Anxiety
Anxiety can feel exhausting. If the symptoms below feel familiar, I understand how draining anxiety can be and how it can interfere in everyday life. I can support you to reduce and manage the symptoms you experience to be able to live your life more fully. Working together we can identify key patterns that perpetuate the anxiety cycle, which can inform changes and adjustments that will help improve your quality of life.
Emotional symptoms
- Feeling nervous, worried, or on edge
- A sense of dread or impending danger
- Irritability
- Feeling overwhelmed
- Difficulty relaxing
- Restlessness
Thought-related symptoms
- Excessive worrying
- Racing thoughts
- Difficulty concentrating
- Overthinking situations
- Expecting the worst-case scenario
- Feeling mentally "foggy"
Physical symptoms
- Increased heart rate or palpitations
- Chest tightness or discomfort
- Shortness of breath
- Sweating
- Trembling or shaking
- Dizziness or light-headedness
- Nausea or stomach upset
- Muscle tension and aches
- Headaches
- Fatigue
- Tingling sensations in hands or feet
- Dry mouth
Sleep-related symptoms
- Difficulty falling asleep
- Waking frequently during the night
- Restless sleep
- Waking feeling unrefreshed
Behavioural symptoms
- Avoiding situations that trigger anxiety
- Seeking constant reassurance
- Difficulty making decisions
- Withdrawing from social situations
- Procrastination due to worry
- Increased use of coping behaviours such as checking, planning, or over-preparing
Symptoms of a panic attack
Some people with anxiety also experience panic attacks, which can include:
- Sudden intense fear
- Rapid heartbeat
- Sweating
- Shaking
- Feeling unable to breathe
- Chest pain
- Dizziness
- Feeling detached from reality
- Fear of losing control or dying
How psychotherapy can help?
Anxiety is often more than simply feeling worried, living with anxiety can feel isolating. It can be linked to past experiences, current life pressures, relationship difficulties, trauma, low self-esteem, perfectionism, loss or significant life changes. Understanding these underlying factors can be an important step towards lasting change.
Many people find themselves keeping their worries hidden from friends, family or colleagues. Psychotherapy provides a safe, confidential and non-judgemental space to explore your experiences and gain a deeper understanding of the thoughts, feelings and patterns that may be contributing to your anxiety.
Therapy is not about eliminating all anxiety from your life, anxiety is a normal human emotion that serves an important purpose. However, it can be very useful to explore unhelpful or limiting patterns that may be maintaining anxiety:
- Avoiding situations that feel challenging
- Seeking reassurance from others
- Overthinking decisions
- Constantly preparing for worst-case scenarios
- Perfectionism
- Excessive self-criticism
Psychotherapy can help you recognise these patterns and develop healthier, more effective ways of responding to anxiety.
Sometimes people know exactly what is causing their anxiety, at other times, feeling anxious can seem confusing or difficult to understand. When anxiety becomes overwhelming or persistent, it can begin to limit daily life.
Alongside exploring underlying issues, psychotherapy can support you to develop practical tools for managing anxiety, including:
- Managing worry and overthinking
- Understanding triggers
- Emotional regulation skills
- Healthy boundaries
- Stress management techniques
- Self-care practices
- Building confidence and assertiveness
I follow a client-paced, trauma-informed integrative approach that explores emotional responses, triggers, negative thought cycles, assumptions, self-care and healthy boundaries. Psychotherapy can help you build emotional resilience to manage difficult emotions and navigate life's challenges with increased self-awareness and greater confidence in your ability to manage difficult thoughts, feelings and situations.
How Yoga therapy can help?
Yoga therapy offers a holistic approach to managing anxiety by working with both the mind and body. Unlike a general yoga class, yoga therapy is tailored to your individual needs, symptoms, health history and goals. Sessions are designed to support your nervous system and help you develop practical tools for managing anxiety in everyday life.
Yoga therapy sessions are tailored to your needs and goals and may incorporate movement, breathing practices, relaxation techniques, mindfulness and psychoeducation. Sessions are suitable for people of all ages and abilities and can be adapted for those who are new to yoga or who have health conditions affecting movement.
When practiced regularly, the individual combination of grounding, breath practices, yoga postures and relaxation balance and regulate the heightened fight/flight response of the nervous system to be more able to access the parasympathetic nervous system or rest and digest.
If you are struggling with anxiety, support is available and lasting change is possible
Anxiety can feel overwhelming but you don't need to manage it alone, if anxiety is affecting your sleep, relationships, work or daily life, therapy can help you make sense of what is happening and begin to feel more in control again. I have availability for psychotherapy and therapeutic yoga appointments to specifically address anxiety in Glasgow and Shotts, you can reach out by the contact page or call me directly.
