How is counselling going to help my anxiety anyway?!

All to often anxiety can creep into your day and make your life unbearable and the feeling of impending doom can bring you to have both physical and emotional symptoms. 

Clammy hands, shaking, sweating, heavy breathing, hypervigilance and the need to choose between fight, flight, freeze or fawn becomes increasingly intense. Thoughts of 'what if...' stick in your mind and all you can think about is how to get out of this feeling you are in right now. 

Anxiety, simply put is a protective mechanism your body uses to alert you to a potential threat. While anxiety is not harmful to you, it can be distressing and panic provoking when you don't know what is happening to you or how to stop it.  So, what can a person-centred therapist do to help with anxiety? 

A person-centred counsellor can listen and help you to notice your triggers, reflect back on the first time you ever experienced anxiety and work with you to figure out why it's intense for you. Whether it be the overwhelming feeling being in the supermarket, being bullied at work/school/college, or that tight deadline that your boss has been pecking at your head about. It's perfectly normal to feel anxiety and even have a panic attack. 

By learning about how anxiety crops up for you and what triggers it you will then start to notice different strategies you can put in place to deal with them. You may find that mindfulness/ meditating works for you or taking a walk away from the office to regulate yourself or even listen to some really feel good music in your break could help to ease the anxious feelings and make them more manageable to cope with.  

By talking it through with your counsellor it provides a safe space that is your little pocket to be present in those feelings and even vent about what makes you anxious. Your person-centred therapist is there to help you navigate your anxiety and walk along side you while you develop a coping plan to breath easy and be your fabulous self!!