americans sometimes i've missed as young as age ten the disorder can progress as time goes on and become more damaging to the affected teen with the help of therapy in counseling teenagers can learn to cope with things id and find ways to manage that is where the importance of mr matthew to take comes into play with eight years of experience in this field a bathroom psychology and two master's degrees in science and social work mr today is a licensed social worker in the state of pennsylvania is a clinical director at south park high school we're here to address the so i actually graduated high school year early because i'm a nerd and i decided to go to w j because my grandmother maybe and when i was there at seventeen i had no clue as what i was going to do or what i was going to study so i kind of tailored my classes to my strengths which was primarily english at the time and i was like this is so boring it just wasn't for me so i jumped track a few times did the pre law pre med thing neither one of those were suited for me so then i ended up being fascinated with psychology funnily enough it wasn't my strongest subject right off the bat but i i just was genuinely interested in it so from then on i went to graduate with my bachelor's in psychology as you said and then went on to a master's program a tell you then another master's program at pitt and then experience in the field eight years later here and that's great that's great i'm glad to hear that so would you like to give a definition of anxiety to start us off so i'll keep it simple for everyone to understand so the crisis prevention institute to find things idea as a change in behavior and really in order to detect that change in behavior you first need to be aware of someone's space find so right now we're sitting in having a conversation and if we start to feel anxious they are usually tells from our body that we can pick up on some people you know put their hands by their face and it's usually that change in behavior that's the first sign of anxiety spiking yeah so would you say it's a generalization to make that everyone experienc do you think that's safe to say everyone is like everyone every answer is anxiety on some level to some degree yeah it's a very human emotion a very normal one so whenever you are working with students and you suspect that they have anxiety what are your coping skills that you recommend for them how do you how do you take a course of action yeah so primarily the two maybe three tons of things that work the best for anxiety is first you have to be calm enough to be able to to think clearly  for instance if you're afraid of planes like i am not thinking a low percentage of fatal plane crashes right to calm myself down my emotional response kicks in and almost over powers that reasonable part of my mind so in order to actually get any benefit or any progress in that kind of treatment modality you have to first become enough to get that to access that thinking part of your brain so you know cognitive behavioral therapy approaches are like thinking better to feel better simply if you can say that's just think about things a little bit better so that you can feel better live a happier life and then there are exposure therapies along with that they're really effective for anxiety so running away from your fears usually doesn't work yes sometimes makes it even worse but confronting them in a way that sets you up for success is something that's really helpful for for students of course so what are like the most common symptoms you seem slee most common symptoms it's either intrusiveness of void and you know you can see some hyper arousal from time to time and then the negative cognitions and mood that go along with it so intrusiveness is just the things that you keep thinking about that you don't want to think about and you know it's if you're not accepted into a certain friend group that you avoid intentionally because you don't want to experience the anxiety or that level of internal discomfort that goes along with interacting with that friend group so you made you may avoid them altogether and then because you're thinking these things more regularly if you're truly anxious on a more clinical level then you're probably going to be more hyper arousal in terms of your physiology so you're you're the biology aspect of it your body's going to be a little bit more on alert on guard and it's going to wear you down yet you know it's going to wear you down so and then along with that obviously come t negative thinking patterns and then moods associated with all those things yeah of course so whenever like you said about the pushing away from the front front groups whenever you see somebody that's struggling with social anxiety and how do you push that and you know it's yeah yeah it's it's a gradual progression there are two types of approaches to this one can be like completely overwhelming the person and putting them in th ok you can do this yeah so there's there's some evidence that flooding is what it's called works but the more sensitive approach would be to gradually work someone up to that point so if one time for instance is triggering event because there are designated social groups usually in one church and usually sit by certain people and what not and you probably have thoughts about that so some people who have severe anxiety may not even be able to eat lunch in the lunchroom for instance so a first step would be to walk past the lunchroom and if you can do that then it's take a step in the lunchroom then it's  and you just you work with the smallest steps to set that person up six for success acknowledging that they're going to be uncomfortable the the way along the way but also also preparing them that that they can do this it's that gradual successive progression that really helps students gain the confidence to deal with some of those social anxieties so if i see someone struggling how do you recommend that i would help that person i think positive positivity and a welcoming attitude can go a long way you can set an example for the rest of your peers or any bystander who's watching or observing by just your attitude and your response to someone who is struggling in simply by you know inviting them to your lunch they're not used to talking to you or for instance is something that would go a long way i would suspect for that person yeah and in today's day and age you know with the social media and aspect the bowling aspect i think that's very important for everyone to get involved and help out with the anxiety for people that struggle for sure so whenever you work with other students that don't only struggle from with anxiety you work with other people like other mental illnesses you think anxiety is one of the hardest to treat treat since there's no cure for it i don't think it's one of the hardest to treat there is no cure for it we do have medications that are really effective with short term and xyzzy but anxiety is compounded or complicated with thought disorders it's really your mind and how you think that really makes that anxiety even worse than it has to