Claire Weekes:

Float Through Anxiety

Claire Weekes was an Australian physician who achieved world renown for her ability to help
people with anxiety disorders, and for her self help books on the subject.

A central theme of her method was to float through anxiety. What did Claire Weekes mean
by that? Here's how I understand it.

How Do You Swim?

It's complicated. You have to coordinate the movement of your arms, legs, and head to
propel yourself through the water. You also have to breathe without taking in large
quantities of water. And you have to keep going in the right direction, even when water gets
in your eyes.

If you're like most people, it took a lot of practice to learn to swim, because there are so
many things you have to make happen, and so many techniques to master.

How Do You Float?

You don't really have to learn to float. A block of wood can float, and so can a person. What
you might have to learn is how to not get in your own way, how to simply let floating
happen.

The block of wood doesn't have to make it happen, it just floats, as long as it's in water.
People will float too, if they just lay down on the water.

But people, unlike blocks of wood, often find it hard to let go and trust in their body's
natural ability to float. Their mistrust and apprehension will lead them to "do things" to try
and stay afloat.

That's not floating, that's sinking! To teach someone to float, you might have to give them a
few instructions - lay back, lay your head on the water, lay your arms and legs out, lie still -
but the most important part of the "technique" of floating is...do nothing, let go, and let
time pass.

Float versus Swim

When anxious clients come to me for help in dealing with anxiety, they usually expect that I
will offer them the swimming kind of help: lots of specific ways for coping with anxiety, and
many techniques to keep them "afloat".

But what they really need is more the floating kind of help. They need to learn to let go,
rather than to make something happen, or prevent something from happening. That's the
surest path to anxiety relief.
 What did Claire Weekes Mean by "Floating"?
First and foremost, she meant to convey the opposite of fighting. The way to regain a sense
of calm is to go along with the sensations of anxiety and panic, rather than oppose them.

She described floating as "masterly inactivity", and said this meant:

to stop holding tensely onto yourself, trying to control your fear, trying 'to do something
about it' while subjecting yourself to constant self-analysis.

That's a tough sell! Claire Weekes knew that, of course, and wrote:

The average person, tense with battling, has an innate aversion to ...letting go. He vaguely
thinks that were he to do this, he would lose control over the last vestige of his will power
and his house of cards would tumble.

Claire Weekes Knew it was a Trick

The aversion Claire Weekes referred to is the result of the Panic Trick. It's the idea that a
person is just barely holding himself together, and that if he relaxes his grip even a little, he
will fall apart. In fact, it's his struggling to keep a grip that maintains the anxiety!

What I like best about the notion of floating is that it avoids two common
misunderstandings about overcoming anxiety. The first one is the idea that you have to
struggle against anxiety, fight it, and overcome it. And the second, related to the first, is
that you have to arm yourself with all kinds of techniques and objects in order to enter the
fray and confront anxiety.

In reality, you'll make much better progress when you let yourself float through the anxiety,
not striving to overcome anything, not struggling to employ techniques, but simply allowing
the sensations to pass over time.

The best kind of help, in my opinion, is the floating kind. It's help that assists you to
rediscover your own natural abilities to cope with whatever comes, rather than arming you
against potential adversity.

The Anxiety Trick

The Anxiety Trick is behind most of the trouble people have with chronic anxiety. Have you
struggled to overcome an anxiety disorder, only to get disappointing results, or even feel
worse over time? You're being fooled by the Anxiety Trick.

This is a terribly common occurrence, and people mistakenly blame themselves for it. Here's
a more accurate, and helpful, way to understand this common and frustrating problem.
What is an anxiety disorder? It's you getting tricked into feeling powerful fear in the
absence of any danger.

It's because there's no danger that people seek help for these fears. People recognize that
they're getting afraid when they're not in danger. If they were actually in danger, they
would just protect themselves as best they could, and be better off for it.

With an anxiety disorder, people get afraid when they're not in danger. Their struggle to
protect themselves from fear leads them down a path of increasing trouble. That's the
anxiety trick.

How does this happen, that you feel fear in the absence of danger? This is the Anxiety Trick
at work.

How You Get Tricked

* If you have Panic Disorder or Agoraphobia, you keep getting tricked into believing that
you're about to die, go crazy, or lose control of yourself.

* If you have Social Phobia,you keep getting tricked into into believing that you're about to
look so unreasonably nervous in front of people that you will be completely humiliated and
be cast aside by your community.

* If you have a Specific Phobia, you keep getting tricked into believing that you're likely to
be overcome by some external object (like an elevator) or animal, or by your fear of it.

* If you have OCD, you keep getting tricked into believing that you've set in motion a
terrible calamity. You might fear that your neighborhood will burn because you left the
stove on, or that your family will get poisoned because you mishandled the insecticide.

* If you have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, you keep getting tricked into believing that
you're about to be driven mad by constant worrying.

In each case, the episode of fear passes without the expected catastrophe. You're none the
worse for wear, except that you're more worried about the next episode. The details seem
different, but it's the same anxiety trick.

What is the Anxiety Trick?

The Anxiety Trick is this: You experience Discomfort, and get fooled into treating it
like Danger.

