Anxiety

We all feel anxious at times, but when anxious feelings stick around or become overwhelming, it can be hard to cope with daily life.

If you are struggling with anxiety, you are definitely not alone. Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health problem, affecting 1 in 4 people in Australia.

The good news is that anxiety is treatable, and with the right support, your quality of life can improve dramatically.

What is anxiety?

Anxiety is more than just feeling stressed. Stress is typically caused by an external trigger and disappears when the stressful situation resolves. Anxiety, on the other hand, is defined by persistent, excessive worries that don’t go away even in the absence of a stressor and interfere with daily functioning. Some anxiety disorders may lead a person to avoid enjoyable activities or make it challenging to keep a job.

Anxiety symptoms

Anxiety can manifest in different ways, including:

  • excessive worrying about everyday situations

  • persistent feelings of fear or dread

  • finding it difficult to calm down

  • panic attacks

  • feeling tired easily

  • difficulty concentrating

  • muscle tension

  • sleep disturbances.

Anxiety types

Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

Generalised Anxiety Disorder is characterised by excessive, hard-to-control worry occurring most days. The worry may jump from topic to topic and is accompanied by physical symptoms.

Panic Disorder

In Panic Disorder, the person experiences recurrent unexpected panic attacks. Panic attacks are a sudden surge of intense fear accompanied by physical symptoms such as trouble breathing, pounding heart, dizziness and sweating.

Social Anxiety Disorder

Social Anxiety Disorder is marked by a strong fear of anxiety about one or more social situations in which the person is exposed to other people’s scrutiny.

Specific phobias

A phobia is the fear of a specific object of situation (such as spiders, heights, flying, etc.) which the person avoids or endures with intense anxiety.

What causes anxiety?

Like many other mental health conditions, anxiety results from a complex interplay of genetic and environmental factors. Individuals may inherit a genetic predisposition or certain personality traits, which, when combined with external stressors or life experiences, can contribute to the development of anxiety disorders.

When to seek help

If stress or anxiety is affecting your daily life and you are finding it hard to cope, it may be time to talk to a therapist. Beyond Blue has an online test you can take to help you decide if your problem is severe enough to need help. Click here to start the test.

My mind-body treatment approach for anxiety

When you first come to see me, I spend the first session or two getting a sense of who you are and what is really going on for you. I listen to your present struggles, your background, and any traumatic experiences. I draw from different theories. I take into account all of this and your preferences to decide what I will do in session.

I generally approach anxiety from 2 different angles:

  • The mind - I offer practical cognitive and behavioural strategies from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to help you cope better from the start.

  • The body - At the same time, I use Focusing to reach deeper for the root cause and shift how your problem is held in your body.

The mind - the ACT framework

ACT posits that disorders result from:

Cognitive fusion (getting hooked by unhelpful thoughts)

Avoidance of inner experience

Disconnection from the present moment

Remoteness from values

Ineffective behaviours

and these are the “antidotes”:

Defusion (unhooking from thoughts

Noticing and accepting inner experience

Present moment awareness

Contact with values

Value-committed action

From an ACT perspective, the person suffering from anxiety is often hooked by worry thoughts, disconnected from the present moment and behaves in ineffective ways. However, the core of the disorder is that the person is letting experiential avoidance rule their life. The person is spending increasing time, energy and focus on trying to avoid or get rid of anxiety. As a result, the person’s range of activities and options in life are being narrowed down and life becomes a smaller version of what it could be.

While all “antidotes” may be offered to the client, a high focus is placed in noticing and accepting their inner experience. This may take different forms depending on the presentation. For phobia clients, it may be through graded exposure, slowly working their way up through feared situations.

The body - Focusing

In Focusing the body is the starting point to achieve healing. Focusing is the process of looking inwards for a whole bodily felt sense of an issue and allowing it to unfold and show us the best next steps. Focusing is incorporated into the treatment in many ways, from getting a sense of what is the best way to support my client at each point, to helping them get clarity about their issues and the best way forward, or processing trauma in a gentle, safe way. To learn more about Focusing, click here.

If this mind-body approach resonates with you, please reach out.