be so really it's it's it's the therapy and thought corrections and getting you thinking a little bit more positively so you can deal with unpleasant feelings and overcome them ultimately and that's not really that complicated at least in my opinion compared to some of these other disorders that we have this is a very treatable one so do you think that gender role plays different weights and a good idea for acting boys and girls ye so around your age we have thirty percent of females who can be clinically diagnosed with an anxiety disorder in comparison to around twenty some percent in males who are diagnosed with clinically with an anxiety disorder so that the female gender is more vulnerable the more anxious yes but you do have an edge on the males and th why you develop a lot faster typically so you're sort of read your prefrontal cortex that part of your brain that's close to your forehead the thinking part of your brain is developing a lot faster than male so that can help you deal with some of the anxiety  angele yes so do they cope differently boys and girls but you say yes definitely so the typical response for a guy is to just internalize that yeah to bottle it up so to speak for the girls we see a lot of venting with friends and yes coping strategies that we see when we compare genders yours is actually you know being a female your gender does a better job of coping with it because it least they're kind of getting some some thoughts out and kind of can be in that dialogue where some of those thoughts might be challenged and then discarded if they're really  that adolescent age you guys are supposed to be going around eight hours of sleep every night but the person with diagnosable anxieties probably get nowhere near that they probably have struggles and three of the most common areas they have trouble falling asleep they have trouble staying asleep once they fall asleep and they have trouble waking up too early you know so that lack of quality sleep rem sleep and deep sleep is is probably something that can if it of see so whenever you see somebody who's got a heavy workload they're doing sports always the classes all this are overwhelmed they're drained this energy how do you like recommend you they slow down a little bit with their life yeah well everyone's different so everyone has a different tolerance threshold so some people can thrive in that kind of structure and expectation but some people don't it's really easy to tease out the people who really thrive in that kind of routine in business and those who just kind of fall apart as a result if it's someone who is falling apart because it's just too overwhelming you're going to need to taper back you're going to need to  first get them to have insight to acknowledge that this is not going to work for event even if they wanted to and then prioritize what's most important to them so that they can carve out a schedule of daily life schedule that's more amenable to  what they can tolerate so what other treatment options are available outside of therapy counseling talking about it you said you mentioned medications those are the primary ones so far for anxiety the biggest is exposure so if you don't want to do any services there are a lot of things on you tube surprisingly there are a lot of things in the library with self help books and stuff like that and really what the consensus is is that the more you gain competence by overcoming those situations on your own it helps to have that support you no doubt but the more you can do that on your own the more confidence you build to overcome situations in the future that are like that so whenever people are put in the situation where they don't feel what they're doing is helping like medications aren't helping cannot have different side effects making it worse would you say it just depends it's really how they they think about it how they interpret it i mean some people can say oh this medication didn't work instantly so that means i'm defective that's the wrong train of thought that you have by the way so you want to kind of correct that ther or someone can say you know the more healthy thought is this medication didn't work for me but there are several other medications out there it's not a one size fits all thing that's usually a concoction of medications that has to be traveled in error before we get to the right dose seeing in the right blend of medications it really helps me when i can be patient with the timing of that if i have if i trust in the process so let's talk about a little bit about what you do at south park high school how you help students agency yeah and it's a mental health and drug and alcohol rehab facility so oh wow yeah that's whatever it is a lot of it is a lot different but we get students we get children in adolescence we've seen kids as young as two years old style all the way you know all the way up from there in the end what our primary roles are at least on the front lines we're doing therapy is to really engage the person and to meet them where they're at a lot of people don't even want to be in therapy yet quite frankly and i don't blame them you know it's not a desirable thing but if you want to take responsibility for making your life better and that's the counsellors job to win you over and convince you of that so how do you ensure people feel comfortable talking with you since you said not all of them like it yeah i just try to be really transparent and some people won't like me unfortunately some people well but if i'm fun transparent and genuine you know i find genuine authentic if i truly listen that's one of the most valuable things most kids and adolescents don't want to be told things yet they want to express things and have someone genuinely listen without their own agenda so that might be one of the most powerful aspects of what is fair as can do and something that i definitely try to do when i see clients yes so what happens if you know they're not really working to get better with you with us i repeat when you recommend a more serious option touches like patient care medications like we talked about you know usually we're just patient with the process so u nless there really the consequences are a lot more severe and for example i'll use one of the most severe if it's if it's causing themselves harm or someone else harm then that's when you look at in in patient services and there is a higher level of care but if they're just struggling that's to be expected you know the pace of the process is not an overnight one by any means and it usually takes a lot of time for someone to come around to the idea that this stuff works and that they can actually try and possibly succeed with this yet so like you said with the most severe cases how can i and my fellow student help if we suspect that something like that is going on i think you just be human everything is simple as that sounds that's really what it comes down to is you show that you care you show that you're your concern person for another and for another person who's struggling that's really all it comes down to it's easy to walk by the person who we