QUESTION: One of my friends is extremely anxious.
She says she rarely has a moment when she doesn't suffer and she increasingly finds it hard to go out, and often rings up to put off dates because she has had a panic attack. She hasn't been to see a film or been to the theatre for a year now, even though she used to love going out.
I've tried to get her to see her doctor, but she's very frightened of taking pills. All she'll see is a hypnotist, who only seems to be taking her money and not improving matters. Is there any way I can help?
Yours sincerely, Henri
ANSWER: There's no way you can help directly. But there are ways you can help indirectly - and one is to persuade your friend that there are myriad ways to lessen anxiety, and there's no one cure-all remedy. Many people spend years trying out new cures and find that while one may work for a while, it often doesn't cure the anxiety permanently. Time to go off on another quest.
I'd imagine that your friend continues with hypnosis because it had an initial beneficial effect. But anxiety is very good at putting up resistance to any solution. Once you've found a crack, it gets busy sealing up that crack, and you've got to find a new chink in its armour.
Obviously her first port of call should be her doctor. Tell her she's insane not to try medication. She only has to give pills a whirl, and if they work, great, and if they don't, she can move on.
She could also try some of the hundreds of herbal remedies. Again, the chances of them working are small, but at least she'll have given them a try, and, who knows, she might be lucky.
Meditation - marketed now under its new name, mindfulness - would be another option. Give it a go for three months. It can't do any harm.
And of course, exercise is one of the most recommended cures. Daily hard sessions in the gym can help burn up anxiety-making cortisone that's whizzing round her body
She may well be helped by counselling, particularly CBT - cognitive behavioural therapy. CBT therapists can encourage her to look at her fears and face them - and find that nothing terrible happens when she does. Again, good results have been reached from this, though not necessarily long-lasting. Other counselling might be able to help her discover whether a trauma in her childhood has led to her anxiety - and again, this can be helpful. Knowledge is power, even if not the cure.
She should also look back into her past to see if any of her ancestors suffered. There's a strong suspicion that anxiety may have genetic roots.
And finally - and here is one thing you can do to make a difference - buy her two books on anxiety. Despite their jokey titles, they're brilliant. My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind by Scott Stossel is one, and the other is Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, by Robert M Sapolsky. Information-packed, humorous, enlightening and comforting, these books are not trivial. They do not offer cures - Stossel himself has learned, somehow, to live with the condition, albeit sometimes only with a curious blend of vodka shots and exact amounts of pills - but their understanding and depth of research can only be helpful.
The Independent