Fear of snakes in Issaquah - Or is it anxiety? Or is it panic?

Since the weather here in the Pacific Northwest is growing warmer and less rainy, my family and I spent parts of Memorial weekend doing yard work, mowing, weed whacking, moving potted trees and plants, and collecting rocks from the side yard that we can use to line the chicken coop fencing.

I happen to be in the process of learning to get comfortable around snakes, and knowing my son’s house is in a woodsy, meadowy area I wore my Keens – you know those sneakers with the holes in them. Great, right? Great until I started picking up the stones and playing through in my mind what might happen if a snake came out from under them, and slithered toward me. Suddenly I realized that while the toes and sides of my shoes gave more protection than my flip flops would, the holes meant that snakes could slither right on up and in.

There’s fear, there’s anxiety, and there’s panic – and mild to moderate to extreme versions of all three of those. My feelings here seem to fit into the moderate fear to mild anxiety categories. If you startle when a snake crosses your path, that’s mild fear. No hyperventilating, and no nightmares later on about snakes chasing you. Fear might make you remember which kinds of snakes you’d see in Issaquah or Eastside might be venomous – the Western Rattlesnake is only east of the Cascades. Fear might make you plan. If you have fear, it definitely gets in the way of things, like hiking or feeling at ease, but it doesn’t traumatize you, give you stomach aches, immobilize you, or feel debilitating. Fear makes you plan.

Anxiety might cause you to wear boots, very tall boots. Even though you know snakes hibernate in winter you might avoid meadow areas or at least scan your path, noticing sticks and twigs, movement that might look like they could maybe possibly be a snake. You might wear gloves to work in the yard, or you might not work in the yard at all. You wouldn’t be likely to live in a house with rocky outcroppings or meadows. And if you did, you might replace it with a lawn and no place for snakes to hide. On vacations, you’d probably not tent camp and you’d likely steer clear of hiking or geocaching, unless it’s in snow. You might visit the Cougar Mountain Zoo (they have no snakes) but you might skip the Woodland Park Zoo. Or if you went, you’d avoid the python exhibit. Anxiety makes you avoid.

Full blown panic would keep you inside, period. You could go into flight, fight, or freeze mode if you saw a photo in a magazine. You might cry inconsolably, feel faint or nauseous, see snakes in every cord on the floor. Panic causes you to carefully plan where you’ll go, what you’ll wear, who you’ll trust. You can’t even stand to hear about snakes or you’ll have night terrors and have trouble getting movies of slithering sliminess out of your head. Panic makes you feel sick.

There’s nothing bad, broken, or weird about you - or any of us - for having fear, anxiety, or panic about anything in life. It’s just that living is more fun, varied, interesting, and full, if we aren’t physically sick with panic. We have fewer limits on what we can do or see if we don’t need to stay inside where it’s predictably (hopefully) safe. When you feel at ease in your environment, the world is truly at your fingertips.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR) can help you get rid of that sick feeling and keep it from coming back. It helps with all kinds of feelings and memories and is particularly helpful with anxiety and panic. I'll post more about long term remedies for fear, anxiety, and panic in the future, but for now try this help if you want to feel better in the moment. And if you'd like to talk in person about easing fear, anxiety, or panic call me to schedule a phone consultation to see how counseling can help.

What do you get fear, anxiety, or panic about? Comment below and I’ll reply. And please share this with anyone you think it might help. Feelings don't need to be debilitating.

As always, thanks for reading.

Finding the Right Therapist (Anywhere)

Seattle is a lovely vibrant city, with the requisite attractions like the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, and the Troll under the bridge. It’s also very hustle bustle and, some say, is known for a phenomenon called the Seattle Freeze. The Seattle Freeze is a belief that Seattleites are closed to newcomers; it’s difficult to make friends and get close to people here. If you experience loneliness, isolation, or sadness, you may benefit from working with a counselor in Seattle. Seattle has many counselors, psychotherapists, and life coaches, each with different fields of expertise. You could search on Google or ask your doctor or a friend for a recommendation. All of these are useful ways to locate a counselor that might fit your needs. Now what?The next step is scheduling a consultation with a therapist you’re interested in working with.

The consultation is often via phone conversation, although some therapists prefer to meet in person. You can expect to tell a bit about yourself. What motivated you to seek counseling now, have you ever had therapy before, why, and how did it help? What are you seeking help with? What would you like to be different to improve your situation? Have you experienced this issue before and how did you resolve it? What would you like your life to look like in 3, 6, 12 months? This helps the counselor and you envision possible therapy goals.

Then the counselor will explain a bit about how therapy works; discuss frequency of sessions for continuity of care. She’ll describe the process of setting long-term goals and short-term objectives, and explain the process for checking outcomes. Outcomes show progress, what’s working, and what might need to be changed up. Therapists generally check outcomes quarterly, to make sure the progress is flowing along the way you want it to.

