Anxiety

While stress can be a normal response to demanding situations, anxiety is when those worried feelings don’t go away when the event has ended or come up when there is no stressful event. Sometimes it’s the result of negative thinking or a habit we have got into during stressful times but either way it can have a big impact upon your life and make daily activities hard to manage.

Symptoms can be physical (panic attacks, racing heart, feeling tense or edgy); psychological (fear, worry, catastrophizing or obsessive thinking) or behavioural: (avoidance of situations or people, obsessive habits).

The good news is that when you ask for help from the right people like a trained psychologist, counselling can often help you both understand the cause and start to reduce the symptoms. Counselling has been found to be a very effective way to treat anxiety with most common method being cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT). This says that a person's thinking (cognition) and acting (behaviour) affects the way they feel (emotions) so in counselling, the psychologist looks at the patterns of thinking and acting that are causing anxiety.

One example is “catastrophizing” (fearing the worst, believing something is worse than it actually is, anticipating things will go wrong) is often connected with anxiety. In counselling, the person works to change these patterns to a way of thinking that is more realistic and on problem-solving.

Anxiety is also often made worse when a person avoids things they are afraid of. Learning how to face situations that cause anxiety can make a big difference. With help a person can make changes to change these old patterns and develop new habits that reduce anxiety and improve quality of life.

At Perth Psychologists, we treat anxiety through treatment of choice methods such as Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Hypnosis or Mindfulness practices. By taking the step of speaking to someone about your concerns you can begin the path back to health and well-being.

To make an appointment or inquiry, please call 1300 70 50 55 or fill in your details for us to contact you.

 

Here is a useful audio track on how to do an Observation of the Breath Meditation