Anxiety Counselling in Newton Abbot Therapy to help you with the effects of anxiety
Where feeling anxious makes the world feel small, therapy can help you feel safe enough to open back up again.
Are you living with anxiety? You might feel like you’re carrying around an extra weight everywhere you go. Like your stomach is full of nerves. Like your mind never quite switches off. Like you have to face the whole world with fists permanently curled, waiting for something to go wrong.
If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. And you don’t have to keep shouldering it alone, either.
I offer anxiety counselling in Newton Abbot and online, where you can unwind in a relaxed, confidential setting and start making sense of what’s going on. Together, we’ll explore how anxiety affects you, and how you can start responding to anxious feelings with gentleness instead of a battle
The Burden of Anxiety
‘Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind.
If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.’
Arthur Somers Roche
Sometimes anxiety is just anxiety. But it can also show up in other ways — as panic attacks and excessive worries; long spells of sadness; fear about your health or certain situations; or insomnia that keeps you watching the clock long after you’d liked to have fallen asleep. It can creep into your relationships or your physical health, too.
These experiences are not weakness, and they’re not something you should just learn to ‘deal with’. They’re signs that your mind and body are strained — and that support could help.
What is Anxiety?
Anxiety is your body’s natural response to perceived danger or threat. When we sense threat, our nervous system coordinates a physical response – we become alert and focused, our muscles tighten, and our heart starts pumping faster. In short bursts, anxiety is necessary and useful. But when it comes out of proportion to the situation (or when there’s actually no clear trigger at all), anxiety can take over.
Generalised anxiety, panic disorder, social anxiety, OCD, and PTSD are all types of anxiety — but like depression, no two people’s relationship with anxiety will look exactly the same.
You might experience sudden anxiety that comes out of nowhere; you might experience persistent worries about specific things, other people’s opinions of you, or worst-case scenarios.
Or you might feel low energy and dread as your anxiety levels rise, alongside physical symptoms like headaches, difficulty breathing or feeling sick.
Whatever it looks like, anxiety isn’t fun. But it is treatable, and it doesn’t have to control how you feel day to day.
How Common is Anxiety?
According to mental health charity Mind, anxiety is one of the most common experiences in the UK. ‘Millions of adults in the UK will experience anxiety at some point in their lives’. Many people who struggle with anxiety become very good at masking it, appearing as confident and calm to the outside world.
What Are The Symptoms of Anxiety?
Anxiety affects everyone differently. Some common symptoms include:
Mind & Emotions
• Worrying too much about things, or struggling to switch your mind off at night
• Feeling tense, irritable or ‘on edge’
• Anticipating bad things happening
• Suffering with low concentration
• Needing or wanting things to be a certain way
• Having negative thoughts about yourself
• Feeling overwhelmed by decisions
Bodily Symptoms
• Pounding heart/racing heartbeat (heart palpitations)
• Feeling short of breath, or tightness in the chest
• Tense shoulders, neck/jaw or stomach
• Dizziness, feeling sick, or shaking
• Sleep problems (trouble getting to sleep, waking through the night)
• Fatigue or low energy levels
• Jumpy
What Causes Anxiety?
Anxiety is almost never caused by one single thing. For most people, anxiety starts as a response to stress or difficult life events and builds over time.
There are lots of factors that can cause or contribute to anxiety, including:
• Life stresses and events. Big life changes, relationship issues, grief, money troubles, and demanding jobs can all cause anxiety (or make existing anxiety worse).
• Your experiences. Traumatic events and difficult childhood experiences can cause you to perceive the world (and your place in it) as more dangerous than it is.
• Your thought processes. Mental habits like ‘catastrophising’ (always assuming the worst will happen), all-or-nothing thinking, or a self-critical inner voice can reinforce anxious thoughts and feelings.
• Neurodiversity. Neurodivergent people living with ADHD, autism, or other conditions are much more likely to live with anxiety. Anxiety is now recognised as a common symptom of autism.
• Medication or physical illness. Anxiety can sometimes be triggered by certain medications or medical issues.
• Genetics. Like with many mental and physical health issues, anxiety can run in families. Some people’s fight-or-flight instincts are more easily triggered than others.
• Uncertainty. Ongoing stress or uncertainty about things like your health, money, a relationship, or the future can cause you to become more anxious over time.
Help with anxiety at Candlewood Counselling
How Can Counselling Help With Anxiety?
In counselling, you can slow down, be listened to and start to make sense of what’s been going on. There’s no need to have answers or to ‘snap out of it’.
The counselling relationship – a regular, safe space to explore without judgement – is itself healing.
My approach is integrative: drawing on different evidence-based schools of therapy depending on what will most help you. Some of the approaches I use which can be particularly helpful for anxiety include:
• working at your pace in a space that is non-directive and deeply empathic.
• helping you to notice and question anxious thought patterns, and develop alternative responses.
• helping you to change your relationship to anxious thoughts and feelings, rather than trying to battle with them.
• developing a kinder relationship with yourself, particularly useful if you find yourself feeling self-critical or ashamed.
• learning how anxiety shows up in the body and how to help your nervous system feel safe.
Together we may work on:
• Understanding your anxiety and breaking the cycle of anxious thoughts and behaviours.
• Practical skills for managing anxiety, including how to cope with anxious thoughts and physical anxiety symptoms.
• Facing fears and working with avoidance – gradually and at a pace you can handle.
• Self-compassion: stopping the inner critic and developing a kinder relationship with yourself.
• Building confidence in your ability to cope with uncertainty and trust yourself again.
• Connecting with stillness; learning to feel calmer and more grounded in your everyday life.
The aim isn’t to become completely anxiety-free. Anxiety is a normal part of life. But through counselling, we can reduce its impact on your life, so that anxiety has less power to control how you feel and behave.
Taking The Next Step..
Deciding to reach out for help is a huge step. And you don’t have to have all the answers.
If you’ve got mostly anxiety, or anxiety coupled with depression, know that I’m here to help. If anxiety is something you’d like help with, that’s enough.
You don’t need a formal diagnosis – just to know that anxiety is something you want to work on.
Click below to request a free 15-minute chat to see if we’re a good fit – with no commitment required.