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

I help clients understand the deeper roots of their anxiety and fears, developing a compassionate awareness of the emotions and beliefs that sustain them. Through a blend of evidence-based and experiential approaches, we work to regulate the nervous system, expand tolerance for discomfort, and foster a sense of calm and confidence in daily life.  

I am able to help immediately with anxiety and fears - I have a separate seminar that deals with these issues too...  

Helping clients to deal with Anxiety and fears, by talking to them asking them to talk about the problems that they are working about. Using calming breathing exercises, and work to identify meaning and purpose in their life. And shift their focus to positive emotions in their daily life.  

Anxiety can feel completely overwhelming, like there's no way out. As your therapist I am here to be with you in your anxiety reminding you that you are not alone. We can explore how anxiety feels for you, when it is at its worst, and help you to gain more of a sense of control over this. You are not a problem to be fixed, my aim as your therapist is to try to provide the right conditions to allow you to explore whatever you want to bring to therapy to support your growth. This isn't a therapeutic approach wherein I will set a treatment plan or tell you what to do. We will work together as a partnership rather than me taking away your autonomy. I absolutely love the work I do, it is the biggest privilege being let into people’s personal worlds and seeing the immense growth of my clients. I hope to hear from you soon!  

Anxiety can show up in many different ways, from persistent worry and overthinking to panic, self-doubt, difficulty relaxing, or a constant sense of being on edge. While anxiety can feel overwhelming, it often develops for understandable reasons and may be connected to past experiences, relationships, responsibilities, or ways of coping that have become stretched beyond their limits. Together, we can explore what may be contributing to your anxiety, develop a deeper understanding of your emotional experience, and build practical ways of responding that support greater confidence, calm, and self-trust.  

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.  

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 is essentially rooted in a heightened state of vigilance and tension. We have 'forgotten' how to let go. Here's a simple example. When we cross a busy road or drive a car we need to be extra vigilant and aware of our surroundings. We don't need that same level of attention when sitting comfortably at home, yet somehow it is still there. By bringing this habitual tension into conscious awareness and exploring its origins, we can help your nervous system rediscover how to unwind and embrace life fully.  

FEAR! The strongest of ALL emotions. Paradoxically it's been fundamental to our evolutionary success: particularly fleeing predators and other sources of harm. It's kept us alive for the 200,000 years of our existence as humans. We're not all that strong, we don't have claws and fangs --but we can run long distances! And it matters not one bit that our fear of that growl in the undergrowth may be unfounded. We can get that wrong 1000 times and if we flee we survive as a consequence. Just as your smoke alarm has one volume (LOUD!) it's natural to be fearful of what we perceive may harm us. We often overestimate the size and proximity of threats and conversely underestimate our ability to cope. Fear is powerful BUT it can often interfere with logic and reason. That's why we need to respect fear and reassess our relationship to it. And courage is not the absence of fear; mindset is everything and mindset can be developed to ensure we have optimal strategies for the stresses and adversities that regularly afflict us.  

Anxiety can make the world feel like an overwhelming place, leaving you 'stuck' in a cycle of constant worry. Together, we will work to understand your specific triggers and develop practical, grounding tools to help you regain a sense of calm and safety in your daily life. I can incorporate EFT tapping to help you manage physical triggers in real-time.  

Strategies to mitigate anxiety and understand this state of being.  

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.  

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.  

I support individuals experiencing anxiety and fear, helping them understand and manage their responses in daily life. Using evidence-based approaches, I work collaboratively with clients to reduce distress, build coping strategies, and increase confidence, resilience, and a greater sense of calm.  

Anxiety is a feeling of worry or fear that is a normal response to a range of different situations. However, when we begin to feel overwhelmed or triggered from our past or current life experiences it engages our ‘flight or fight’ response. This happens when our body feels as if it’s in danger, This can be real or interpreted. When you feel anxious or fearful every day your mental and physical health can be affected: You can feel varying levels of fear and anxiety which can cause sleepless nights, worry, sweating, nausia, hightened emotions and thoughts, feelings of wanting to stay under the duvet or sometimes thoughts of self harming and suicide. Counselling can help you explore the cause of these feelings, understand them and work though them helping you manage day to day stresses in a healthier way and help you free yourself of possible responses to historic experiences.  

Fear while a fundamental human healthy response, often in our culture and times become instead something that becomes a stopper instead of a warning system in our lives. Learning to manage and use your central nervous system in ways that serve you, to respond instead of react, allow you to reduce and manage fears and allows them to go back to being a warning system instead of driving your life. We select and try on for you from a combination of CBT, somatic work, breathwork and Central Nervous System work and others. This allows you to have a unique system for you to manage fear and return to a balance of how your body's system is meant to be.  

We will provide you with Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction techniques and tools to help you to manage and reduce your levels of Anxiety, Phobias and Fears. We also provide Hypnotherapy sessions to reduce and release your anxiety, stress, worries and fears, and sometimes a combination of the two.  

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.  

We all feel anxious. Is yours out of all proportion? Does it take you over so you feel you cannot function with calm and acceptance around ordinary challenges? If so, come and talk to me and we will explore what is going on to trap you in this debilitating version of ordinary life.  

Anxiety can be debilitating and distressing, and prevent you from being the person or parent you can be or would like to be. But there is a way forward for you. And I can be of support. I can offer a safe, compassionate and non-judgmental space where you can relieve thoughts and feelings you find troubling, and gently work through any experiences underlying them. You're welcome to get in touch to ask questions or book a consultation to explore if I'm the right counsellor for you.