The Reality Of Terror Anxiety

 

For those of us living in Southern California, the week brought forth several alarming headlines. For one thing, there was a tragic shooting at a synagogue near San Diego. And even more recently, a suspect was arrested who had been plotting to bomb the Santa Monica pier and several Los Angeles freeways. For those living with anxiety, stories like this can ignite deep rooted feelings of fear and paralysis. Even the idea of leaving your home can feel terrifying. But it is important to not let negativity overpower you and lead you down a dark path of phobias and addiction.

 

Therapist Jennifer Shannon recently authored an article titled Don’t Let Terrorism Hijack Your Brain. Unfortunately this subject matter is now timelier than ever and something that deserves to be addressed. Her piece referenced several other high profile incidents, such as the Orlando shootings and the massacre in San Bernardino. It is truly heartbreaking to know that these occurrences happen so frequently, but (as Shannon explains) there are ways to cope.

 

“When we become afraid—really afraid—our first instinct is to neutralize the threat,” Shannon explains in the article. “The primitive, survival-oriented part of our brain (the amygdala) sends chemicals and neural messages throughout our bodies prompting us to do something. We are not thinking with our more rational evolved minds. We get hijacked by negative emotion. When we let this primitive part of our brain do our thinking, we cannot calculate the likelihood of an event occurring. We can only imagine how bad it might be. When we act while in a state of fear, our attempts to stay safe actually make the problem worse.”

 

Those who become truly terrified tend to avoid public places altogether. Fears can include everything from the local shopping mall, to movie theaters to airplane flights. And sadly, those are all U.S. locales that have been affected by terrorism.

 

Shannon instructs her readers to recognize the fear instead of reacting to it. Don’t try to bury your anxieties. Rather, practice calming techniques and seek out professional resources to help you talk through your emotions.

 

The other major point is the toleration of uncertainty. Terrorism or not, we never know if some unplanned event may change our lives forever. Living in fear and worry will often make you feel less in control of your life and lead to even more mental struggles down the road.

 

Using Virtual Reality To Combat Fear

As the season of Halloween approaches, we thought now would be an appropriate time to discuss the very real issue of “Fear.” Phobias, anxieties and paranoia are much more common across America than you may realize and for many, they can have crippling consequences. One of the more encouraging stories on this topic came from The Independent and discussed how technology is being used to help people overcome issues that may be plaguing them.

This latest news concerns Virtual Reality (“VR” for short) and the idea that can people can face their darkest fears in a controlled setting. One example given concerns a phobia of heights, which can impede people from working in tall buildings or boarding airplanes. In this scenario, subjects put on VR glasses and are given “virtual challenges” that put them atop high peaks in the safety of a therapist’s office. Counselors are there to guide them every step of the way and can turn off the experience at a moment’s notice.

“A fear of heights is just the most common type of phobia, and one we know a lot of people do not get treatment for despite it impinging on many people’s lives quite a lot,” University of Oxford professor Daniel Freeman told The Guardian. “What is hugely encouraging here is just the size of the treatment effects; it is really very large. And the results with this are very encouraging.”

Freeman has been part of an ongoing study analyzing VR treatment for phobias. Not only is he using it to combat height issues, he is also exploring ways virtual reality can treat depression and schizophrenia. In regards to the height experiment, he tested 100 adults who claimed to suffer from this type of paranoia. Among them, exactly half were given VR sessions two to three times a week. After a period of months, 68% claimed their fears had lessened.

As he explained to The Independent, there was a strict regimen that accompanies each session. For these experiments, coaches would slowly put subjects on different floors of a VR building and ask them to perform activities (such as picking fruit, which is shown below). Pep talks and surveys would be implemented, slowly building people’s confidence as they stepped into higher and higher scenarios.

These certainly sound like encouraging results to us and we are excited to see how this type of treatment progresses. In the meantime, however, we offer our own support systems for those dealing with daily phobias and are more than happy to make ourselves available.