Seth tells Us How to Support Someone with an Anxiety Disorder

In these two videos Seth talks about the support an anxiety disorder sufferer benefits from but there are some caveats I'd add:

• while it's OK to ask for this kind of support from parents or siblings it's not OK to ask for it from children or those who have their own emotional difficulties - the last thing you want is everyone tippy-toeing around you - it just makes things more tense


• in some cases the reason for the anxiety disorder developing in the first place is because the family is seriously dysfunctional and may actually have been criticising the sufferer for years beforehand - this can lead to an unconscious self-critical inner voice - it's like an echo of that person's outer experience - in such cases the person needs to get external (professional) support


• there's a limit to what family and friend supporters can do - they've still got to be themselves. As Seth says though - people are only human.

Two other points I'd like to make here:

• I don't fully agree with the 'relaxation and peace and quiet at all times' approach - I believe exposure therapy needs to be achieved through cycling through both of these stages; in my experience it's experiencing intense emotions for long enough that clears them but you do need to have peaceful rest periods in between - I don't think Seth's suggesting 'no stress ever' but I wouldn't want people to think isolation and total peace are the answer either


• strangely enough depression is not an emotional response - it's a withdrawal response in which the cognitive function (our thoughts) pull back into the lower brain in an effort to avoid painful stimulation - the problem with this is that our thinking pulls back into our emotional brain and so ends up moving closer to the disturbing and ruminating thoughts.

I'll write about depression in more depth in future posts.

Regards - Carl