Anxiety Counselling
You already know there's nothing to worry about. You've told yourself that a hundred times, and it hasn't made the slightest difference.
Maybe it's the 3am wake-up, where your brain hands you a list of everything that could go wrong. Maybe it's the tightness that arrives in your chest before you've even got out of the car. Maybe it's that you've become very good at looking completely fine while running worst-case scenarios underneath.
Why knowing it's irrational doesn't stop it
This is the part people find most maddening, and it's the part that makes them think something is wrong with them.
The part of your brain generating anxiety isn't the part you reason with. It's older and faster, and it's doing a job… watching for threat and getting you ready for it. Once it has learned to treat ordinary things as dangerous, logic doesn't reach it. You can know you're safe and still feel like you're not.
So "just don't worry about it" was never going to work. It's not a failure of willpower, and you can't think your way out of it.
How it narrows your life
Anxiety rarely announces itself. It works by shrinking things.
You stop putting your hand up. You decline the invitation. You take the route you know, order the thing you always order, avoid the call you could make. Each decision is small and sensible on its own, and across a few years they add up to a life much smaller than the one you meant to have.
For a lot of people, that's what finally brings them in… noticing what it's cost.
It looks different on different people
Constant background worry that moves from one thing to the next. Solve one and it lands on another by the afternoon.
Panic attacks. The racing heart, the breathlessness, the absolute certainty that something is badly wrong. Frightening, and among the fastest things to respond to treatment.
Social anxiety. The feeling of being watched and assessed, and the replaying of conversations for hours afterwards.
Health anxiety. The checking, the googling, the reassurance that lasts about a day.
The kind nobody can see. You're capable, you're on top of things, and you're exhausted from the effort of holding it all in place.
What we'd do
We start with your body, because anxiety is physical before it's anything else. Getting some control there gives you the room to do everything else.
Then we look at what's driving it. What your system has learned to treat as dangerous, and where it learned it.
Where it's rooted in something older, I use EMDR. It works at the level anxiety actually lives on, which is why it helps people who understand their own patterns completely and still can't shift them.
What changes
Sleeping through the night. Walking into a room without fear. Making a decision without running it past every possible outcome first. Saying yes to something you'd have turned down a year ago. These are just some examples of how you will improve your life by getting on top of your anxiety.
Starting
The first session is a working session. We'll start on what's happening now, and I want you leaving that first hour with something you can use.
I see clients in person in Joondalup and by video anywhere in Australia. With a mental health treatment plan from your GP, Medicare rebates part of each session.
Call me on 0410 461 588. If it feels easier to text first, that's fine too.