What do we do when we're in danger? We only have three things: Fight, Flight, and Freeze.
If it looks weaker than me, I'll fight it. If it looks stronger than me, but slower, I'll run away.
And if it looks stronger and faster than me, I'll freeze and hope it doesn't see so good.
That's all we have for danger.

When people experience the fear of a panic attack, or a phobic encounter, or an obsessive
thought, they instinctively treat it as a danger. They try to protect themselves, with some
variation of Fight, Flight, or Freeze.
 How People Get Tricked

People's natural instincts to protect themselves are what lead them to get tricked. See if
you recognize your responses in these examples below.

A person with Panic Disorder gets tricked into holding her breath and fleeing the store
(highway, theater, or other locale), rather than shifting to Belly Breathing. and staying there
until the feelings pass.

A person with Generalized Anxiety Disorder gets tricked into trying to stop the unwanted
"what if?" thoughts, rather than accepting them and taking care of present business as
thoughts come and go.

A person with Social Phobia gets tricked into avoiding the party, or hiding in the corner if he
attends, rather than say hello to a stranger and see what happens.

A person with OCD gets tricked into repeatedly washing his hands, or returning home to
check the stove, rather than accepting the intrusive thoughts of contamination and fire and
returning his energies to the present activities at hand.

A person with a dog phobia gets tricked into avoiding the feelings by avoiding all dogs,
rather than spending time with a dog until the feelings pass.

What Maintains the Anxiety Trick?

You might wonder, why don't people come to see this pattern, of repeated episodes of fear
which don't lead to the feared outcome, and gradually lose their fear?

The answer is this. They took these protective steps, and there was no catastrophe. They
tend to believe that these steps "saved" them from a catastrophe. This thought makes them
worry more about "the next time". It convinces them that they are terribly vulnerable and
must constantly protect themselves.

The actual reason they didn't experience a catastrophe is that such catastrophes are
typically not part of a fear or phobia. These are anxiety disorders, not catastrophe
disorders. People get through the experience because the experience isn't actually
dangerous. But it's understandably hard for people to recognize that at the time. They're
more likely to think they just had a "narrow escape". This leads them to redouble their
protective steps.

It's the protective steps which actually maintain and strengthen the Anxiety Trick. If you
think you just narrowly escaped a catastrophe because you had your cellular phone, or a
water bottle; or because you went back and checked the stove seven times; or because you
plugged in your iPod and distracted yourself with some music, then you're going to continue
to feel vulnerable. And you're going to get more stuck in the habit of "protecting" yourself
by these means.

This is how the problem gets embedded in your life. You think you're helping yourself, but
you've actually been tricked into making it worse. That's how sneaky this Trick is.
This is why my patients so often say, "the harder I try, the worse it gets". If the harder
you try, the worse it gets, then you should take another look at the methods you've been
using. You've probably been tricked into trying to protect yourself against something that
isn't dangerous, and this makes your fear worse over time.

How Can You Overcome

The Anxiety Trick?
The thing that makes fears and phobias so persistent is that virtually anything you do to
oppose, escape, or distract from the anxious feelings and thoughts will be turned against
you, and make the anxiety a more persistent part of your life.

This is why people notice "the harder I try, the worse it gets". They're putting out fires with
gasoline.

If you come to see that you've been putting out fires with gasoline, you may not have any
idea what to do next. But the first step is always the same: put down the buckets. Stop
throwing gasoline on that fire.

This is where the cognitive behavioral methods of desensitization and exposure come in.
They're intended as methods by which you can practice with (not against) the symptoms,
and become less sensitive to them. As you lose your fear of the symptoms, through this
practice, that's when the symptoms will fade.

All too often, people get the idea that exposure means going to a place or situation where
you're likely to get anxious, perhaps a highway or an elevator, and take a ride without
getting anxious. That's not the point! The point is to actually go there and feel the
anxiety, being sure to stay there and letting the anxiety leave first. This is what Claire
Weekes called floating.

The way to disarm the Anxiety Trick is to increasingly spend time with anxiety, to expose
yourself to the thoughts and sensations, and allow them to subside over time.

What can you do to make the experience of exposure more tolerable? You can use
the AWARE steps as a general guide for how to conduct yourself while doing exposure. If
you want a more specific, step by step guide for overcoming panic attacks and phobias,
my Panic Attacks Workbook is full of tools and techniques that will help you keep moving
forward. If your problem is Generalized Anxiety Disorder, or involves a lot of worrying
without regular panic attacks, The Worry Trick is a book that will help you reduce the role
worry plays in your life.

Always keep in mind that exposure is practice with fear, and do nothing to oppose, avoid,
or distract from the fear during exposure.

https://www.anxietycoach.com/anxietytrick.html
he Rising Epidemic of Anxiety in
Children and Teens
These are the key points on an emerging epidemic.
Posted Jan 23, 2016

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Overview of Anxiety Disorders in Children and Teens

As I discuss in the newly released second edition of 10 Days to a Less
Defiant Child, which was cited in the Wall Street Journal, anxiety underlies a
high percentage of behavioral issues and struggles in children and teens.
Below are some key points on the topic of anxiety in children and teens from a
wonderful presentation I recently attended. The sources of this information are
provided at the end of this post.

