Anxiety, Panic & Stress

Are Anxiety, panic and stress stopping you reaching your goals?

Are you afraid of going out?
Do you worry about having a panic attack?
Do people make you feel nervous?
Do you drink too much in social situations?
Do you get upset with people or do they get upset with you?
Do you worry about job interviews or exams?
Do you have problems maintaining relationships with friends, family or colleagues?
Are you sometimes envious of other people’s abilities?

Are you tired of feeling like you’re not in control of your life? If so, Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) may be the answer for you.

REBT has been shown to be effective in treating a wide range of emotional problems, including anxiety, depression, anger, low self-esteem, and relationship problems. It is also effective in helping people achieve their goals and live more fulfilling lives.

It is a type of cognitive behavioural therapy that helps you identify and change the unhelpful beliefs that are causing your emotional problems. It is based on the idea that your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are all interconnected. When you change your thoughts, you can alter your feelings and behaviours.

REBT is a short-term, goal-oriented therapy. It typically takes 12-20 sessions to complete. During therapy, you will work with me to identify your unhelpful beliefs and develop new, more helpful ones. You will also learn how to challenge the unhelpful ones and replace them with more reasonable ones.

However, sometimes, our problems are more complex than they seem. They may involve a combination of emotional, behavioural, and symptomatic issues. And sometimes, we just feel stuck in our lives. We may not know what we want or how to get there.

Talking through these issues in a focused way can help us to get clarity on what needs changing. It can also help us to develop a plan for making those changes.

If you are interested in learning more, please contact me. REBT can help you change your life for the better.

Anxiety

The most commonly diagnosed anxiety disorders are:

You might not have, or want, a diagnosis of a particular disorder – but it might still be useful to learn about these different diagnoses to help you think about your own experiences of anxiety, and consider options for support.

Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD)

If you have felt anxious for a long time and often feel fearful, but are not anxious about anything specific that is happening in your life, you might be diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder (GAD).

Because there are lots of possible symptoms and effects of anxiety this can be quite a broad diagnosis, meaning that the problems you experience with GAD might be quite different from the problems another person experiences, even though you have the same diagnosis.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a diagnosis you might be given if your anxiety leads you to experience: Obsessions – unwelcome thoughts, images, urges or doubts that repeatedly appear in your mind and Compulsions – repetitive activities that you feel you have to do.

Phobias

A phobia is an intense fear of something, even when that thing is very unlikely to be dangerous to you. If you have a phobia, your anxiety may be triggered by very specific situations or objects.

Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

If you develop strong feelings of anxiety after experiencing or witnessing something you found very traumatic, you might be given a diagnosis of PTSD. PTSD can cause flashbacks or nightmares which can feel like you’re re-living all the fear and anxiety you experienced during the actual event.

Rational Emotive and Cognitive Behavioural therapy

Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) are psychosocial interventions that are the most widely used evidence-based practice for treating mental disorders.

Guided by empirical research, CBT focuses on the development of personal coping strategies that target solving current problems and changing unhelpful patterns in cognitions (e.g., thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes), behaviours, and emotional regulation. It was originally designed to treat depression, and is now used for a number of mental health conditions and to promote ‘mental wellness’ awareness.

The CBT model is based on a combination of the basic principles from behavioural and cognitive psychology. It is different from historical approaches to psychotherapy, such as the psychoanalytic approach where the therapist looks for the unconscious meaning behind behaviours and then formulates a diagnosis. Instead, CBT is “problem-focused” and “action-oriented”, meaning it is used to treat specific problems related to a diagnosed mental disorder and the therapist’s role is to assist the client in finding and practising effective strategies to address the identified goals and decrease symptoms of the disorder.

CBT is based on the belief that thought distortions and maladaptive behaviours play a role in the development and maintenance of psychological disorders, and that symptoms and associated distress can be reduced by teaching new information-processing skills and coping mechanisms.