Lucinda Bassett - Founder Of The Midwest Center for Stress and Anxiety
The Midwest Center for Stress and Anxiety was founded by Lucinda Bassett, who shares the story of her 20-year battle with anxiety and depression through the Center as a way of helping others who suffer from stress and anxiety.
Lucinda Bassett's Story
Lucinda Bassett's story is well known, but it bears reporting here since the Midwest Center for Stress and Anxiety would not exist were it not for her. Throughout her childhood, Ms. Bassett experienced symptoms of anxiety and depression. She worried constantly about everything, even as a child - whether her family would suffer some accident or tragedy, and whether she was suffering from some illness or disease.
According to Ms. Bassett, her anxiety became intolerable when she was in her twenties, suffering panic attacks on a daily basis. She suffered from stress symptoms that included a rapid heart beat, nausea, tension headaches, and other stress related disorders. Although she saw a number of health care professionals in an attempt to treat her anxiety, no one had the answer. Indeed, it is hard to imagine that a person in such a predicament could ever rise to become the founder of a prestigious organization like the Midwest Center for Stress and Anxiety.
One day, while watching the Today Show, Ms. Bassett heard a guest on the show describing the personality characteristics that make up an anxiety disorder. She recognized aspects of her own personality - perfectionism, intelligence, negativity, creativity, high expectations, need to be in control, obsessive thinker - in the description she heard on TV. The more she listened, the more she heard herself described, in the physical symptoms and fearfulness and other psychological symptoms of anxiety.
Ms. Bassett began a course of self-study to learn more about her disorder, and eventually she began to develop stress management techniques on her own that were later implemented in the treatment philosophy of the Midwest Center for Stress and Anxiety.
Coincidentally, around this time she also met a doctor who had treated others with the same problem, and he sought Ms. Bassett's help in treating these people by helping with group therapy sessions. Thus, in 1984, Ms. Bassett and Dr. Phillip Fisher founded the Midwest Center for Stress and Anxiety.
As time passed, they began recording the therapy sessions and using them as one of the most effective behavior modification techniques known: repetition and reinforcement. They conducted free seminars, provided the recordings to many depressed people, and created a television infomercial for their techniques.
