the main question is, “Why do panic attack sufferers develop and others who likewise are hypoglycemic develop muscle pains and aches, or hypertension, ulcers, colitis…?

The answer is in one's personality. Effective treatment of an sufferer requires that the therapist understands the personality that contributes to the development of anxiety.

I first began working with clients in the late 70's under the supervision of two psychologists for the World Health Medical Dental Center in the World Trade Center, NYC. Dr. Joyce Brothers was one of the consultants. I asked my superiors for advice in how to work with sufferers. My main treatment modalities were biofeedback and hypnosis. I asked them for the protocol that they wanted used and was told something similar to, “Anxiety patients are basically babies. They use generally for secondary rewards. We don't expect you'll have much success. Simply teach them body awareness techniques and hold their hands. They are generally an irresponsible group of patients.”

I was too young to dispute what I was told and accepted it as truth. Needless to say, I didn't have very much success hand holding and most clients came three or four sessions at most and then stopped coming-they could never get their muscles to relax with biofeedback, much less their breathing.

Two years later I opened the Biofeedback Center of NJ in Middletown, NJ and after about four years of poor results-only 30% improvement (no better than placebo)--with anxiety/panic attack clients I hired a psychotherapist to work with them. My thinking was that it must be something deep rooted causing the problem and I wasn't qualified to do therapy nor did I want to.

After another five years we evaluated her success and even though the clients came for many more sessions than they did with me-she was better at hand-holding-the results were no better. The only consolation was that I wasn't the one seeing the clients-I could focus on clients with stress related health issues that brought me much greater success rates.

One Saturday afternoon I received a phone call from our psychologist who was doing an intake with a new client-I'll call her Jane. He informed me that Jane wanted biofeedback for her panic/agoraphobia and nothing else. She was dictating her treatment. She and her husband drove some distance and they very much wanted to start immediately and refused psychotherapy as he recommended.

It was his opinion that her high motivation and expectation would be instrumental (pun intended) in biofeedback working. Reluctantly I agreed to see Jane and her husband hoping to convince them that psychotherapy was the route to go.

She made it clear she wanted nothing to do with psychotherapy and it was biofeedback or nothing. I didn't waste much time trying to convince her re psychotherapy. Instead after twenty minutes of getting to know her, I began her with basic “close your eyes inward focus breathing exercises,” and observed her go into a panic attack within minutes. She opened her eyes. She and her husband were quite apologetic, paid their fees, and left quite abruptly.

Personality? I'll jump ahead and share with you what I leaned about personality. First it was easy for me to see Jane as the classic attention getting irresponsible secondary reward getting individual-a no brainer so to speak which was a total erroneous assumption as were all clients suffering from that I had ever seen.

Contrary to what I was told and learned to believe, sufferers are Type A perfectionist individuals. They are totally responsible (in some or many areas of their lives) and don't use symptoms for secondary reward (even though it appears that way). They need to be right. You might ask, “Who doesn't?” Contrary to most of us who like to be right, they really need to be right. In fact it's this universal need to be right of sufferers that makes waking hypnosis work. They are the kind of person you would want to have as an employee-minus the which may totally incapacitate them. In fact it's their high sense of responsibility that works against them in contributing to development of issues whereas someone suffering from hypertension is also a type A individual, but be more of a driven, less patient person than the responsible one who develops anxiety.

Although there are many more issues such as diet, handling disappointments, the general adaptation syndrome... this is the first program of its kind that takes personality factors in consideration. A survey of the participants indicated an 80% success rate in overcoming panic attack and agoraphobia.

About the author:

Richard Kuhns B.S.Ch.E., NGH certified, a specialist in Waking Hypnosis to eliminate
anxiety panic attack and agoraphobia.
The new technique available to professionals and clients demonstrates an 80%
success rate in overcoming panic attack. Cds for stress management and mastery
public speaking  in addition to many others
for handling a variety of self help issues are available.



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