Special Treatment Programs
At LI Anxiety Care, we offer a variety of specialized treatment programs with the goals of enhancing client health, increasing their capacity to cope and reducing their risk of future disease.
Cardiac Stress Management
One might think that a heart attack would be a darn good motivator of behavior change.
Yet, patients with heart disease often struggle to make the important behavioral and emotional changes required to lower their cardiac risk.
Whether the goal is to stop smoking, lose weight, lower cholesterol, decrease salt intake, increase exercise, or better manage stress and other negative emotions, the threat of a heart attack, alone, is frequently ineffective in motivating lifestyle change.
For some patients, worries about work, finances, marriage, and family–the very stressors that may have contributed to their development of heart disease in the first place–continue to take precedence and interfere with the modifications they need to make. For others, the mere thought of changing habits and attitudes, formed decades ago, seems too overwhelming
to achieve.
Living in the shadow of heart disease, itself, may cause too much fright for some individuals to cope effectively. Feelings of guilt and recurring worries about loss often lead cardiac patients to suffer depression and to behave in a helpless manner. Feelings of anxiety and panic, arising from exaggerated fears of sudden death or disability can also serve to block effective coping and behavioral change.
The addition of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), with its emphasis on education, coping skills training, and rational methods for changing thoughts and behaviors has been shown to be an effective treatment strategy for helping cardiac patients make beneficial lifestyle changes. CBT is a highly structured and goal oriented form of psychological treatment that can be delivered in both individual and group formats to cardiac patients and their family members. Of course, CBT has also been shown to be effective as a preventative measure for heart disease, as well.
At The Cardiac Stress Management Program at LI Anxiety Care, we provide treatment that helps individuals with heart disease reduce anxiety and depression, improve coping, and lower their risk of future cardiac episodes. Sound education for patients and their families, training in stress management and relaxation methods, and cognitive therapy for managing anger, depression, and other difficult emotions form the core of our program.
Test Anxiety
It’s normal for children and teens to feel a little nervous or stressed in preparing for an exam or important school assignment. In fact, a “touch” of nervous anticipation can actually be motivating and help children focus and perform at their best.
Sometimes, however, the stress or anxiety children feel before a test can be so strong that it actually interferes with concentration and performance. Indeed, some students can become so stressed about school work or tests that they begin to “block” and suffer symptoms of anxiety such as sweaty palms, muscle tension, tearfulness, headaches, stomachaches, dizziness, or even a sense of panic.
Children who maintain intense worries about their school performance may lose sleep, become depressed or disorganized, display obsessive routines in preparing for assignments, or complain of frequent illness. Others may express anger toward their parents and teachers or simply back away demonstrate indifference and appear to be indifferent to academic challenges, altogether.
Students who may be particularly vulnerable to “test anxiety” include those who are typically achievement oriented, highly responsible, and conscious about making mistakes. But, keep in mind, procrastinators and students who act out or even “cut-out” from school may be sufferers of test anxiety, too.
When test anxiety becomes a problem, a therapeutic program can be helpful in restoring children’s confidence and ability to focus. The Test Anxiety Program at LI Anxiety Care teaches students relaxation techniques and coping skills for managing anxiety as well as specific strategies for test taking and test preparation. Both individual and group treatment formats are available. If you’re concerned about a student who may show signs of test anxiety, please, give us a call.
Early Intervention
For Pre-School and Early Elementary Children, Ages 4-7
All young children experience some fear or anxiety at times, usually brought on by new
situations, unfamiliar people, or novel experiences. The most common challenge for most young children is separating from their parents. But, fears surrounding darkness, thunder, imaginary creatures, and even dogs and cats are also common during this time.
A certain amount of anxiety is recognized as a normal part of development; too little apprehension and children may not know the limits of their reach. Too much anxiety, however, and a preschooler’s normal social and emotional growth can be inhibited. For instance, some young children are not
able to sleep in their own beds, attend school, or even enjoy a play date. In more severe cases, socially anxious children may inhibit their own speech in front of peers, a condition called Selective Mutism. And, in trichotillomania, children pull at their hair, skin, and eyelashes in response to persistent feelings of stress.
True, most of the time, young children outgrow their early childhood fears. Yet, some children simply appear to be sensitive, either by birth or by circumstances, to anxiety reactions that do not remit easily.
For that matter, anxiety disorders once thought to be exclusive to adults, like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Social Phobia, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (i.e., the tendency, to string together mostly
irrational worries in an endless pattern of “what-if’s”) are now more often being observed during early childhood.
The Early Intervention Anxiety Treatment Program was established at LI Anxiety Care to help children and their parents learn to cope with the fears and uncertainties of early childhood. Our program is fun for children and it’s an educational service for parents who want to make sure their kids have the coping skills and strategies they need to deal with change and new experiences.
Of course, our focus is to help kids cope with their worries of today, whether it be about going to school, coping with thunder and lightning, managing family transitions, or dealing with the new babysitter.
But, even more so, the goal of LI Anxiety Care’s Early Intervention Anxiety Treatment Program is to teach kids and their parents an approach to managing fears and anxieties that will help them cope effectively in years to come. We see the opportunity to help young children with
their fears early on in life as an opportunity to help them learn how to approach rather than avoid “scary things” for a lifetime.
School Refusal
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Medical/Dental Anxiety
Fears of medical and dental procedures are common in children. Nearly all children experience some anxiety during regular medical and dental checkups and, of course, anxiety often worsens when “shots” are involved. Most children are able to overcome their fears and it does not stop them from getting necessary immunizations, injections, blood work, or dental procedures.
But, if the fear is so great that it interferes with a child getting necessary medical and dental help, then it may be a condition known as ‘medical phobia’.
The main feature of medical phobia is excessive distress and a desire to avoid most medical or dental procedures. Often, even minor medical procedures have the power to effect excessive distress and even “panic” in children effected by medical phobia. When faced with the prospect of a trip to the doctor or dentist, these children may experience an array of intense anxiety symptoms that include sudden sweatiness, rapid breathing, heart palpitations, and an overwhelming desire to run away.
Medical phobia is relatively common in both adults and children. An unusually large percentage of those with medical phobia have relatives with medical phobia. Individuals with needle phobia usually feel intense fear and distress when faced with a needle situation, and will have an increased heart rate and blood pressure.
Following the initial increased heart rate and blood pressure, the body compensates with the opposite — a vasovagal reflex which causes a lowering of the heart rate and blood pressure. In some individuals, this vasovagal reflex is so extreme that the person may faint.
It is normal for many children to dislike needles. But if it’s to the point where your child is refusing and/or too overwhelmed to have a needle you may wish to seek help from a professional.