my wrap up of the three main social anxiety disorder treatment options and, as always, feel free to leave comments below.