How many times have you started a new diet, the appeal fresh and exciting as the last one that failed extravagantly like its many predecessors? What is it about the cycle from diet/deprivation to free-flowing diet-breaking and bingeing, weight loss to weight gain, that feels so incredibly hard to break? Why is all the pain and suffering that precedes the diet start-up so easily vanquished by the promise of weight loss? The feeling of a new beginning, so powerful, creates false hope of success in the face of a great deal of evidence to prove diets don’t really work.

There are many reasons why weight loss seems to be the only way to enhance self-esteem: It is an external measure trying to heal an internal problem, and this can seem much easier and less scary than trying to regulate food based on hunger vs. emotional needs. For those caught up in the restricting-overeating cycle, learning how to regulate the physical-hunger, fullness and the emotional can be a lot of hard, confusing, and time-consuming emotional work whereas starting a diet is familiar and enticing. The amount of attention a woman receives for weight loss may be unparalled only to be overcome by the equally strong feelings of shame if weight is regained. Diets are billed as making us “good” people, who control base urges, while diet breakers feel like “bad” people, sloppy and lazy. (or much worse)

Aside from the deprivation and restriction that dieting supports, the good and bad food dichotomy it sets up, dieters who are prone to disordered eating or eating disorders can tend to find that they are more obsessed with food in general, and especially the foods they are trying to restrict the most. There is a cruel irony here that is very painful to realize. That is why so often dieting actually causes weight gain in the end. As with many self-defeating behaviors, realization of the behavior and understanding its origins can be very helpful, but also very scary. Psychotherapy can help with the self-understanding and the fear and can help you learn new, more durable eating skills. It’s important to remember that the difference between starting therapy and starting another diet is that therapy has a better chance of helping in the long-run if you can hang in with it and find the right support-team.

Eating disorders are extraordinarily emotionally painful, humiliating, and humbling problems. Although not everyone with an eating disorder has tried to diet, the restricting-craving-bingeing with or without purging cycle is familiar to many. One of the hallmarks of an eating disorder is its good-bad/all-or nothing dichotomy of thinking. This thinking also contains a lot of “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts”. It is usually very self critical with perfection being the goal. Again, the cruel irony is that “permission”, the opposite of eating disordered thinking, is the opposite of dieting and the most promising for recovery.
I don’t mean to imply an eating free-for-all. Structure and loving limits (a term I like from the Don’t Diet, Live it Workbook by Andrea LoBue, LMFCC and Marsea Marcus, LMFCC) are really different from self-castigation and unreachable perfectionistic goals.

I want to add more thoughts on shame. Shame is one of the most difficult feelings because it strikes at the core of who you are rather than embarrassment over mistakes you have made that might be able to be corrected. There is so much shame associated with weight gain and overeating for many reasons, but to a great degree, I believe dieting and the weight loss industry are big contributors to shame and body hatred. How many of you reading this had someone in your family try to put you on a diet when you were young? Instead of having the chance to experiment with food and learn your body’s desires and limits naturally, you may have been taught to feel restricted with food and shamed about your body from an early age.

And now, for the subject that is possibly the number one topic of interest for many or maybe most women: weight loss. How, you ask, are you going to lose weight if dieting doesn’t work? And what about the “obesity epidemic” and health concerns and prejudice about size? What about gastric surgery and is weight watchers not really a diet anymore? How about Overeaters Anonymous and abstinence? As with any global subject, there are going to be many answers for different individuals. Lately, there have been more voices speaking out about letting the body find its own weight rather than trying to force a preconceived number on each and every body. There is a concept called “weight neutrality”-the idea that your weight is neither good nor bad but what it is. In her article, “Are you a weight-ist” Dr. Sari Shepphird states that weight discrimination is a prejudice more prevalent in our society than racism. Here are examples of weight-ism Dr. Shepphird notes: “fat people are unhealthy and lazy”, “losing weight is just a matter of willpower”, “thin people are more in control and disciplined”, “thin = healthy”, “fat is unattractive; thin is attractive”. Our society has been indoctrinated with these ideas so deeply that it is easy to forget that they boil down to nothing more than outright prejudice and discrimination. And this toxic negative thinking gets turned on the self as well as others. For more information on these concepts go to http://www.bodypositive.com or, Are you a weight-ist? http://www.eatingdisordersblogs.com/treatment

“Do I have an eating disorder?” This is a very important question, and I believe you need to take an honest look at this rather than returning to the security of another diet. If you believe you do have an eating disorder, (there are many websites that address this with questionnaires) your direction around weight loss may become a little clearer because addressing an eating disorder needs special attention and care. If you do not have an eating disorder, you may have some signs of disordered eating. These are the kind of questions that a therapist may be able to help you with.

