Are you suffering from an anxious time, or suffering from anxiety? They sound so similar — yet they are so different.

Having occasional feelings of anxiousness is perfectly normal and part of everyday life. However, when you experience excessive and frequent fear in everyday situations that often leads to panic, terror and dread, it can have a drastic negative impact on your way and quality of life. Suffering with anxiety can stop you functioning normally on a day-to-day basis. Often anxiety sufferers will have safety behaviours that mitigate the anxiety. In the short term these can be helpful — but in the longer term these safety procedures can also become unmanageable and stop you from living a full life.

How anxiety shows up

Anxiety manifests in several different ways. There are various symptoms, including but not limited to:

  • Physical — hyperventilation, sweating, trembling and increased heart rate.
  • Emotional — nervousness, helplessness, obsessive and intrusive thoughts and a sense of impending doom.
  • Behavioural — avoidance, irritability and irrational conduct.

The root of fear

The causes of anxiety and the various disorders associated with it are complex. I have found that with my clients, at the very core of their anxiety is a fear for the future or in the present moment. As humans we all suffer from fear, and at the heart of that are our primal fears — death and abandonment.

Physical fear comes when we are anxious that we, or someone we care for, will suffer pain, illness or hurt in the present or future. It is likely to lead back to the primal fear of death.

Emotional fear is often where a person feels they have suffered humiliation, embarrassment, rejection or failure. This can be linked to the primal fear of abandonment.

How CBT can help

Starting Cognitive Behavioural Therapy can help bring anxiety under control. We can help you to understand the science behind anxiety and how it manifests — your personal triggers, what the root cause is, and how to identify it.

We will help you establish healthy changes you need to make in your life. We will use tried and tested techniques and strategies to cope with, reduce or remove the anxiety, so that you can lead a more fulfilling life.

What our sessions will cover

  • Identifying what type of problem(s) you are experiencing.
  • Understanding why your particular problem persists (definition of the issue).
  • Using behavioural activation — exploration of cognitive, emotional, bodily and behavioural symptoms — to tackle the issues you are experiencing.
  • Comprehensive SMART goals based on your own individual cognition and perception.
  • Tracking and supporting progress.
  • Detecting your unhelpful thinking and behaviour, including patterns and triggers.
  • Changing your unhelpful thinking and behaviour through evaluation of thoughts using behavioural experiments.
  • Reaching a new perspective.
  • Testing this new perspective in your life.
  • How to cope with and deal with setbacks.
  • Making changes last — how to stick to your plan.
  • Establishing relaxation techniques that work for you.

For more information and to book a free assessment please contact Laura.Peart1980@hotmail.co.uk.