Anxiety

We can all become pre-occupied with concerns about the future from time to time, sitting with uncertainties and doubts, especially in this ever more complex world we share, with its endless stimuli of information and events. Sometimes this concern can move beyond worrying to a more heightened state of anxiety. Anxiety can become a very debilitating condition to manage with symptoms ranging from restlessness, fatigue, concentration difficulties, sleep disturbance and irritability.

From an evolutionary perspective, the emotion of fear has always served to spur us into activity to avoid immediate environmental threats, where taking action discharges the emotion and returns us to our more steady state. Where we come to develop feelings of anxiety our fear becomes displaced into a general persistent condition of hyper-alertness. With no immediate threat to manage, our energies are diverted from living effectively in the here and now, to managing difficult thoughts and bodily aches, discomforts and agitations.

Therapeutic work with anxiety will pay attention to how it presents in the body and basic techniques such as breathing, grounding and mindfulness may help to reduce symptoms in the moment, so that attention can begin to focus on the thoughts and situations that are associated with anxious feelings. Anxiety if it persists can become a diagnosed condition known as Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD).

If you feel you are becoming dominated by your anxiety we can work together to first look at ways to cope in your day to day living that might lessen your symptoms. If appropriate we can move to understand the wider circumstances of your life and uncover possible underlying reasons for your present difficulties with a view to supporting you for the future.