She may talk with you about benefits and drawbacks to a diagnosis and possible therapeutic methods shown to benefit specific issues, like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy’s help for depression, motivational interviewing’s help for addictions, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy’s benefit for anxiety, trauma, and phobias.

At this point, you both get to check in with yourselves and see how you think you’d feel working together. Does she listen more than she talks? Do you feel heard and understood? Do you have confidence that she can help? Do you feel like you can connect with her? If the answer to these questions is no, it may be time to seek another counselor.

If you can answer these questions with a confident yes, you can assume this is the therapist for you. At this time in the consultation, one of you, usually the therapist, brings up the topic of money. If you don’t connect, or this therapist specializes in other areas than your issue, it doesn’t matter if the fee is $20 a session. $20 a session gets very expensive when it goes on for years and years.

The therapist then tells you her fee, whether and which insurance she takes, when payment is due, and how/if you can be reimbursed. If your insurance pays out of network, you would likely pay for sessions and your insurance will reimburse you, minus your copay. If you participate in your employer’s flex care spending plan for medical costs, it will likely reimburse you for all therapy expenses, although you need to check your plan.

If all goes as you wish, you two will schedule your first session. You can relax; you already know you’ve got the right therapist for you. Now you can dig right in and start feeling better. And as always, I'm here. You can reach me in Seattle at Balance InSight, 206-790-7270.

Thanks for reading, and be well.

~ Robin

EMD What? FAQs about EMDR

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR) is one of the great counseling techniques (stay tuned for others) to lessen the triggers and flooding that come with anxiety. It works on the stuck memories that come out with physical sensations when we are confronted with smells, sights, people, places, or sounds that are similar to trauma, pain, or fear we experienced in the past. For example, if you’ve experienced sexual assault that started when you were sleeping, by a man with alcohol and cigarettes on his breath, you might start sweating or crying when you smell the combination of cigarette smoke and alcohol. You might start hyperventilating or having chest pain when you are woken up from a deep sleep. You might need to sleep with the lights on, or in your living room, or not much at all.

Triggers

The smoke, alcohol, darkness, being woken up, or sleep itself, are triggers that flood the brain with chemicals that put us into fight, flight, or most commonly, freeze mode.

We feel immobilized and experience panic, perspiration, inability to catch our breath, chest pain, tingling sensations in our hands or feet, lightheadedness, nausea, or headaches. We might get a flush of being extremely hot or cold, blacking out, and even a sensation of either watching ourselves from outside our bodies or of not being present in that time and space at all (this last one is called dissociation and I’ll post more about it later).

Protection

These physical sensations, interestingly, are our brain and body’s way of protecting us from danger. Our brain was so overwhelmed by the danger and trauma of the assault that it goes into protection mode to make sure to keep us from getting assaulted again – it warns us if any aspect of the assault is present now to tell us to get away and get safe.

When you think about it that way, our brains are pretty amazing, right? The problem comes when the brain’s attempt to protect us isn’t helpful, like when we are not in danger of assault but the brain thinks we might be, so we can’t be around certain smells or sights or places without experiencing the physical and immobilizing symptoms I talked about above.

While our brains are terrific at protecting us, that protection, when we don’t need it, gets in the way of us living life and doing things we want to do.

Enter EMDR Therapy

EMDR is a technique that I use, to help your brain recognize that sleep doesn’t necessarily lead to assault, nor does darkness, or the smells of cigarette smoke and beer.

EMDR uses something called bilateral stimulation – stimulating both sides of the brain – to get the emotional feeling side synced up with the logical thinking side. Integrating the two sides around the trauma helps the brain reprocess the traumatic event and move it from a current trauma to a past trauma, thereby lessening the physical triggers and panic in the present.

Sounds like such a relief, right? It certainly can be. EMDR does not make the memories go away, but it does lessen and dilute the symptoms related to the assault – or car wreck, dental visit, humiliating or fearful event, loss, death of a loved one, combat, dog bite, or, or, or, you get the idea.

Like all EMDR trained therapists, I've gone through rigorous training over an extended period, many hours of practice, and consultation with a certified EMDR supervisor, to make sure it's the best and most effective treatment for the issue/s you want to work on. Just like psychotherapy – longer, deeper, talk therapy – is not right for every person or even every issue of the same person, the same holds true for EMDR.

If you experience symptoms such as panic, tingling hands or feet, anxiety, nausea, avoidance of places, smells, sounds, or people, or a sensation of not being present, ask me about EMDR and whether it might be helpful for you. Request your free consultation here.

Note: If you are involved in a lawsuit, or if you plan to be involved in a lawsuit, related to the original trauma, please contact your lawyer to determine whether it is advisable to keep your triggers intact until the legal issue is resolved.