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Anxiety and Stress Management

The Anxiety and Stress Management blog has now been retired. You can still find Dr. Farrell at the Anxiety and Panic Disorders message board. And you can visit the Anxiety & Panic Disorders Health Center for more information about these conditions.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Anna Nicole and Social Anxiety Disorder
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I believe that everyone deserves respect and anyone who can overcome Social Anxiety Disorder to become a celebrity and spokesperson deserves not only our respect, but our understanding. Who among us will cast the first stone at Anna Nicole, a woman who came from humble beginnings and tried to make a place for herself?

Now, information is coming out about Anna Nicole that doesn't zero in on the prescription drugs, the narcotics, the sex and the scandal, but the woman fighting to survive. Mental health professionals know that some people use street drugs or alcohol as a means of "self-medicating" to handle their demons. This would seem to be the case with Anna Nicole. Someone who worked closely with her over the years is talking about her social anxiety in the face of celebrity.

How awful it must have been to be so scared of the press and all the bad publicity that she wouldn't agree to have a physician brought into her room before her death. To die because you are afraid people will say horrible, untrue things about you doesn't seem right in any scenario that I can conjure up.

Neither does it seem right to call anyone "trailer trash." That's plain cruel. The term has been tossed around casually and used as a way of putting people down just because they weren't born into anything but poverty or came from a humble background. Who has the right to make such harsh judgments about people? Listen to who is doing all the talking and wonder where they came from. No one with any sensitivity or ounce of understanding would say something like that to anyone.

What if you were in the middle of all of this and you felt, as Anna Nicole once said, that everything she did resulted in someone suing her? Then you lose a child and still there is no peace from the relentless photographers? You are a prisoner in your own home? How do you go on? Drugs become more and more attractive. Consider the TV journalist who asked another, on camera, "Is Anna Nicole still dead?" Tasteless.

Remember about that first stone and before anyone tosses it, think about yourself. I don't think many of us could jump out of the way of this bus.

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Posted by: Pat_Farrell_PhD at 2:47 PM

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