Some of the special attention and care I mention above points towards learning how to take better care of yourself. Why do you eat the way you do and how can you understand the role of emotions in your eating patterns? Why are you so focused on weight loss above all else? If you had more tools, skills, and support to handle compulsive eating would you possibly eat less in the long run than if you were on a restricted diet? Why do you (if you do) move your body in harsh and exhausting ways? Are there ways for you to be able to move and move in your body that you could start using right away to feel better about yourself? What is it about self-enhancing activities like yoga that feels threatening or creates resistance in you? How could you find avenues towards inner self-esteem enhancement? Is it true or false that losing weight can bring you inner peace? Geneen Roth’s first book has “breaking free” in the title. Of course this is a really difficult and complicated project, but will dieting get you there?

If you have read this far, then here is a question: have you ever stopped to think about why dieting hasn’t worked for you? Take a moment to sit down and look at your own experiences. If you are currently dieting, this may feel very threatening. However, there are usually moments on a diet when you aren’t as sure why you are doing it. If you are not currently dieting, are you romanticizing or glamorizing what actually happened the last time you were on a diet? Did the diet help you with your self-esteem, or did it cause negative feelings or excessive worry that got filed under the rug? Did you feel anxious about being “bad”? Did you feel very anxious about starting to “maintain” your weight loss? Or did you increase the number of times you purged or took unhealthy drugs?

If you are open to it, I would love to hear about your dieting experiences and any insights you may have into how you really feel about dieting.

Note: This article was originally published on the Eating Disorders Referral Website.

There are several ways to stop panic attacks. One method doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you have ended them for good. While another method will guarantee permanent results. Although medications are capable of relieving anxiety symptoms, they should never be mistaken for a cure. Medications get you out of a state of constant tension by calming your body.? Tension keeps your body in a constant state of alertness because it feels something is wrong.

It’s a state of always feeling you’re going to have to react at any given moment. The body just doesn’t know when the alarm bell is going to ring.? But your thoughts are always triggering the alarm because you are in a constant state of expectancy, waiting, and anticipation. You may not even know what you are actually expecting to occur. You just feel a sense of unease.

You may even experience a sense of dread. Medication keeps the body calm and also suppresses a proper flow of adrenalin into your system. So, you feel better prepared to deal with your anxiety disorder and its associated fearful thoughts.

You can stop anxiety temporarily in this state.

But you don’t need medication to put an end to anxiety. Some people will take medications until their doctor advises them that there is nothing else he can do for them.? (I was one of those people.)? Believe me, that is the last thing someone wants to hear who doesn’t feel they have been cured of their condition.? So, your first thought may be “how can I deal with anxiety without drugs?” But if you think about, you probably never felt completely okay while taking the medications.

Underneath the layers of medications, a simmering feeling of discomfort may have always been there just waiting for its moment to pounce. But learning to deal with anxiety without medication is actually a good thing.

It forces you to change your attitude, and once you do that you can stop anxiety quickly and permanently. I’ve done it, and so can you!

The key is changing your attitude from one of fear to that of being in control. It’s difficult, but I’ll try to explain what worked for me. One morning I woke up and realized that I could stop anxiety by changing the way I think about it.

I actually got angry at the panic attacks for the mess they had made of my life. This may sound odd, but it provided me with a sense of power to finally defeat anxiety for good. I looked upon anxiety as the enemy and opponent that it was. It had invaded my life and essentially taken it over. I would not stand for that one more day.? Anxiety wasn’t welcome and it was not going to play a role in my life anymore.

When I finally stood up to this opponent, it backed down much easier than I ever could have expected.

Look back on previous successes in your life. Connect with that mindset and energy that was used to accomplish those achievements.? As you reflect, you’ll probably realize that the determination you had simply didn’t allow for defeat, despite whatever obstacles blocked your path. You have to fully believe that you have the power to stop anxiety without medications or therapy. Never lose sight of the fact that one day soon anxiety will never be a part of your life again.

Such a positive outlook will soon get rid of your panic attacks forever. After you have mastered this control technique, you will instinctively know how to apply its principles to any other obstacle that that may come your way. The next time you start feeling overwhelmed, you can apply these methods without thought.

Instead of being ridden with anxiety, you will have a renewed sense of calm? - a sense of calm that will enable you to tackle all of your future problems logically and to a successful fruition.

Social anxiety disorder can stem from a variety of reasons and understanding the causes can help with overcoming social anxiety and shyness.

The following are some of the causes that can lead to social anxiety:

Causes of Social Phobia and Anxiety

Genetic Causes - People with a close relative suffering from social shyness are likely to have it too.

