Anxiety can affect far more than your thoughts. It can show up throughout the body through tension, restlessness, a racing heart, difficulty settling, disrupted sleep, or a sense that you need to stay alert to what might happen next.
Anxiety can develop for many reasons, and sometimes it can be difficult to understand why your body is responding so strongly. Therapy provides a space to understand what may be contributing to your anxiety, how these patterns have developed, and how you can begin responding to them with greater confidence and choice.
My approach considers both the mind and the body, recognising that anxiety is often experienced through thoughts, emotions, physical sensations and the nervous system, not just the mind alone.
My work draws on psychotherapy, somatic psychotherapy and, where appropriate, Craniosacral Therapy and SomatoEmotional Release (SER). You can explore these approaches in more detail through my therapy services.
You don’t have to understand exactly why you feel anxious before reaching out. We can begin with what you’re experiencing now and gently work from there.
Understanding Anxiety and Stress
Anxiety is a natural response to the possibility of danger, uncertainty or threat. It can help us prepare to respond when something genuinely requires our attention. But sometimes this response can become difficult to switch off, even when there is no immediate danger.
You may notice your mind becoming busy with worry, imagining what might go wrong or repeatedly trying to find certainty. At the same time, your body may respond with tension, a racing heart, shallow breathing, restlessness, digestive changes or difficulty sleeping.
For some people, anxiety is connected to particular situations or experiences. For others, it can feel more general or difficult to explain. Previous experiences, ongoing stress, relationships, expectations, or periods of feeling unsafe or overwhelmed can all play a part. You might notice anxiety showing up as repeatedly checking, overthinking conversations, avoiding situations, needing reassurance, or finding it difficult to switch off. These responses can sometimes bring temporary relief, but over time they can reinforce the sense that something is wrong or unsafe.
Rather than seeing anxiety as something you simply need to “get rid of,” we can become curious about what it is communicating and what keeps the cycle going. As you begin to understand the relationship between your thoughts, emotions, body and nervous system, new possibilities often emerge for responding differently, rather than feeling caught in familiar cycles of anxiety.
How Therapy for Anxiety and Stress May Help
Anxiety can become a cycle in which thoughts, emotions and physical responses continually reinforce one another. Therapy can help you begin to notice this cycle and understand what happens for you before anxiety becomes overwhelming.
Together, we can explore the situations, thoughts, relationships and experiences that tend to activate your anxiety. As these patterns become clearer, many people find they feel less controlled by anxiety and more able to recognise what they need in the moment.
From there, we can explore different ways of responding. This may include strengthening your boundaries, supporting your nervous system, understanding anxious thoughts, or learning to stay present with difficult emotions without feeling overwhelmed.
The aim is not to eliminate every experience of anxiety. Instead, therapy can support you to develop greater awareness, regulation, flexibility and choice, so that anxiety does not have to determine how you respond or how you live your life.
How I Work with Anxiety and Stress
Therapy for anxiety is tailored to your individual experience, drawing on both psychological and somatic approaches.
We begin by understanding what anxiety looks like for you and what tends to activate it. Psychotherapy provides space to explore your thoughts, emotions, experiences and relationships, while also considering how anxiety is experienced in your body.
As we develop a clearer understanding of your experience, we can explore patterns of worry, expectations, boundaries and the ways you may have learned to respond when something feels uncertain or threatening. We may also consider how earlier experiences continue to influence how you respond in the present.
Somatic psychotherapy brings attention to what is happening in your body as anxiety arises. This can help you recognise earlier signs of activation and develop greater awareness, regulation and choice in how you respond.
From there, we can explore different ways of responding. This may include understanding anxious thoughts, strengthening boundaries, supporting nervous system regulation, or learning to stay present with difficult emotions without becoming overwhelmed.
Where appropriate, Craniosacral Therapy and SomatoEmotional Release (SER) can provide another gentle way of working with body-based experiences of anxiety and supporting greater awareness and settling.
The work remains collaborative and responsive to you. We regularly consider what is helping and what may need to change as therapy progresses. The intention is not to force anxiety away, but to develop a different relationship with it and increase your capacity to respond with greater awareness and choice.
Is therapy for anxiety right for me?
You don’t need to have a formal diagnosis or be experiencing severe anxiety to explore whether therapy could be helpful.
You might be considering support because you are worrying more than you would like, feeling constantly “switched on,” struggling to relax or sleep, experiencing panic, becoming overwhelmed easily, or finding that anxiety is affecting your relationships, work or everyday life.
You may also simply have a sense that something needs to change, without being completely sure what is causing it. That is enough of a place to begin.
You don't need to have everything figured out before you begin. Therapy offers an opportunity to better understand what is happening for you, reconnect with your own inner resources, and explore what may help you respond differently.
Can therapy help if I don’t know why I feel anxious?
Yes. Sometimes anxiety can feel difficult to understand. You may know that you’re worrying, feeling tense, or finding it hard to switch off, but not be sure what is behind it. You don’t need to work that out before coming to therapy.
Together, we can gently explore what might be contributing to how you’re feeling, including your experiences, relationships, thoughts, emotions, and patterns of responding. Therapy can be a place to make sense of what is happening and begin to understand yourself more clearly.
What if my anxiety feels overwhelming or I have panic attacks?
If your anxiety feels overwhelming, or you experience panic attacks, you don’t have to manage it on your own. Therapy can provide a space to understand what is happening and explore ways of responding that feel more manageable.
We might look at what happens for you when anxiety rises, including the thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations that come with it. Understanding these responses can help you feel less overwhelmed and develop a greater sense of steadiness and choice.
How can therapy help with anxiety?
Therapy can help you understand what is happening beneath the anxiety and begin to change the patterns that keep it going. Together, we can explore your thoughts, emotions, relationships and experiences, while also paying attention to how anxiety is showing up in your body.
As these patterns become clearer, you may begin to recognise what happens before anxiety becomes overwhelming and develop different ways of responding. This can support greater regulation, confidence and choice, rather than feeling as though anxiety is determining what you can or cannot do.
What if my anxiety has been there for a long time?
Long-standing anxiety can become so familiar that it may feel like simply part of who you are. You may have learned to organise your life around avoiding certain situations, staying prepared for what might go wrong, or managing things in ways that help you feel safer in the short term.
Therapy can provide an opportunity to understand how these patterns developed and what may be keeping them in place. Even when anxiety has been present for a long time, change is possible. We can work gradually, at a pace that feels manageable, to develop greater awareness, regulation and flexibility in how you respond.
What if I know what triggers my anxiety, but I still can’t stop it?
Understanding what triggers your anxiety can be helpful, but knowing the reason for a response does not always make the response disappear. Sometimes your body and nervous system can react before you have time to consciously make sense of what is happening.
Therapy can help you work with both the understanding and the response itself. We can explore the thoughts, emotions and experiences connected to the anxiety while also paying attention to what is happening in your body. Over time, this can help you recognise these responses earlier and develop more choice in how you respond, rather than feeling controlled by them.