Anxiety

There are different types of anxiety disorders and people with an anxiety disorder may have a number of physical, social and psychological symptoms.

  • Physical symptoms can include shakiness, muscle aches, sweating, cold and clammy hands, dizziness, fatigue, racing heart and dry mouth.

  • Emotionally, they may feel irritable and apprehensive, fearing that bad things are about to happen to them, or that they are going to die. The feelings of terror and dread may appear without notice and tend to drive the individual into acting in ways that are out of the ordinary for them under normal circumstances.

  • Socially, an individual may feel terrified of being around others, or of being in a situation where they have to have a conversation.

  • Intrusive thoughts are also a feature of anxiety these may be related to memories from the past, worries about the future (these usually have a link to something in the past), or both.

Treatment for anxiety can involve a number of therapeutic approaches. These can include Mindfulness in order to learn to accept the thoughts associated with the anxious feelings and to gradually let them go. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) can help a person to identify the thoughts that lead to anxiety and replace these thoughts with more useful, positive and realistic thoughts. Social skills can provide tools and confidence to have a positive conversation or to be assertive.  Hypnosis and guided relaxation can allow an individual to focus on elements of relaxation and internal and external resources to help manage the anxiety.

EMDR therapy can result in the disappearance of disturbance associated memories that were associated with the initial development of the anxiety problems.  Sometimes these events have been replaying in a person’s head over and over for many years. These may be very early events in someone’s life or later events related to adulthood.  Once the previous disturbance has cleared, the focus is on current triggers and then finally, anticipated events targeted so that the person can do what they want to do without previous levels of anxiety.