Struggling with Anxiety?

We all experience a certain amount of anxiety, but sometimes anxiety becomes so overwhelming that it affects our ability to function. Anxiety can lead to constant worrying, always the worst, and even distressing physical symptoms and panic attacks.

Some of the ways anxiety can affect you include:

• Anxiety can involve feeling paniced and having full-blown panic attacks.
 
• Anxiety generates cycles of worrying about endless "what if?" that are difficult to break.
 
• Anxiety leaves your mind racing, making it difficult to think straight, and affecting your ability to concentrate or focus even on simple things.
 
• Anxiety leads to the urge to avoid anything you fear could lead to even more anxiety.
 
• Anxiety creates many physical symptoms including tension and tightness in your chest and throughout your body, increased heart rate, upset stomach and digestive issues, breathing difficulties, blushing, sweating, weakness in the legs, etc.
 
• These physical symptoms can create additional anxiety concerning your health.
 
• Periods of anxiety often lead to depression due to the negative impact anxiety has on your quality of life.

If anxiety is making it difficult for you to relax and enjoy yourself, causing you to avoid doing things out of a sense of fear or dread, and interfering with the way you live your life, counselling and therapy can help.

How Counselling and Therapy Can Help

I'm a Guelph counsellor and therapist who specializes in helping my clients overcome anxiety. When you come for counselling or therapy for anxiety, there are a number of ways I'll help you relieve your anxiety and learn to cope better with the anxiety you are experiencing.

Some of the things we'll do in counselling or therapy are:

• Help you gain insight and understanding into your anxiety by exploring the factors that are contributing to your anxiety, what triggers your anxiety, and how anxiety is affecting you.
 
• Examine the role that your patterns of behaviour, thinking and self-talk may be having in maintaining your anxiety, and how making changes in these patterns can help reduce your anxiety.
 
• Look at relaxation and mindfulness techniques that can reduce the amount of anxiety you experience and help you relieve anxiety when it is present.
 
• Learn effective strategies to help you manage feelings of panic and to prevent full-blown panic attacks from occurring.
 
• Explore ways you can experience worried and anxious thoughts and feelings that will prevent them from becoming overwhelming, and allow you to function and do the things you want even when you are feeling anxious.
  

Our work together will help you reduce your anxiety and develop effective ways to cope with and relieve anxiety when it is present, so that anxiety doesn't get in the way of your ability to enjoy your life and prevent you from doing the things that are important to you.