What is Anxiety?

Anxiety is your body's natural response to something you find threatening or dangerous; often experienced as excessive worrying, difficulty concentrating or a feeling of dread, as well as physical symptoms including increased heart rate, sweating and shortness of breath. Occasional anxiety is normal, but if it becomes frequent or severe it can disrupt your daily life, effecting many areas such as work, homelife and socialising. 

 

Common types of Anxiety:

Generalised Anxiety:

Excessive worrying and cycles of negative thoughts about the major domains of life - work, family, relationships, money, health, travel, etc.
Often showing up as "What if ?" thinking: 
What if the plane crashes? What if I lose my job, my home, etc? What if they don't love me anymore? etc.


Panic Disorder:

Panic attacks are short, intense bursts of anxiety accompanied by pounding heartbeat and shortness of breath. The brain wrongly interprets this as "I'm going to die/have a heart attack" resulting in more dread and anxiety. Fear of further panic attacks results in Panic Disorder which can be debilitating for many individuals. 


Social Anxiety:

Anxiety about social situations, often accompanied by a fear of being judged negatively by others. Avoiding spending time in the staff room or accepting social invitations due to thoughts of "I don't know what to talk about, they'll think I'm weird/boring, etc. 


Health Anxiety:

Extreme worry about minor aches and pains or physical symptoms. Often the next step is researching symptoms and self-diagnosis,  which generates even more anxiety. Frequent visits to GP and hospital for minor ailments.


Phobias:

A fear of specific objects (e.g. snakes, water) or situations (small spaces, being up high) ; the immediacy of the fear can be so intense it can induce a panic attack.
Agoraphobia (fear of not being able to escape or inability to get help) leads to high levels of distress and avoidance of the situations.



Perfectionism:

Is there such a thing as "perfect"? Sometimes we feel that despite doing everything we can, to the best of our ability, things just aren't good enough. CBT can help you explore your ideas of what "good enough" is and look carefully at what you are telling yourself that is keeping you stuck, and loosen the grip of perfectionism.

How CBT can help

The feelings associated with anxiety are unpleasant, such as racing heart, dread, panic, etc .... there's no wonder we try to avoid feeling it. Often people will avoid anxiety-inducing situations or will seek reassurance from others to make themselves feel better, e.g. friends assuring them they will be alright, GP carrying out tests, work colleagues telling you you're doing a great job, etc.

This usually relieves the anxiety, but only for a short while. Before we know it, we're feeling anxious again and find ourselves back in the cycle. What's happening is each time we try to push the anxious feelings away in this way, our brain gets the message that there IS actually a threat or danger out there, leading to further anxiety.

In CBT we use something called the ABC model, which allows us to clearly identify the areas you are struggling with, your current thought patterns and your responses to this. From here we can help you to explore and identify more helpful ways of thinking about and looking at situations as well as planning behavioural adjustments which can help you move forwards towards better mental health and a more fulfilling life. 

CBT can help you put things into perspective and identify how your thoughts about the future are causing you emotional distress in the present.

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