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

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, 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.  

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 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.  

Anxiety and Fear covers a spectrum of disorders and I have helped clients who have experienced such concerns ranging from the most severe psychotic paranoia to panic, worry and intrusive thoughts. I do not believe there is a good or bad, right or wrong, better or worse label in these comparisons rather each person has their own experience of what they are going through and to learn to alleviate those difficulties is what I work to do.  

I am a Psycho-Spiritual Counsellor offering bespoke services using a combination of holistic and complementary intervention to help tackle anxieties and fears utilising a combination of hypnosis and meditation by addressing your physical and psychological responses that triggered the threat system into hyperactivity.  

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.  

Anxiety and fear often points to the meaning of something that might happen in the future. It may be the fear of losing your job or a relationship that is struggling. It may be the anxiety from the responsibility that come with living in the modern world and what might feel like no freedom. I believe most often, anxiety is telling you something useful and critical in you life that require exploration. I invite you to come and explore your anxiety with curiosity and what it is trying to tell you. With that awareness, new choices may appear.  

Utilisation of Hypnotherapy and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction to help reduce the symptoms of all aspects of anxiety.  

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.  

I provide Cognitive Behaviour Therapy which is the recommended psychological therapy for panic attacks, agoraphobia, social anxiety/ social phobia, other phobias, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Generalised Anxiety Disorder* and stress/ burnout. I have several years experience of supporting clients who had been bullied at school or gone through workplace bullying, harrassment, stalking, domestic violence and court proceedings. During my professional qualification I chose to specialise in panic attacks and agoraphobia for my research and dissertation. I have provided therapy for clients who had phobias of elevators, buses, trains, underground trains, bees, dogs, hospitals, needles, blood, injuries, and childbirth. I can also provide CBT for depression, traumas and PTSD. (*GAD also known as chronic neurosis is excessive and persistent worrying about several areas of your life, worry that is out of proportion with the situation and interfering with day-to-day life, a feeling of not being able to control worrying, and difficulties around overthinking and planning for potential problems that have not occurred.)  

All of our Clinical Psychologists at ComposurePsychology are highly experienced in helping people understand, manage and overcome anxiety, fears, nervousness, phobia, OCD and panic. We draw from evidence based therapies including; CBT, ACT, CFT, SFT, DBT, EMDR, systemic, narrative, psychodynamic and others.  

For dealing with anxiety, first of all, I help my clients to manage their physical symptoms of anxiety and then they are able to take control of their bodies, secondly we try to identify automatic negative thoughts and learn how to deal with them and challenge them. It is okay to have anxiety, but you need to learn how to deal with it faster.  

Are you avoiding situations due to anxiety? Is it stopping you from living a full life? Anxiety attacks can produce an unpleasant cocktail of symptoms; sweating palms, nausea, palpatations, hyperventilation and feelings of paranoia. As anxiety is usually triggered by specific circumstances, many people find themselves avoiding those situations where they may experience anxiety, this in itself can exacerbate the problem, especially if those situations involve work, travel or socialising. With cutting edge psychological tools anxiety can be a thing of the past in between 1 and 4 sessions.  

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 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.  

I help you to understand what anxiety and fear is, how you can allow it to control your life, and how to manage this  

Anxiety is a persistent feeling of worry, tension, or unease that can show up in the mind, body, or both. It may manifest as racing thoughts, muscle tension, trouble sleeping, or a sense that something bad might happen—even when there’s no clear threat. Fear, on the other hand, is usually a response to a specific, immediate danger—real or perceived. But when fear becomes chronic, or is tied to past experiences or unresolved trauma, it can limit our choices, relationships, and sense of safety in the world. Both anxiety and fear can be signals—not of something wrong with you—but of something important asking to be understood.  

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, Fears, and Phobias be gone