Help with anxiety
Tired of living with that horrible feeling?
If you are reading this you may well be familiar with anxiety. Perhaps you are fed up with this tiresome companion. Or you may feel worried and weary of facing life each day. Anxiety can be debilitating. It can really bring you down.
Anxiety is often rooted in difficult life. Whilst anxiety is a normal human experience, life where anxiety overwhelms or ruins life need not be the norm.
Anxiety is a very common condition and something we all face at some point. It can be triggered by life changing events, traumatic events, and creep up on you unexpectedly. So, while anxiety is normal living with the stress and worry is not. MiP can help.
Overwhelming anxiety rarely ‘just gets better’. It can appear as catastrophic thinking, worrying about different scenarios, procrastination or asking yourself “what if” questions. Overwhelming anxiety can leave you feeling unable to rationalise, or you might experience panic attacks or worrying physical symptoms. This might be through difficulty in breathing, shakiness, tightness in chest or butterflies in the stomach.
That’s why reaching out, and getting some help can change your life.
Sadly, many people struggle with anxiety for years before feeling able to ask for help. CBT and Psychotherapy can effectively be used to treat anxiety.
Types of Anxiety
Commonly treatable
We all have feelings of anxiety, worry or fear sometimes, and these can be normal responses to certain everyday situations. You might experience these feelings at the thought of a job interview, meeting or speaking to someone or paying a bill on time. This type of anxiety is known more commonly as ‘fight or flight’. It is a very basic and natural response to frightening situations.
People with a general anxiety disorder (GAD) experience these feelings more intensely and can interrupt life in a very disturbing and distressing ways. Experiencing such anxiety can be very distressing and upsetting. You might have physical symptoms such as dizziness, sweating, an unusual irregular heartbeat, muscular tension, feel out of breath or tired. Other psychological symptoms may include disassociation, nightmares, intense phobias like claustrophobia or agoraphobia or feeling suddenly scared and traumatised.
Sadly, many people often struggle with these debilitating symptoms for many years, but you can find relief.
The MiP therapists have many years’ experience in helping clients with anxiety and symptoms such as these. We are here to help.
This is an intense and powerful form of anxiety creating a fear of social interaction and social situations with other people. Social anxiety is not just shyness or feeling embarrassed. It goes way beyond the normal feeling of uncertainty when we have to speak to others or meet people. A person suffering from social anxiety can feeling judged by others and be very self-critical of themselves. Living with such self-persecution is horrible. We understand.
If you have this disorder you might go to great lengths to avoid everyday interactions like shopping or eating in public places. You might avoid meeting with friends or going to work. In these ways such anxiety can severely hold you back from reaching your potential.
Suffering from social anxiety is very difficult. It is not something to suffer alone and we are here to listen and try to help you find a way forward.
PTSD is a terrifying and debilitating anxiety disorder brought on by experiencing or witnessing a traumatising event. The impact of such a trauma can create symptoms such as nightmares, flashbacks, social anxiety disorders, mood swings, changes in personality, and severe anxiety.
Symptoms of PTSD are unpredictable and may suddenly intensely change after a period of calm. You might be caught off-guard by a seemingly normal everyday event that triggers a flashback, cause a panic attack or evoke severe anxiety. The Mi-Psychotherapy team can help symptoms by helping you understand and try to process these terrifying events. By mourning the past you may begin to understand and respect the feelings with compassion and sympathy towards yourself.
What Next
The Mi-Psychotherapy team are here to help
Common themes linked to anxiety
- Difficulties in relationships
- Feeling like something isn’t quite right
- Catastrophic thinking
- Persecutory voices
- Feeling under pressure
- Low in confidence or self-esteem
- Feeling stuck
- Seem unable to think straight or rationalise
- Panic attacks
- Physical symptoms: breathlessness, sweating
- Feeling shaky or tightness in the chest
- Butterflies in the stomach
- Needing the toilet or having an upset stomach
- Procrastinating
Other symptoms of anxiety
- Nervous, tense, agitated or unable to relax
- Excessively worried
- Something terrible is about to happen
- Disoriented
- That people are judging you
- Confused
- People are angry or upset with you.
- Feel like you are disconnected from your body.
- That somebody is watching you or that you depersonalised from yourself.
- Suffering from Insomnia where you might find it hard to fall asleep, stay asleep or wake up early.
- Problems such as nightmares, panic attacks or flashbacks are disturbing your sleep.
- Worrying about being tired and become so stressed you can’t sleep.
- Finding it harder than usual to wake up or get out of bed.
- Feeling out of sync with your day. Lack of sleep makes it hard to manage daily routines and the urge to nap or sleep during the day might both interfere with your day and quality of sleep at night.
What is this?
- Dissociation is one way the mind copes with high levels of stress for example during a traumatic situation or event.
- It may be useful to know that everybody’s experience is different.
- Dissociation can last for both shorter periods of time, minutes, hours or days but also for much longer periods such as weeks or months.
- Dissociation is a state of anxiety experienced by many people during their lives and is a natural response to trauma.
- When this happens, you may feel disconnected from the world around you or from yourself.
- This may feel like the world around you is unreal or you detached from your body.
- Some people chose to dissociate as a way of focusing or calming down in a stressful situation.
- Some people experience dissociation as a physical symptom to other mental health problems such as depression, bipolar disorder or PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).
Did you know? Some people experience dissociation as a side effect of alcohol, to taking some medication or coming off medication.