Lifetime prevalence of anxiety:

Twenty-five percent of 13- to 18-year-olds have mild to moderate anxiety. The

lifetime prevalence of severe anxiety disorder is 5.9 percent. Girls are more
likely than boys to be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. The median age of
onset is 11 years old. Anxiety is among the earliest of developing pathologies.
Anxiety in children and teens often overlaps with depression.

Symptoms:

Anxiety symptoms include muscle tension, physical weakness,

poor memory, sweaty hands, confusion, constant worry, shortness of breath,
palpations, upset stomach, and poor concentration.

Reasons for increased anxiety:

These include post-9/11, parental pressures, terrorism, media fears, social

media pressures (e.g., kids viewing pictures of being left out of parties), and
perceived threats.

Causes of anxiety:

These include a combination of genetic, environmental, psychological, and

developmental factors, over-scheduled children, and poor sleep.

Brain regions associated with anxiety:

These are the Thalamus, Hypothalamus, Hippocampus, Amygdala, Basal

Ganglia, Prefrontal Cortex, Orbitofrontal Cortex, and Anterior Cingulate Gyrus.

Child and teen problems resulting from anxiety:

These may be poor school performance, problems with peers, substance use,
psychosomatic illnesses, low self-esteem, and psychopathology in
adulthood.

Personality traits (assets or liability or both):

Some examples are responsible, perfectionistic, difficulty relaxing, worrying,

likes to please, avoids conflict, and low assertiveness.

Anxiety disorders:

These include Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Separation Anxiety, Selective

Mutism, Panic Disorder, Agoraphobia, Social Anxiety, specific phobias,
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Acute Stress Disorder, and anxiety due to a
medical condition.

Strategies to Help Children and Teens With Anxiety

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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT):

A growing body of evidence over 20 years supports the efficacy and

effectiveness of CBT with children and teens. CBT is more effective than no
treatment, a placebo, or alternative treatment, and multiple trials have been
conducted. CBT was noted to be an efficacious treatment
for childhoodanxiety, according to the American Psychological Association
Task Force on Psychological Interventions.

Several other therapy modalities can work well too, such as mindfulness-
based treatments, like ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) and
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT).

Identifying sources of anxiety about school:

Common worries include school performance, parental pressures,

appearance, social acceptance, friend pressures, and bullying.

Psychoeducation is very important to teach children and teens about anxiety:

  Teach youth the connection between the physical, cognitive, and
behavioral signs.

 Use the “false alarm” metaphor as it relates to fight or flight.

 Normalize reasonable fear or anxiety.

 Teach young people to recognize somatic responses.

 Use role playing, YouTube clips, bibliotherapy, etc.

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Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Key Strategies and Points

Identify positive thoughts, such as: “This challenge can be overcome.”

Identify negative self-talk and challenge the child’s misinterpretations (one

setback does not make for a total failure). Help the child recognize that other
views of the situation exist.

The goal is not to overload someone with positive self-talk, but to reduce
negative self-talk.

Use positive affirmations: “I trust that everything will be okay if I give a good
effort.”

Teach mindfulness. “Witnessing” involves labeling feelings without judgement:

“It’s a thought not a fact,” or "That’s my feeling, now what are my choices?”

Use the Miracle Question: It generates solution talk and focus. If a miracle
happens tonight while you are sleeping, you won’t know what will happen
until you wake up tomorrow morning. What will be different? What will you
notice, and how will you know you will have changed?

Write a letter from the future: Write a letter from your future self to your current
self, and include what you learned to help you get there.

Play the Part: Show what a relaxed confident kid looks like.
Use the Floating Technique (Claire Weekes, M.D.’s model: Face, Accept,
Float, and Let Time Pass). Floating builds on acceptance and involves moving
through sensations, like anxiety, without offering tense resistance, as one
would when floating on gently undulating water.

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Reframe the harmless: Ask yourself, “What is the worst thing that can
happen?”

Externalize the worry: Use words or acting out feelings to express your
emotions.

Prescribe the symptom: Children and teens can gain a sense of control when
they are asked to deliberately think or do what they want to avoid.

OCD fact: Most children are diagnosed with OCD around age 10. Boys are
likely to develop OCD before puberty, and girls to develop it
during adolescence.

The CBT intervention that works best with OCD is exposure and response
prevention. Exposure reduces anxiety, minimizing avoidance-preventing
rituals.

For Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in children, there are three responses

to trauma that children often experience:

1. Re-experiencing the trauma through repetitive play and setbacks.

2. Avoidance of stimuli associated with trauma, which can lead to further

anxiety.

3. Persistent symptoms from trauma that increase arousal and interfere with
school functioning.

Note: Pharmacologic treatments may be used with psychotherapeutic

approaches

Credit to the source: The information shared in this post is a selected

summary of a PESI presentation by Janet K. Kirsh, Ph.D.
References

Anxiety Disorders Association of America

American Psychological Association

Bernstein, Jeffrey, 2015, Ten Days to a Less Defiant Child (Second Edition), Perseus
Publishing