Psychological Causes - Some people have a mental conditioning that does not allow them to be comfortable in social situations and even experience aggressive symptoms of reaction. They might harbor feelings of low self-worth and may panic greatly in such situations.

Past Social Experiences - In most people who suffer from SAD, the social experiences that they have had in their past life play an important role. Social anxiety patients might have suffered from uneasy situations with their peers or at school. Submissive methods might have been used in their behavior modification such as using corporal punishment to train them or using comparison or humiliation techniques by their parents or teachers. They might have had some social accidents before, such as being called on stage to say something and failing at that. Such past social experiences can leave indelible marks on children and grow with them as they grow, developing into social anxiety disorder.

Treatments for Social Anxiety

The treatment for social anxiety disorder depends on the causes of that precipitate this condition. The following are some approaches that can help overcome social phobia and shyness.

• In cases where a parent and a child may have SAD, counseling both of them together could help them overcome the phobia. The combined counseling will help both parties to be support systems for each other, mainly because they live in the same house and may experience similar situations most of the time. Methods such as joint hypnosis therapies can work quite well at overcoming social anxiety due to genetic causes.
• Some medications such as antidepressants and painkillers are used to treat the evident symptoms of social anxiety disorder such as palpitations, hyperventilation, shivering, etc. However, medications are usually short term remedies and cannot be looked upon as long term modes of treatment for overcoming anxiety permanently.
• Lifestyle changes are suggested by experts in most cases. This includes taking a proper diet at the proper times and exercising and relaxing the body adequately.
• With anxiety that stems out of past experiences, the impact on the current life of the individual can be diluted through proper counseling and therapy. Once again, hypnotic therapy works quite well in such situations. It helps people overcome their nerves about facing people and makes them more confident in such situations.
• Hypnotic counseling works most efficiently when the SAD is due to psychological causes because it can create a positive outlook in the mind of the person and help them face social situations better.
• Another method that is in widespread use in treating such social anxiety disorder is cognitive behavior therapy, which has some degree of success but is usually not an absolute mode of treatment.

Overall, there is a general agreement that hypnosis can be an important part of treatment for overcoming social anxiety and shyness. People clearly benefit from hypnosis. They get better, stay better and live a more confident life.

To answer what is a panic attack, one has to take into account the numerous definitions on an attack. One thing is for sure is that it can be the most frightening, upsetting and uncomfortable experience in a person’s life. Panic attacks are sudden periods of intense anxiety, mounting fear, stomach problems, general discomfort and are associated with a variety of somatic and cognitive symptoms.

The onset of these episodes is typically abrupt and may have no apparent reasons behind it. Some research suggests that the symptoms of an attack usually last for about thirty minutes. They can also be of only fifteen seconds duration. But at times, the attack may form a cyclic series of episodes lasting for an extended period, some times hours. The afflicted person experiences anticipatory anxieties and limited symptom attacks in between the panic attacks.

An attack is often consciously linked to the fear of not being able to escape a bad situation. Many experiencing attacks feel trapped and unable to free themselves. The intensity of the anxiety varies from person to person. The first-time sufferers, at times, call for emergency services. They believe that they are having nervous breakdown or heart attack as they feel nauseated, faint, or lose control over themselves.

The most common symptoms include shivering and trembling, shortness of breath, chest pain, hot and cold flashes, burning sensations and heart palpitations. Such physical symptoms are interpreted with alarm in many people the first time them experience them. Panic attacks can be distinguished from other attacks of anxiety by the intensity and the sudden yet cyclical nature. Some research indicates that panic disorders may be hereditary. Environmental factors such as overtly cautious view of the world expressed by elders / parents and cumulative stress have been found to be the reason.

Biological deficiencies or Vitamin B deficiency owing to inadequate diet can also trigger anxiety attacks. Often people experience panic as a result of exposure to phobic situations. Incidents of personal loss, significant life change or even the intake of stimulants like nicotine, caffeine or drugs can trigger an attack.

People who suffer from attacks can be successfully treated with therapy and anti-anxiety medicines or anti-depressants. Other treatments include diaphragmatic breathing that is slow breathing through the nose using the diaphragm and abdomen, acceptance and acknowledgment and floating with the symptoms as well as talking to supportive persons. Panic attacks are frightening but fortunately physically harmless. They can occur at random, peaking in intensity very rapidly and also can go away with or without medical assistance.

Some people may begin breathing rapidly but within an hour such symptoms fade away. However, people having repeated attacks require medical health check-ups. Often they indicate the presence of panic disorder, depression and other anxiety based disorders. For those people whose attacks are brought about by a known stimulus, it is better for them to avoid such stimuli. Behavioral therapy is an important part of treatment and in many cases such therapies are recommended.