Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Panic Disorder

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It should come as no surprise that by using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, you're able to integrate new patterns of thinking that will take hold and the whole process continues to flow.  This is preceisely one of the reasons why Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is good for panic disorder.

Often, though, at some point in time you might feel like you’ve hit a brick wall, with respect to your recovery and it really feels like the things that were working, are no longer working, and that’s what I’d like to talk about today.

So the question becomes: What do you do when you fall off track or seem like you’re getting nowhere with your recovery? 

You first need to recognize that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is something that you could do it any time, not just initially when you come down with your panic attacks or when you’re feeling anxious. 

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is something you should be using in this instance because, and this is really the most important point, the reason you’re feeling bad is because of your thoughts.  What better way to help with your thoughts than with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy? 

If you continue to work on these thoughts and change your thinking then you can get back on track.

What are some examples of thoughts you might have when you feel that things are insurmountable? 

“There is no way out.”

“This just proves that none of this works and I can’t feel better.”

These thoughts are not necessarily obvious but are likely reflected in your feelings. 

One way these emotions are reflected in your thoughts is by virtue of how the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy model works. 

As I’ve said many times, you need to be a good detective with your thoughts because the particular thoughts that are causing your anxiety are likely not immediately obvious. 

In other words, if you feel emotional or sad, you examine the evidence: For example, your thoughts might be: “Well I feel sad because I feel like I failed?”  But have you really failed or have you simply experience a challenge in life like everyone does? This is the notion of restructuring your thoughts.  This alternative question “have you simply experienced a challenge in life like everyone else does?” would be an example of an alternative thought.  A thought can definitely be in the form of a question.

You have to look at your own thoughts as an individual and generate alternative thoughts that are more accurate. 

One of the things I did through my own self-discovery, is I discovered that often when I would feel really bad, or when I had been doing everything I could, I might become very anxious and on one level I would say to myself “see I knew this wasn’t going to work again” but I bought into the original thoughts that came with the initial onset of my panic attacks. In the moment it’s hard to recognize that – you can’t see the errors in your thinking. 

You can’t solve a problem that is caused by the same thinking that created it. 

This is so true for anxiety and panic attack sufferers.  You can’t use the same anxious thoughts to feel better. 

So what do you do in this situation? 

You need to be more objective but Cognitive Behavioral Therapy allows you to step aside as a third party.  It’s very easy to give advice to someone else and such advice that we really believe.  Yet the same things we say to others we would not say to ourselves.  This is what is known as a double standard.  In other words, you’re holding others to one set of standards but holding yourself out to another set of standards.

I could quickly name counselees examples proving it is not hopeless to a friend, when he/she tells me it’s hopeless but I find it difficult to do the same for myself.  We all share this tendency.  As an anxiety and panic attack sufferer you would not heed the same advice that you provided to a friend.  You would ignore the evidence.  That’s why you need a structured, more objective way of looking at the situation in which you can generate more accurate thoughts – this of course is where Cognitive Behavioral Therapy comes in.

Under the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy model, if you’re feeling bad then there’s typically an error in your thinking.  [Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is not intended to stop a natural process (however even in these see so situations Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can help you to keep things in perspective and bounce back again because it puts things into perspective).]

The difference between hitting a brick wall and getting back on track is a matter of actually deciding whether you go back and do Cognitive Behavioral Therapy again and refocus or whether you slip back into your own way of thinking. 

You hold the wheel in your hands to control your thoughts – and that’s what’s really amazing here – but at the same time the most important point to take from here is that you can do this every single day and you should expect that there are naturally going to be barriers that we all hit in our life where we need to refocus again and regroup and come back but that’s how we become successful in our recovery.