Panic disorder is a devastating and debilitating anxiety disorder; often there is no clear precipitant that triggers the panic attacks, and therapists are often mystified about how to help their clients get them under control. Exposure Therapy is often cited as the treatment of choice, but most therapists have never witnessed, much less been trained in this approach. Here, anxiety disorder expert Reid Wilson shows you how it’s done in this remarkable live session with a woman whose panic disorder has made her life completely unmanageable.

Renée has been struggling with panic disorder for almost a decade, and has been unable to do much of anything alone. Fearful of driving, shopping at the supermarket, or even taking a stroll in the park, she has become increasingly agoraphobic, only venturing as far as her parents’ home 3 1/2 miles away. Seeing the effect her anxiety is having on her ability to parent her small child, she feels she must tackle her problem now, for his benefit as well as her own.

With humor and compassion, Wilson engages Renée in his signature “provocative approach” to treating panic disorders, encouraging her to not only welcome, but beg her symptoms to increase when she feels them arise. Using exposure therapy to recreate her symptoms in vivo, he shows Renée that it is her relationship to her symptoms, rather than the symptoms themselves, that makes them so intractable.