It is difficult for many people to believe recovery is possible. After trying many different treatment methods without success, it is difficult to believe anything will succeed. If we think something isn’t going to work, then it won’t. That’s our problem—our thinking.

The past belongs to the past-except for one major point. Despite the enormous difficulties we have encountered through the disorder, nothing physically has happened to us. None of our major fears have been realised, and they aren’t going to be in the future. The next attack is not going to be the ‘one’ in which our fears come true. If anything were going to happen to us it would have happened in the first attack. We are continually drawing on our past experiences of the anxiety and attacks and projecting them into the future. We don’t concentrate on what is happening now.

If we always have an attack at 7.00 a.m. we expect to have one every morning. When we have an attack we think ‘I knew it would happen’. We expect to have one the following morning, and we do. We don’t see what is happening now because we are too busy anticipating the next attack.

As an example, we need to be aware of our first thoughts when we wake. The first thought is usually ‘where is it’, and we usually feel frightened because we know ‘it’ is going to be there. We turn on our internal radar and check to see wbat is happening. We move down our body. ‘I’m going to have a headache, my throat is tight, my heart is racing, I am having trouble breathing, I feel sick, I’m shaking.’ And a full scale attack may develop. After it subsides we worry about the next one. As we go to sleep at night we think to ourselves, ‘What if I have an attack in the morning?’

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Commonly, after the sleep issue is resolved, parents notice real difference. The child is more easy-going, less frustrated, happier, and more predictable Parents wonder why they didn’t do something sooner. Parents, too, feel m content and self-confident.

In the long-run, the child’s sense of independence and self-esteem enhanced. When he masters sleep problems, he has mastered an important p of life. (He knows it is important by the significance you—and the rest of world—have placed on it.) Sleep and nighttime can be frightening; child need to know that Mom and Dad are in charge.

A child who continually disrupts his parents’ sleep forms an unhealthy vi of life. He learns that his needs are the only important ones. This is a far from what parents intend.

Perhaps this is the message you would like to send: / love you and I want you to grow up to be a happy person. Sleeping is part life. The way you are sleeping now doesn’t fit with the rest of our family. It becoming a problem for us all. Let’s work on it together.

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Only a few days ago a doctor brought his twenty-two-year-old son to me. He was a big lad of fine physique and was a successful athlete. In a pleasant extrovert manner he told me that for the past five months he had had continuous pain over his heart and down his left arm. The pain had come on when he was under a lot of stress studying for exams at a time when his girl friend was also demanding his attention, and he felt he could not cope with both. He had recently seen a cardiologist who found him normal and who had suggested a visit to me.

I have mentioned that pain over the heart due to anxiety rarely extends down the left arm. This lad was convinced that there was something wrong with his heart. He is the son of a doctor; and when I questioned him, he said that he knew quite well that pain from heart disease goes down the left arm. This serves to illustrate the way in which the symptoms of anxiety can be modified by our knowledge of our body and its functions.

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