When natural feelings of anxiety turn to overwhelming fear, disrupting a person’s normal routine, the diagnosis very likely is an anxiety disorder. Affecting one out of every four people at some point in their lives, anxiety disorders are considered the most common mental disorder and one of the most treatable. Disorders that fall under this category include obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized social phobia and others.

Specializing in the treatment of these disorders as well as related problems, clinical psychologists Lee Fitzgibbons and Gordon Street opened their private practice, Anxiety Solutions of Northern New England, on Route 85 in Raymond. Located in the former Olde House Restaurant, Anxiety Solutions provides cognitive-behavioral therapies to treat both children and adults.

A graduate of Lake Region High School, for Fitzgibbons, moving to the house in Raymond is coming home – especially because her mother ran the Olde House Restaurant for 20 years.

Fitzgibbons and her husband, Street, met in Philadelphia where they furthered their training, conducted research and practiced at the Center for Treatment and Study of Anxiety.

While in Philadelphia, Street supervised data management and analysis on five multi-site treatment outcome studies. He also served as Outpatient Services Director for the Children’s Crisis Treatment Center there prior to joining a private practice.

During her time in Philadelphia, Fitzgibbons worked as one of the protocol clinicians on several multi-site treatment studies, eventually becoming a clinical supervisor for a study that continues today. She was also the Director of the Children’s Program at the Anxiety and Agoraphobia Treatment Center in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. In addition, Fitzgibbons co-authored “Helping Your Child with OCD: A Workbook for Parents of Children with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.”

Street and Fitzgibbons say they enjoy their patients and find treating them to be both challenging and rewarding.

“We enjoy it because we tend to see a lot of success – we love helping people get better,” Street said.

They stress the importance of adapting to each patient, using the techniques that work best for each individual. They say studies show that patients who obtain their treatment from anxiety specialists like themselves require less treatment to get better and have half the relapse rate.

The difference in their approach is their focus – they look at changing how people respond to the problem rather than simply determining its origin.

“Generally what we try to do is to teach them how to make it in small steps. We want them to make gradual improvement over time instead of having them take on too much and fail,” Street said.

They also involve the whole family whenever possible and beneficial because, when one member of a family suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, the entire family adapts to accommodate the person, often unwittingly contributing to the problem instead of helping the person in his or her recovery.

In addition to their weekly therapy and intensive treatment programs, Street and Fitzgibbons plan to start free support groups for people who suffer from anxiety disorders but cannot afford treatment. The couple has found these groups to be very popular, offering people a way to move forward to recovery and to help support others who suffer from problems with anxiety. Anyone interested is encouraged to call the office at 655-2737.

“The biggest piece is to stop treating anxiety as a catastrophe,” Fitzgibbons said. “You want functional anxiety in your life. The misconception is that all anxiety is bad. When people try to make it go away, they’re teaching themselves that it’s all bad and it sets up a negative reinforcement cycle.”