Anxiety Counselling
We all know what anxiety feels like. Your heart pounds before a big presentation or a tough exam. You get butterflies in your stomach during a blind date. You worry and fret over family problems or feel jittery at the prospect of asking the boss for a raise. These are all natural reactions.
However, if worries, fears, or anxiety attacks seem overwhelming and are preventing you from living your life the way you'd like to, you may be suffering from an anxiety disorder. Fortunately, many anxiety treatments and self-help strategies can help you reduce your anxiety symptoms, control anxiety attacks, and take back control of your life.
Understanding anxiety disorders
It’s normal to worry and feel tense or scared when under pressure or facing a stressful situation. Anxiety is the body’s natural response to danger, an automatic alarm that goes off when you feel threatened.
In moderation, anxiety isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, anxiety can help you stay alert and focused, spur you to action, and motivate you to solve problems. But when anxiety is constant or overwhelming, when it interferes with your relationships and activities, it stops being functional—that’s when you’ve crossed the line from normal, productive anxiety into the territory of anxiety disorders.
Do your symptoms indicate an anxiety disorder?
If you identify with several of the following signs and symptoms, and they just won’t go away, you may be suffering from an anxiety disorder.
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Because anxiety disorders are a group of related conditions rather than a single disorder, they can look very different from person to person. One individual may suffer from intense anxiety attacks that strike without warning, while another gets panicky at the thought of mingling at a party. Someone else may struggle with a disabling fear of driving, or uncontrollable, intrusive thoughts. Yet another may live in a constant state of tension, worrying about anything and everything.
Despite their different forms, all anxiety disorders share one major symptom: persistent or severe fear or worry in situations where most people wouldn’t feel threatened.
Emotional symptoms of anxiety
In addition to the primary symptoms of irrational and excessive fear and worry, other common emotional symptoms of anxiety include:
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Physical symptoms of anxiety: Anxiety is more than just a feeling. As a product of the body’s fight-or-flight response, anxiety involves a wide range of physical symptoms. Because of the numerous physical symptoms, anxiety sufferers often mistake their disorder for a medical illness. They may visit many doctors and make numerous trips to the hospital before their anxiety disorder is discovered.
Common physical symptoms of anxiety include:
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The link between anxiety symptoms and depression
Many people with anxiety disorders also suffer from depression at some point. Anxiety and depression are believed to stem from the same biological vulnerability, which may explain why they so often go hand-in-hand. Since depression makes anxiety worse (and vice versa), it’s important to seek treatment for both conditions.
Treatment for anxiety attacks
In most cases, anxiety attacks respond quickly to anxiety counselling treatment. Even if you're starting to avoid certain situations or places because you're afraid of having a panic attack, anxiety counselling can often rapidly and effectively help you regain control.
Anxiety attacks, also known as panic attacks, are episodes of intense panic or fear. Anxiety attacks usually occur suddenly and without warning. Sometimes there’s an obvious trigger— getting stuck in an elevator, for example, or thinking about the big speech you have to give—but in other cases, the attacks come out of the blue.
Symptoms of anxiety attacks include:
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If you live in central or north London, contact us now to find out how our anxiety counselling service can help.
Call us today for more information or to arrange a counselling or psychotherapy session in central or north-west London or Elstree (covering Bushey, Radlett, Watford St Albans and the surrounding areas