In my therapeutic work I often meet clients going through feelings of anxiety. This can be experienced as overwhelming and disorientating and can be accompanied by a sense of disconnection from everyday life. When feeling anxious, the day can slow down and feel like an age. To say deep feelings of anxiety are no fun would certainly be an understatement, these intense feelings can really dominate and sour everyday life.
In working with anxiety, I find that an important step can be to accept anxiety as a natural and normal part of being human. To attempt to dispel anxiety, to cure it away may not work as this could be seen as trying to remove a part of ourselves. My approach is to uncover with you what’s happening in your life that may be influencing your wellbeing, and contributing to you feeling so intensely. This is sensitive work which is undertaken within a respectful, caring and supportive therapeutic relationship. Very few people start therapy because they feel great, and once started therapy can be an unfamiliar thing where you’re encouraged to share what’s important to you, what you may not have shared before with someone you don’t know. But this can be therapy’s strength, because as your therapist I’m listening to you openly without judgement or assumption within neutral, and allowing dialogue.
The sense of intensity and overwhelm that anxiety can bring can be challenging, and whatever is beneath them daunting. But working with warmth, invitation and support in the therapy room can be the right environment to encourage you to explore and grapple with and grasp how your life is, how it could be different and once glimpsed, how else you might want to live.
Sometimes therapy can feel like a roller-coaster ride, but in therapy you’re not alone. Like a fairground roller-coaster, we may approach it with trepidation, the ride may shake us up, but sometimes we step off feeling exhilarated and relieved of what we carried before.