Dr. Marie Kerns PsyD

Are you

like many of my of my clients that experience anxiety? They feel hijacked when symptoms begin? The sweaty palms, stuttering speech, unclear thinking and if severe - the panic attack type. With panic you may experience hyperventalization, real brain fog, severe tingling of limbs, and more. So what's going on?

The Anxiety you experience may be a real threat, such as an upcoming exam that your not prepared for, or it may be an imagined threat. Your emotions are overpowering your thoughts. When this happens, your thinking becomes unclear and poor decision making may affect your behavior. It is pure survival, anything to reduce the uncomfortable feeling.

Behavior becomes automatic when anxiety is triggered. Your decisions, based on internal feelings take over. This could result in inadequate decision making and negative consequences. Overtime, if anxiety persists it can lead to depression, or even physical health problems. Here are two types of anxiety existing in complex relationship with each other.

The first is acute anxiety, which generally occurs in response to a real threat and is experienced as time limited. You probably adapt to acute anxiety rather successful, partly because your response or action is based on a clearly defined situation. When the situation is over you are relieved and the anxity is gone.

The second is chronic anxiety, which occurs in response to perceived threats, is not experienced as time limited, and exists in all of us to a different degree. Chronic anxiety can be influenced by many things, but may not be caused by any one of them. Chronic anxiety can be the degree of your sensitivity to real, or perceived changes in your many relationships. Your sensitivities to these may cause an anxiety reaction that stems from, the relational instability that exists in your need for bonding with others. Are you accepted for yourself,? Or do your individual beleifs, if expressed, leave you excluded from sincere bonding with your desired group?

Once triggered, chronic anxiety sets off instinctual responses, actions and reactions that quickly gather momentum and become largely independent of the triggering stimuli. Chronic anxiety is subtle and pervasive and runs like a silent undercurrent guiding all human relationships.

Chronic anxiety may also affects the way you think, and influences how you perceive the circumstances in your life. It can determine your beliefs, organize your behavior, influence your personality and hijacky your emotions. More often than not, you may not be aware that your thinking, feeling and behavior are anxiety driven. Thus, chronic anxiety is a much broader concept than an anxiety disorder, or an episode of acute anxiety symptoms. Even if it never manifest as a disorder or an acute episode, it can definately include these.

Working to lower your level of chronic anxiety can be a self soothing endeavor. Attention to both the internal factors, and the way you function as a part of your family or friends, and other key relationships, is something to be explored in Counseling Sessions.

In our sessions, we will work together, to understand and modify both:

1. Your position in your social group and/or family, and

2. The way your social group and/or family manifests inside of you.

You may call me at 949-285-5199

Dr. Marie Kerns PsyD - Licensed Marriage Family Therapist #50443