know struggling it's easy not to say anything it's easy to keep our mouths shut it's easy it is much much easier but it is also more rewarding when we can make a positive impact on someone's life who is struggling so it's not the easy route to take but it's often the rewarded route of just stepping out and  doing the anti high fives thing like what no one else seems to be doing you know yes of course so whenever people are struggling with anxiety it can cause other mental illnesses correct it can cause o c d depression anxiety usually links up or correlates very closely to the prest depressed mood at least in your question was how do we deal with that whenever it's just getting worse and yeah yeah so  it's obviously if what we're doing is not working in the process of therapy been we need to be flexible enough to try something else so there are tons of theories out there there are tons of approaches out there there are tons of interventions out there and if we're a one trick pony as a therapist we're not serving our population very well so it's almost what we do on our end by making ourselves more versatile  and the knowledge we have interventions we use in the way we connect with people that's really going to go a long way in in making a change or causing a change of direction and that progress of worsening past ye anxiety or depression it really comes down to this key word support us it's how supportive people are when they're encountering someone who's being anxious the social learning part of us says when someone's anxious that i have to be anxious and then someone else's voice is high so mine has to get a little bit higher in volume so humanly we're conditioned to match other people's emotional mood whereas someone who's struggling just wants to see that you're a marker of calmness a lot of time and that everything's going to be ok so we asked almost by our own instincts in order to her tray this idea that it's go ok even though it doesn't feel like it will be ok so whenever you realise that the home life is a big major cause for the person who's struggling what course of action do you take to get them out of that situation well we try not to get them out of that we try to pull the family members it yet because and i'll likely they're going to be connected with their family for the remainder of their lives so in those in those types of situations we try to we try to engage the family members and involve them in the therapeutic process and then and hopefully make some headway through them too and that family dynamic yeah so what there's a little bit of a miscommunication i've when i was doing my research i thought some people get confused o obsessive is the thoughts those are the anxious thoughts that are running through your head constantly but the see the compulsive part is the really differentiating factor in o c d because now you have behaviors or compulsion that are oftentimes a little bit irrational in a sense like i have to flip off my flip on and off my wife which one hundred times before i leave the house or someone in my family will die or i have to check that the doors lock at least ten times before i leave just to make sure it's locked so it's that anxiety that starts off that thought pattern of fear that starts off and usually the behavior serves as some kind of correction for making that ok so if i'm fearful that my family isn't safe enough i do all these things x y and z in order to ensure that they're safe enough and some what other options do you recommend for that kind of behaviors like that hoping for that yeah for that it's very similar sense since we're talking about anxiety and o c d is an anxiety disorder really you're just working with the thoughts and now the behaviors that are associated with the issues of insecurity whether they be fear of protection fear of safety fear of losing something here of deigning something that they don't want whatever the fear is it's rooted in the same kind of anxiety disorder so we just address the behavioral component in addition to the negative thought patterns that are usually coming coming along with that  simply how do you recommend for people who are struggling how do you how do you simply decrease stress how do you decrease your workload just make things calm without going the path of therapy without going to counseling like just simply by doing it by yourself what kind of ways would you recommend how do you reduce stress well you have to know your body well enough to know when it is stressed first of all in order to be able to identify when you need that stress relief so the first step is awareness you have to be cognizant enough of what's going on inside you in order to come up with ways to relieve relieve some of that stress and then the second step is really whatever works i mean that might not be as specific of any answers you're looking for yeah first some people it's exercise you know that's a very helpful way to relieve stress because you're working your muscles to the point of exhaustion you're forcing your body to relax even if it doesn't want to so that's why  like you said exercise you recommend other different hobbies for that kind of for o c d and body they've years finding a hobby that you can like use to get away from the stress yeah yeah those things are temporary relief so anything that you can find outside you is going to be temporary relief or alleviation from whatever you are experiencing internally but the key to everything is actually inside the within you so nothing works like a change of self concept so if you truly are an insecure person just slipping to the side where you believe that you're secure person now you have permanent relief from the anxiety that you experience and you have a sense of overcoming of that when it comes up in the future but those other things that you can do like exercise or deep breathing or progressive muscle relaxation or exposure type of therapy that stuff will ultimately help you temporarily get through the tough times yeah all right so before we went on the time i wanted to address the topic of technology so do you think that that can also play a role in ng's id well because anxiety is such a thought driven disorder that just makes you more aware of what other people are thinking so the vulnerability is there you know you become macro aware i say more aware than you need to be aware of what other people are thinking and then again you have thoughts based on what other people are thinking and that can go down a bad path pretty fast or it can actually fill your head up and blow your head up pretty fast so you usually see the extreme you know someone who has extreme popularity they usually have an overinflated sense of self and can be egotistical and contrarily so that for people can do it even more anxious because they're connected to those social media outlets relate to that aspect of struggling well thank you so much for joining us today it means a lot that you could come thank you harlan so they are going for joining us and giving us a better understanding to view to viewers about the mental illnesses id thank you for watching my