Therapy

Anxiety

Anxiety is a normal emotion that is designed to help us overcome or avoid a perceived threat. However, about 1 in every 10 people experience excessive anxiety that interferes significantly with their quality of life. Typically in these cases it does not serve its warning function.

There are numerous symptoms of anxiety and include such features as tiredness, insomnia, swallowing difficulties, headaches, muscle tension, rapid breathing, sweating and trembling and so on.

Existing problems such as dermatitis and asthma amongst others may be aggravated. People may have a number of symptoms and unfortunately sometimes use cigarettes, alcohol and prescribed or un-prescribed drugs to try and control their anxiety creating additional problems for themselves.

Phobias

A phobia is a persistent, excessive and disruptive fear. Most commonly this is a particular object or situation that the person tries to avoid. These may include animals, storms, heights, closed spaces and so on. Other phobias include a fear of social situations and a fear of situations and places difficult to escape from when panicked.

Phobias affect about 8% of women and about 3% of men. While many phobic individuals cope, for some their fears can interfere greatly with their lives.

A treatment regime has been common for many decades now, which has a very high success rate with phobias and if you would like further details please contact me.

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Stress

Excessive stress is one of the most common and increasing causes of ill health today. Stress is a normal bodily reaction to the activities of everyday living. Therefore we all deal with and handle stress all the time. However, people may come under an excessive load of stress. There are two main ways this can occur, a number of intense but short -lived events or a prolonged increase but at a much lower level of stress over a period of time. Such effects can be accumulative and therefore one can slowly become much more stressed without easily recognizing that this is happening.

Stress causes both physical and emotional problems, which can include such things as fatigue, sleeping difficulties, anxiety, loss of concentration and irritability. Unfortunately we often resort to ways of handling stress that are not healthy for us, for instance the use of drugs (alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs). We can also experience a worsening of conditions we may already have such as irritable bowel syndrome, dermatitis and depression.

Common causes of extreme stress include loss of a loved one, the breakdown of relationships and personal conflicts and personal injuries. Other common forms of stress those related to work such as interpersonal conflict, being over worked and becoming unemployed and retirement.

There are a variety of methods that can be used to help combat stress and should you wish further information on this area please contact me.

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Panic Attacks

Panic Attacks are intense anxiety reactions within a comparatively short space of time, usually for minutes although occasionally a panic attack can last for an hour or more. Panic Attacks include such features as pounding heart, rapid breathing, and shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, heavy perspiration, weakness or dizziness. Sufferers often believe that they are having a heart attack and their first presentation may be to an emergency department of a hospital. There's also often a sense of terror or loss of control and sufferers frequently believe that they're going crazy or are going to die. Because of the intensity of the physical symptoms people often feel exhausted afterwards.

This is obviously quite different from what we in every day language talk about as feeling panic.

There are a variety of psychological treatments that are very useful in helping people control and manage their panic attacks. Please contact me for further information.

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