Addressing the Anxiety Underneath
Margaret Wehrenberg • 2/1/2022
When the pandemic first struck, I was concerned about its impact yet able to handle the anxiety about infection pretty well. After all, managing anxiety is my stock-in-trade ability. But two years later, what I feel most of the time now is anger, so I’ve been using my anxiety management skills to figure out what exactly is going on with me.
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Acknowledging Loss a Year Later
Margaret Wehrenberg • 6/4/2021
It’s critical for clinicians to recognize anniversary reactions. When clients describe their experiences as depression, we naturally think of solutions like prescribing medication, talking about relationships, or finding ways to raise energy and reframe negative thoughts. But those methods to lift mood won’t be productive when the suffering is mourning. Grief requires a different process than depression: reflecting on the loss, which is real and should be honored as significant.
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Coping with Loss as Disappointment
Margaret Wehrenberg • 5/18/2021
As all of us in the United States move into the coming months, a full year into COVID life, our personal losses will come into focus. If we don’t process them, they’ll be magnified. As therapists, we can be on the lookout for symptoms of anniversary reactions in our clients, and with our help, our clients can both recognize what they’ve lost and what they can still share with their friends and family.
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We Need to Start Treating Anxiety and Depression as Chronic Conditions
Margaret Wehrenberg • 12/19/2019
By Margaret Wehrenberg - I’ve begun to put aside my idealized view that unless people overcome their difficulties once and for all, therapy is somehow a failure. Evidence continues to accumulate that many people who have anxiety and depression suffer bouts of it all their lives, even after a good response to therapy.
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We're Being Smothered in Data. Here's What Therapists Can Do About It.
Margaret Wehrenberg • 5/22/2019
By Margaret Wehrenberg - Perhaps no endemic workplace condition causes more anguish among employees than the culture of contrived urgency, the ginned-up atmosphere of crisis, in which everything—every project, every report, every meeting—is an urgent priority, superseding all the other urgent priorities before it in the long queue.
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Using the "Microtherapy" Approach
Margaret Wehrenberg • 3/8/2019
By Margaret Wehrenberg - Rather than seeing depression as some kind of monolith, I've found it useful to see depressive symptoms as falling into four basic clusters. By immediately addressing the attitudes and distinctive vulnerabilities that lie at the core of each cluster, treatment can begin to bring about a shift in brain function that makes longer term work easier.
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When It Comes to Addiction, Sometimes a Diagnosis is a Client's Best Motivator
Margaret Wehrenberg • 7/5/2018
By Margaret Wehrenberg - The labels we use to describe clients’ behaviors have important therapeutic implications. Sometimes using the word addiction and explaining its neurological basis can help clients focus on the consequences of their behavior. But how do we parse the tenuous line between addiction and habit?
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Four Techniques Your Clients Can Use Anywhere, Anytime
Margaret Wehrenberg • 12/7/2017
By Margaret Wehrenberg - The rewards of teaching people how to use deceptively simple anxiety-relief techniques are great. While clients in this culture have been indoctrinated to want and expect instantaneous relief from their discomfort at the pop of a pill, we can show them we have something better to offer.
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Optimizing Health, Mindful Awareness, and More
Margaret Wehrenberg • 9/14/2017
By Margaret Wehrenberg - The sensations of doom or dread or panic felt by anxiety sufferers are truly overwhelming—the very same sensations, in fact, that a person would feel if the worst really were happening. Here are a few anxiety-management techniques that can offer relief, and offer it quickly.
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There are Effective Alternatives to Medication
Margaret Wehrenberg • 5/1/2016
By Margaret Wehrenberg - The sensations of doom or dread or panic felt by anxiety sufferers are truly overwhelming--the very same sensations, in fact, that a person would feel if the worst really were happening. Here are a few anxiety-management techniques that can offer relief, and offer it quickly.
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