Lucinda Basset founded the Midwest Center for Stress and Anxiety. She has experience with anxiety and depression, having fought a 20 year battle with depression herself. She founded the Center as a way to help others suffering from anxiety and stress related illnesses. Lucinda Bassett’s story is well known. Nevertheless, it bears reporting here since the Midwest Center for Stress and Anxiety would not exist were it not for her.
Ms. Basset experienced symptoms of anxiety and depression even when she was still a child, worrying about her friends and family, fearing that they could be involved in an accident, and worrying that she was suffering from some disease or illness.
Her anxiety became too much to cope with when she reached her twenties. She began to suffer from panic attacks on a daily basis, and suffered from headaches, nausea, and other anxiety related illnesses. She sought treatment from health care professionals, but found that they were unable to provide her with answers.
Ms. Bassett was watching the Today Show, when she heard a guest on the show describing the personality characteristics that make up an anxiety disorder. She immediately recognized aspects of her own personality – perfectionism, intelligence, negativity, creativity, high expectations, need to be in control, obsessive thinker. These were all descriptions she heard on TV. The more she listened, the more she realized that she was hearing herself being described in the physical symptoms and fearfulness and other psychological symptoms of anxiety.
Ms Basset began to study stress and anxiety related disorders, and developed her own stress management techniques. These techniques proved effective, and they were later implemented as part of the treatment philosophy of the Midwest Center for Stress and Anxiety.
It was around the time of her self-study that she met Dr Phillip Fisher, a doctor who had successfully treated others with stress and anxiety problems. Dr Fisher became the co-founder of the Midwest Center for Stress and Anxiety.
The Center was founded in 1984, and the doctors at the center recorded therapy sessions and treatments to find the ones that were the most effective. They discovered that repetition and reinforcement was one of the most effective techniques, and it is now one of their main therapy techniques, used to help sufferers of anxiety and stress related problems to re-train their thinking and lead a happier, healthier and more positive life, free of their anxiety.