Anxiety Therapy
What is anxiety therapy?
There are several different types of therapies that successfully help people work through their anxiety and recover. In our practice, we rely on a combination of treatments supported by research as effective in treating anxiety. These include Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Mindfulness Therapy (MBSR), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Compassion Focussed Therapy (CFT) and Psychodynamic Therapy.
What does anxiety feel like?
When we experience anxiety, it feels as if something is very wrong with our bodies and minds. Our hearts race, our muscles tense, we sweat and feel sick or dizzy. We can't stop worrying or obsessing. Hence, people often assume they might have a nervous breakdown or a heart attack. In reality, when you experience anxiety, your brain has its wires crossed and has perceived a threat to your life where there actually is no threat. This is why we call it anxiety and not fear when, in fact, the physiological and emotional experiences are the same. In anxiety, we perceive that there is something about to harm us even though we're actually okay - something that anxiety therapy can help us more readily realise.
In fear, something really is about to harm us. The mechanisms are the same. Unfortunately, the brain doesn't know the difference between what is real and what we believe to be real. When anxious, it sets off all kinds of neurochemicals and hormones that activate our fight, flight or freeze mechanism to protect ourselves and survive. The only problem is that we might be in the middle of a job interview or on a first date where the last thing we need our nervous system preparing for a fight.
How can anxiety therapy help me?
We work on anxiety from different angles and actively use a combination of various therapies. First, how you think has everything to do with the way you feel. So, to begin with, we will help you identify your anxious thinking habits and teach you how to challenge thinking patterns that exacerbate your anxiety. Simultaneously, we will work with you to practice recognising thoughts for what they really are - just thoughts! After all, just because you think it does not make it true. Even if your thinking is true, that does not mean that it's helpful and buying into unhelpful worrying thoughts will only lead to panic.
Anxiety therapy works on your relationship with anxiety, worry, panic and fear. Most of us take our feelings far too seriously and do anything we can to feel good and not bad. Nowhere is this more true than in anxiety! Unfortunately, this tendency makes us feel worse. We become exhausted, just trying to distract ourselves from our own minds. Despite our best efforts, holding a constant focus on not feeling anxious means that anxiety ends up getting all of our attention! The fact remains that anxiety is merely a feeling, an intensely uncomfortable feeling for sure but still just a feeling. This means it cannot kill you or hurt you, and if you do not feed into it, it will pass. We will teach you to sit with uncomfortable, anxious feelings and not overidentify with them. This allows for the anxiety to come and go more freely, as is our emotions' natural tendency.
Throughout this process, we will help you cultivate a sense of compassion and understanding for your anxiety and where it comes from. In our healing, we must go back to the origins of our fears, and this commonly brings us back to difficult past experiences in childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. Linking the relationship between our past and present helps us come full circle to heal old wounds and move on in our current lives.
Next Steps
Please get in touch with us to schedule a consultation or to ask any questions you might have.
Email: admin@harrisonpsychologygroup.com
Phone: 07944 112333
