“Ask Dr Neuman” Advice Column
Confronting the final challenges. The process of recovering from a panic disorder and agoraphobia is straightforward, but difficult. The affected individual has to experience panic attacks over and over again, purposely, and then remain in the threatening situation...
The treatment of panic disorder is not easy, but it is straightforward. The affected individual has to learn not only to deal with the phobic situations that are almost always a consequence of a panic disorder, but also how to deal with the panic attack itself. This...
A particular kind of bad behavior. This is a scenario I have seen played out many times with the protagonist sometimes a young woman and sometimes a man. A woman, let us call her Carol, was in a romantic relationship that lasted for a few months. She and the man she...
Feelings, even very unpleasant feelings such as fear, serve a purpose (See my blog post, “The Purpose of Feelings.”) They are a goad to action. For example, someone who is being treated rudely—or frustrated in any other way—is supposed to get angry. The...
Raising the stakes. Many love relationships—maybe most love relationships—come to an end at some point when the people involved have come to know each other better, or when one or both have changed. Sometimes those involved have come simply to understand themselves...
Violence is extremely common, violent crimes occurring literally in the hundreds of thousands every year. Individuals assault each other impulsively, almost casually, even those whom they love. The causes of violence are, consequently, the subject of much attention....
Fear People enter psychotherapy with a desire to feel better. Usually they have symptoms they wish to overcome. They want to be free of anxiety and depression and, perhaps, certain specific fears, such as phobias, and certain habits, such as those that trouble the...
I developed an interest in phobias, and in agoraphobia in particular, in 1954, as the result of developing the condition myself. One day without any evident reason I became panicky. I had the feeling I was going to go crazy or scream or in some way lose control of...
In the treatment of the very depressed, the role of the family is more often defined in terms of what they ought not to do rather than what they should do. Certainly they ought not to quarrel with or preempt the authority of the treating psychiatrist. They...
In the early days of civilization and for a very long time afterward, the mentally ill lived at home for the same reasons that everyone else lived at home: there was no place else to live. Certainly there were no institutions in which those so afflicted could be...
Exposure and response prevention. There is an old joke about doctors: “Doc, it hurts when I do this.” “So, don’t do that.” A version I hear frequently: “Doc, I get upset when I read about all the side-effects of these drugs.” “So, don’t read about the side-effects.”...
Patients who are near to dying are still alive Dying patients usually have all the emotional problems they have always had. The image of death growing up in front of them does not obliterate everything that went before. Money problems have not evaporated. Family...