Online Anxiety therapists in Benwell, England ENG, United Kingdom UK

In my work I build a strong therapeutic alliance with the young person and their parents to understand and explore through the explore the unconscious psychological meanings and internal conflicts that underlie a young persons anxiety symptoms.  

Anxiety, Fear & Emotional Overwhelm - Complimentary Consultation Do you often feel weighed down by anxiety or persistent mental tension? For many people with ADHD and other forms of neurodivergence, anxiety develops as the mind tries to manage overwhelm, uncertainty and constant mental activity. Together we explore the connection between attention, emotions and the nervous system, and develop practical ways to regulate anxiety, regain emotional balance and respond to challenges with greater clarity and confidence. Using a neuroscience-informed and strengths-based approach, I help clients build healthier emotional patterns so anxiety no longer drives their decisions or limits their life. Book a complimentary consultation to explore whether this approach is right for you.  

We will focus on beliefs and behaviors that are sabotaging your happiness  

In the midst of life's challenges, managing anxiety or confronting fears can feel like an uphill battle. As a dedicated psychologist, I specialize in providing a safe and compassionate space for individuals seeking support in overcoming anxiety and fears (including OCD). Together, we'll explore the roots of your concerns, develop practical coping strategies, and embark on a journey toward resilience and empowerment.  

Anxiety and fear can be debilitating and cause you to miss out on so much in life. You may feel crippled by the overwhelming feelings and feel there is no way our. A healthy level of anxiety is part of everyday life but when it becomes too big, or you cannot see your way out, you can end up feeling helpless and as though nothing will get you through the fear. By bringing this to counselling, you can begin to explore where it started, bring in a bit of realistic thinking, and can learn to soothe these feelings and take the power back to live your life as you want it.  

Anxiety is a strong feeling of worry or fear that a person experiences when faced with an impending danger. Using person-centered counseling helps the client to discover a coping mechanism that works for them.  

Talking about anxiety in therapy may initially feel overwhelming, but it is vital for your mental health journey. Identifying your specific concerns, including symptoms and triggers, is essential for effective management of anxiety. By openly discussing these elements with me, we can work together to develop strategies that will support you throughout the therapeutic process.  

After several decades of working on myself and experimenting with methods, I find that it is true that Fear is safe! It may sound strange but you can let fear be your guidance. This implies meeting the inner shadows in openness. I've experienced that it works and it works for many of my clients. Analysis and other methods can support with softening overwhelm at the beginning, yet the real teacher is in opening to the experience of fear in the moment. It is safe! To experience this, I hold space for you, and your hand when possible.  

I work in a unique way to help people experiencing anxiety and I have helped many people learn the tools and deep exploration to reduce and overcome symptoms.  

Anxiety in clients that I see is almost always based on traumatic experience which needs to be understood for successful treatment.  

Living with anxiety or persistent fears can feel exhausting and overwhelming, like your mind is constantly in “alert mode.” I help individuals understand what’s happening beneath the surface, regulate their nervous system, and build tools to manage worry, overthinking, panic, and fear-based patterns. Through gentle, trauma-informed and integrative therapy, we work together to restore calm, confidence, and emotional balance, one step at a time.  

Counselling provides a space for you to explore your experiences and feelings in a respectful and confidential space. The focus of the conversation is to understand your experience and provide support to explore the ways in which you can introduce change into your life.  

From an TIST/EFIT/IPNB/IFS Parts Perspective, clients get to know parts with anxieties and fears and learn how to listen and be with the anxiety, even finding hidden wisdom in these parts. We also offer the Polyvagal Theory based Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) for clients with more intensive anxiety and fears, particularly social and intimacy fears. Sometimes a functional approach may support clients experiencing anxiety due to physiological stress or epigenetic adaptive stress (e.g. if a basic metabolism or hormonal cycle is not able to complete with ease or there is an injury or chronic health condition that is still being tended to in the body, the brain will likely receive signals of distress that could be read as baseline anxiety, but may be a bodily signal that some part of a basic physiological cycle is not able to function smoothly and may benefit from ascertaining where the challenge is and working with supplemental or integrative support/education/care that is within scope or collaborative scope); please feel free to ask if you have any questions about this.  

