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Insight Therapy
Insight therapy
for agoraphobia (also called psychodynamic therapy) focuses
on uncovering the deeper feelings or fears that are causing
agoraphobia. In this type of therapy, the patient talks at
length about his or her thoughts and feelings, and the
therapist analyzes them
If you have agoraphobia, insight therapy can either help you
make a major breakthrough or turn out to be an expensive
trap. Research has shown insight therapy to be less
effective for agoraphobia than most cognitve-behavioral
approaches. Despite this, some therapists practice it and
consider it effective. If you are going to try insight
therapy, it's good to know something about it first.
Insight therapy comes from Freudian Psychoanalysis which was
popular in the early 20th century. In this type of therapy,
the patient talks at length about his or her thought and
feelings and the therapist analyzes them. The goal of
insight therapy is to figure out the deeper reason behind
why you are suffering from a particular psychological
disorder. In the case of agoraphobia, the goal would be to
figure out what about your life is behind all the fear.
Before you go to a therapist to receive insight therapy for
agoraphobia, it might be worth it to try to figure out what
is behind your fear on your own. Ultimately, the answer will
need to come from you, with or without the help of a
therapist. Therapists are trained to help you figure it out
if you can't do it on your own.
To uncover the roots of your fear and panic on your own, it
might be helpful to know some general trends that insight
therapists have discovered among people with agoraphobia. In
general, many people with agoraphobia discover that their
fear and panic coincides with negative life circumstances.
For many people, agoraphobia develops when they find
themselves caught in circumstance in which they feel like
they:
- are trapped in a bad situation they can't get out of.
-
really need to or should do something but felt helpless or
powerless to do it.
-
are being negatively affected by circumstances beyond their
control.
-
can never be good enough for themselves or for a significant
person in their lives they cannot please.
Once the person is caught in these types of circumstances,
they feel strong emotions as a result. The person may feel
one or a combination of the following emotions or
feelings: angry, anxious, ashamed, frustrated, guilty,
helpless, nervous, overwhelmed, powerless, sad, sorrowful,
or weak.
Eventually, fear and anxiety grow out of these negative
circumstances and resulting emotions - expressed as
agoraphobia. Here are some examples of the types of fear
that might be expressed as agoraphobia according to
psychodynamic theory:
-
fear of failure
-
fear of insignificance, or lack of purpose
-
fear of losing control
-
fear of loss
-
fear of identity or role loss
-
fear of losing approval
-
fear of abandonment or isolation
If you wish to do your homework before beginning insight
therapy with a therapist, ask yourself the following
questions:
Are there any circumstances in my life that seem to coincide
with my panic and fear?
What emotions do I feel when I find myself in these
circumstances?
What type of fear do my circumstances and emotions lead to?
To answer these questions, it might be helpful to use a
journal. Recall the times in your life when you have felt
the most fear and anxiety, or experienced the most panic
attacks. Write down what was going on in your life during
each of these times and then look for themes. Write down the
emotions you felt during these times and what fears these
emotions led to.
If you can answer these questions, you will begin your
insight therapy sessions way ahead of the game. You can
spend all of your time in therapy (and money) figuring out
what to do about agoraphobia rather than exploring what lies
behind it.
The concept that lies behind insight therapy is that when
you can answer these questions, you can start to do
something about getting free from panic disorder. You can
exert power to change your circumstances once you know what
is leading to the fear and panic. You may or may not need a
therapist to help you.
For some people, self-discovery is enough. Once you
understand what lies behind your panic disorder, you may
know intuitively what to do about it. Maybe you won’t need
to go to therapy at all.
Insight therapy is not as fast as cognitive-behavioral
therapy when it comes to recovering from the symptoms of
agoraphobia. However, insight therapy offers the possibility
of removing the psychological roots of the fear and panic so
it won't come back.
Sometimes it is not so easy to get insight. In some cases,
your feelings may be unknown to you or lurking at a
subconscious level. That's when it might be helpful to
consult a therapist, but if you do you should proceed
carefully and follow a few guidelines:
1) Tell the therapist what your goal is - that you are
recovering
from agoraphobia and that you need help discovering the life
circumstances and feelings that are behind your fear.
2) Make sure the therapist is willing to share direct and
honest
conclusions with you.
3) Agree on how many sessions the therapy is expected to
last.
Make sure the therapy can be done in no more than 6 one-hour
sessions. An experienced therapist should be able to provide
the insight you need within that length of time.
Following these guidelines will keep you out of an expensive
trap with a therapist who takes forever leading you to your
own conclusions. If you pay for professional help, you are
paying for the therapist's insights and you don't want to
get caught in a never-ending therapy program where you are
expected to keep coming to therapy until you have your own
insights.
Also, it's easy to get too comfortable with therapy or
attached to the therapist if it goes on too long, especially
if you are isolated, lonely, and need someone to talk to.
Remember that if you have agoraphobia your goal is to get
well, not to settle into a comfort zone and get content with
just talking about your disorder with a friendly, caring
person.
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