Anxiety
I offer assessment and treatment for a range of different anxieties.
Feeling anxious is a normal feeling that happens to everyone. It tends to happen when we are feeling threatened or stressed. It is our body's way of telling us that something is not right and that we need to get ready to take action.
Common experiences of anxiety are body sensations (tummy butterflies, racing heart, sweating, dizziness), thoughts (predicting bad things will happen and that we won't be able to cope) and behaviour (avoiding things or running away).
People become anxious about lots of different things, for example they might worry:
about a specific phobia, such as blood, needles, spiders or birds
generally about the future,
about what their friends think of them,
about speaking out in front of lots of other people,
about being away from their parents or other carers,
about school,
about having panic attacks,
about their health - having stomachaches, headaches and feeling sick,
about obsessional thoughts and doing rituals and routines in order to make the thoughts go away.
Anxiety becomes a problem when it happens a lot, causes us excessive distress, and starts getting in the way of our lives rather than protecting us from harm. For example, it might be making it hard to get into school, talk to other people, make friends, concentrate, or do things with your family. This is when it might be a good idea to do something about it. Every year about 1 in 10 people seek help because they feel tense or anxious. Many more just cope with it alone because they think that is how life is, but excessive anxiety can be helped.