For people who have never suffered from anxiety it is almost impossible to describe how debilitating the symptoms can be. It can seem as if there is no escape from the pain and discomfort; it feels like life will be like this forever and that the symptoms can’t be helped. Conventional approaches to anxiety seek to medicate. Many physicians may tell you that your anxiety is something you just have to live with.  Counseling or mainstream psychological approaches may have you manipulate or change your thought patterns, while alternative practices may seek to have you relax or practice mindfulness.  While there is value in some of these approaches, most fail to reach that deeper understanding of the underlying cause of anxiety and panic. Symptoms of anxiety and panic are not the same as emotions of fear – these include worry, nervous, apprehension, concern, etc. In everyday life we tend to talk about anxiety symptoms and conditions as being the same as emotions of fear, nervousness and worry. This is confusing for the simple reason that anxiety symptoms are not merely amplified fear, even though this can be what they feel like in many instances. Anxiety is something of an umbrella term that covers quite a wide range of symptoms and experiences. In some instances this symptoms and conditions might relate to emotions of fear but in other instances they do not. This is why it is entirely possible to rid ourselves of anxiety symptoms whereas we cannot, and should not try to rid ourselves of healthy emotions, because they play a vital feedback role in our day to day experience of life. These are the anxiety conditions: - anxious apprehension (worry, rumination) - generalised anxiety disorder (free floating anxiety) - Intense anxiety and panic attacks - obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) - phobias of all kinds including agoraphobia and social phobia - eating disorders - derealisation - depersonalisation There is an enormous amount of scientific evidence to show that various regions of the brain are either over active or dysfunctional when anxiety symptoms are present. One of the most salient issues pertaining to this kind of scientific research is that different types of anxiety symptoms correspond with different areas of brain dysfunction.The forebrain appears to be the area most affected in most anxiety disorders. This is the largest portion of the brain and includes the cerebral hemispheres, the limbic system, the thalamus and hypothalamus, amygdala and the corpus callosum. Each of the brain hemispheres is divided into four lobes: frontal, parietal, occipital and temporal. Collectively, the forebrain functions to control cognitive, sensory and motor function, regulate temperature, reproductive functions, eating, sleeping and the display of emotions. When it becomes dysfunctional it is evident that the range of symptoms can be enormous.Recent studies using electroencephalographic (EEG) methods have found that patients diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder had heightened activity in the left brain regions, whereas patients with panic disorder, panic symptoms or those subjected to high stress situations exhibited enhanced activity in the right hemisphere. The important lesson from this type of research is that anxiety conditions are not all the same and therefore each case needs to be approached and treated depending on the needs of the individual and the types of symptoms present.  However, we must also be mindful that over activity or dysfunction in brain regions is not the cause of anxiety – rather this activity is caused and supported by the 4 core element model outlined below.  It is these 4 Anchors that trigger brain dysfunction, and it is only by fully addressing these that a complete cessation of symptoms is achieved. The first step is to understand the nature, structure and cause of anxiety, and then we can begin to address the cause of the symptoms. Within our culture we use the words ‘anxious’ and ‘anxiety’ to mean both the emotion of fear and a varied and debilitating set of symptoms. This can be extremely confusing since fear, in the form of worry, nervous, scared, or dread, is often very different from the symptoms of anxiety or a panic disorder. I would argue that even though many anxiety symptoms can feel like fear, it’s also the case that many anxiety and panic symptoms do not feel like fear (see Anxiety Symptoms Checklist below). This means that is possible to experience anxiety symptoms without being afraid of anything. Even though anxiety can be related to the emotion of fear at a deep unconscious level, there are many instances when symptoms of anxiety are present and there is no evidence of the emotion of fear. Most sufferers of anxiety will experience fear about the symptoms; though fear of symptoms is not the cause of symptoms.  Fear can exacerbate symptoms and make sufferers of anxietyfeel significantly worse; however it is rarely, if ever, the underlying cause. So what causes anxiety symptoms? The first step is to embrace the notion that symptoms are feedback from body and brain.  Symptoms are not some nasty evil invader trying to make us suffer, they have reason for existing and that reason is to let us know that something is not right, something is blocked and out of balance. There are Four Core Elements that lock anxiety symptoms in place. When we address these four core elements, we not only banish anxiety symptoms, we open up to the possibility of experiencing ourselves in a whole new way. The 4 core energy-flow model comprises: - FEAR & AVOIDANCE OF SYMPTOMS. Anxiety is deeply uncomfortable so it can be a natural reaction to avoid situations and events that seem to cause anxiety. Avoidance can lead to more symptoms, so carefully navigating through this is the first step. - REWIRING THE EMOTIONAL SYSTEM. Our emotion has a massive impact on body and brain. Blockages and imbalances within the emotional system are significant causes and contributors to anxiety conditions as well as a huge range of other chronic health challenges. Yet, our understanding of the nature of emotion and how to effectively process and regulate it remain poor. This element focuses in revealing the true nature of emotion and critically how to connect with it and facilitate a flow. - WEARING A MASK: As we move through life and seek to get along, fit in, be accepted and do well, we unconsciously block our true nature and end up being more of who we are not than who we are. Anxiety symptoms often tell us when we are covering up who we are, or are disconnected from our authentic core. Reconnecting with our core and removing the shackles of who we used to be takes us a step closer to being anxiety free. - CONTROL & CREATION: Whether we like it or not, we play a significant role in the creation of our experience of life and reality. However, when shackled with anxiety we feel out of control, restricted as if we have lost our freedom. Learning how to create inner freedom and design our lives is the final piece of the puzzle. The four core element model uncovers a different perspective on the cause of anxiety conditions and embraces a full understanding of the nature of the human condition. It puts you back in the driver’s seat to return to your natural healthy self. Your natural state is to be connected and happy; all that’s needed is a little guidance to help you find the way back to your default setting.  

