According to statistics of WHO, about 12% of the European Population suffers from anxiety disorders that can be treated. Part of these disorders are: phobias, generalized anxiety disorders and panic disorders.
Phobias are described as the fear of a certain object or situation, which are therefore avoided:
- claustrophobia (the fear of closed spaces),
- agoraphobia (fear of open spaces),
- acrophobia (fear of heights),
- animal phobias (Spiders or mice phobias),
- social phobias (fear of humans).
With the general anxiety disorder, the patient always underlies a constant fear readiness, often linked with physiological symptoms. Patients often seem to have fear for no distinctive reason.
Many fears are at first not recognized as such, since they only show physiological symptoms such as: nausea, difficulties breathing, feeling of tightness and fastened heart rate. Social phobias are underestimated in occurrence, since people who suffer from them are often not able to leave the house and can therefore not seek for help with a doctor. A treatment with benzodiazepines (Diazepam or Lorazepam) often reduced the fear immediately, but is also the first step towards addiction. The medication does not treat the source of the fear. To relive the fear the dose will be increased which after weeks causes an addiction towards the medication that would have to be treated separately. Benzodiazepines should only be used for acute situations. Most anxiety disorders can be successfully treated with behavioral therapy.
Confrontation techniques play an important role. Patients learn techniques for reducing anxiety to understand their disorder. The therapist confronts the patient with anxiety-provoking situations (eg. enclosed spaces, availability, objects, people, animals). Therefore, many phobias, often with just a few sessions, significantly improve or disappear completely. The advantage of our treatment program in Mallorca is the intensive confrontation with the anxiety. With daily psychotherapeutic discussions and exercises stubborn fears, under which the patients often suffered for years, disappear within two or three weeks. Certain partly unconscious conflicts can also lead to massive fear, here we find the psychodynamic psychotherapy very useful.
We combine the two therapeutic methods that complement each other perfectly. For some fears medicinal help is useful. We use a medication from the substance groups of the antidepressants and neuroleptics. These preparations have no dependence potential. Relaxation techniques such as biofeedback, Progressive Relaxation, autogenous training and hypnosis complete the therapeutic offer. In particular forms of anxiety, such as after traumatic events, and EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) is used. The longer an anxiety disorder persists, the more it manifests itself. Is integrated into life, quality of life and freedom are increasingly restricted.
Our goal: restoration of quality of life in the shortest possible time.
Patients with severe anxiety can be picked up on request from home and be accompanied to the clinic or to their hotel.
If you are interested in our therapy, please take a few seconds to fill out our contact form. We will then set up a preliminary phone interview at your convenience to determine your individual therapy: