Anxiety Counselling Thame | Anxiety Therapist Oxon

Anxiety isn't always something that needs to be got rid of. Sometimes it can be useful to understand what it is trying to tell us. 

You may know that you are anxious without really understanding why.

Perhaps your mind rarely switches off. You overthink conversations, worry about what other people think of you, struggle to make decisions or find yourself constantly anticipating what might go wrong.

You might appear perfectly capable on the outside while internally feeling tense, overwhelmed or never quite settled.

And sometimes anxiety isn't really the problem. It is the signal.

Anxiety can have many causes, and I don't assume that everyone's comes from the same place.

But sometimes, when we begin looking underneath it, we discover that anxiety has developed alongside a lifetime of adapting.

Perhaps you learnt to keep other people happy.

To avoid conflict.

To be useful.

To get things right.

To notice what everybody else needed before considering what you needed.

Or perhaps your feelings weren't particularly noticed or welcomed when you were younger, so you became very good at coping by yourself.

Those ways of managing may once have made perfect sense.

But as an adult, they can leave you constantly monitoring yourself and the people around you.

Did I say the wrong thing?
Are they annoyed with me?
Have I disappointed someone?
What if I make the wrong decision?
Am I being selfish?

Living like that can be exhausting.

Some people come to counselling very aware of everybody else's feelings and surprisingly unsure of their own.

They know what their partner needs.

What their children need.

What their parents expect.

What work requires.

What they should be doing.

But when I ask, “What do you want?”, the answer can be much harder.

Anxiety can sometimes grow in that gap between the life we are living and what we actually feel, need or want.

Counselling can give us somewhere to become curious about that.

I am less interested in simply teaching you how to make an anxious feeling disappear and more interested in understanding why it is there.

Of course, learning ways to regulate yourself when anxiety becomes overwhelming can be helpful.

But we can also explore:

• What tends to trigger your anxiety? 
• What happens inside you when it appears? 
• What are you frightened might happen? 
• What do you find yourself doing to feel safe? 
• Where did you learn that? 
• What do you need that you may not be allowing yourself to need? 
• What might change if you trusted yourself a little more? 

Over time, the aim isn't necessarily to never feel anxious.

It is to understand yourself well enough that anxiety no longer has to run your life.

Anxiety often shows itself in our relationships too.

You might need reassurance but feel embarrassed about asking for it. You may become frightened when someone seems distant, replay conversations afterwards or assume that a change in someone's mood must somehow be about you.

Or you might do the opposite — withdraw, become fiercely independent and convince yourself that you don't need anybody.

Neither response means there is something wrong with you.

Often there is a history behind why closeness, uncertainty, disagreement or rejection feels particularly difficult.

Understanding that history can help you begin responding differently in the present.

I offer individual counselling for anxiety from my private counselling room in Thame, Oxfordshire, as well as online counselling across the UK.

My approach is relational. That means we won't only look at the anxiety itself. We will also be interested in you — your relationships, experiences, patterns, needs and the ways you have learnt to cope.

We can work together to understand where your anxiety comes from, what keeps it going and what might help you feel more secure in yourself.

You don't need to arrive knowing why you feel the way you do.

Finding that out can be part of the work.