Anxiety takes many forms. It can present as OCD, agoraphobia or more commonly as free-floating anxiety. You could view it as your body's way of warning you that there is something amiss. The role in therapy is to discover what it is your body is trying to tell you. Then you can begin to confronted it and become stronger. I would like to meet with you to see what can be done to help you. This will enable us to get to know each other and see if we can work together. It’s important for you to work with someone you trust and feel safe with.  

Bognor Regis, Bristol, London, West Sussex I am an integrative counsellor so covered this in my studies alongside years of experience and continued professional development  

Anxiety is extreme worry or apprehension which is a normal reaction to an extremely stressful situation. However if anxiety is characterised by physical changes such as increased blood pressure or rapid heart beat or recurring intrusive fearful thoughts or concerns it can lead to serious mental health issues.  

Anxiety and fear can relate to external events- and they are also wired into our nervous systems. Being 'activated' can be a very helpful response- when it allows us to protect ourselves. But this can also be our habitual or only response. This can be exhausting. I take an approach that looks not only at the thoughts and feelings but helps you to create different bodily/ nervous system responses to fear/ stress or concern. We can work online or in person, informed by somatic experiencing and Polyvagal Theory. If helpful, we can also explore the links between anxiety and sleep difficulties.  

Anxiety is often a signal of a system that has learned to stay alert in order to feel safe. My work focuses on understanding these adaptive responses through a trauma-informed lens and a focus on trauma endurance. Together, we explore the patterns beneath the anxiety, creating space for greater regulation, safety, and sustainable change.  

People struggle with anixety and fear due to unconscious processes in the brain. In looking at the underlying issues people are struggling with can we affect change to peoples overall sense of wellbeing and alleviate any anxiety.