Problematic Anxiety - What Works?

Long periods of frequent or severe anxiety can be both exhausting and debilitating. Excessive fear and worry uses up our precious - and finite - emotional resources, leaving us with less time and energy for other areas of our lives and for the people we love and care about. What can be done?

Lessons From Therapy

I have been working in Brighton as a psychotherapist with people suffering from problematic anxiety since 2011. Although every person's experience of tackling overwhelming fear has been unique, patterns of behaviour that can bump us out of an excessively anxious state (or at least knock the corners off it most of the time) have repeatedly shown up in my consulting room.

Small Steps

Problematic anxiety can often make us feel very stuck. We might rationally know that the negative, intrusive thoughts about 'what might happen' swirling around our head are, for example, highly unlikely or outside our control - but for some inexplicable reason our body propels us into a full-on fight, flight or freeze threat response.

Experimenting with small, consistent changes to our behaviour and to what we tell ourselves can make a difference. Simply waiting for the anxiety to pass comes at a high cost and making giant, risky leaps can lead to disaster; but committing to small, manageable steps that slowly extend our comfort zone do seem to work.

What Works?

Over the years, I have noted a number of actions taken by some of my clients (and also by myself) that have made a significant difference to the way they were able to better regulate their emotions and experience lower levels of anxiety.

These actions include:

• being open to experiment with different ways of managing fear

• setting new boundaries with friends and family. Usually, this involves saying 'no' more often!

• tolerating other people's - real or anticipated - response to our new boundaries, e.g. their irritation or disappointment

• tolerating our own response to actual or anticipated healthy conflict

• taking more care of ourselves, e.g. making time for rest or hobbies

• changing what we say to ourselves about what we can and cannot achieve

• responding to the 'now' without a whole lot of noise from our past getting in our way

• accepting the support that trusted others can give

• unless immediate action is necessary, stepping back a little from whatever tricky situation we find ourselves in

• celebrating successes; doing something different counts, even if it doesn't have the desired effect

• helping others

• breathing!

• keeping going...

  
  

How might Psychotherapy Help?

Therapy can provide a safe and supportive space in which to examine problematic or irrational fears. The therapist cannot make such fears go away (I'm all out of magic wands!) but, if you are open to kindly challenge and willing to take small risks, it is possible to find ways of containing anxiety such that you feel more resilient in the face of change and have more space in your life for doing whatever it is that brings you a sense of stability and joy.

Copyright: Caroline Clarke, UKCP-reg Psychotherapist. Counselling or therapy for anxiety in Brighton & Hove and online. Health, social and generalised anxiety.

For more information or to arrange an initial consultation, please send me a message via my Contact page.

Image courtesy of Bruno Nascimento on Unsplash