Therapy for Anxiety: A Safe and Personalised Approach That Goes Beyond Labels
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If you feel like you’re living with anxiety, whether it feels like a racing mind, a tight chest, or a sense of being on edge all the time then this post is for you.
It makes sense that you might find yourself here. After all, recent research states that 1 in 3 adults in the UK suffer from high levels of anxiety. Yes, you read that correctly, 1 in 3. I was reading an old blog post that my clinical supervisor posted on his website over 10 years ago that 1 in 5 adults reported anxiety as a daily obstacle. The metrics and methods of these two studied mentioned notwithstanding, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the capacity to deal with anxiety and exercising good mental wellness generally in the UK, if not most of the world, has been and is continuing to decline.
So, what are we to do about it?
First, let’s take a look at what it actually is before we begin to work with it.
Image Credit: Kelly Sikkema
Anxiety Is More Than a Label and It’s Different For Everybody
On the surface of it all, “anxiety” is a convenient label for distress and it comes in all sorts of different shapes and sizes. For example, Doechii highlights in her song “Anxiety” that it is like a “tightness in my chest, like an elephant is standing on me” and pretty much the entirety of Linkin Park’s discography speaks to the lived experience of anxiety and the futility, internal conflict and emotional entrapment in responding to it.
Nearly everyone you talk to in conversation will know what that word means and because we are in this modern age where the stigma is declining, the mental health hat comes on. Your complaints are met with sympathy if you’re around the right people and you might find some relief in that you feel someone understands you’re in distress on the surface but, through little fault of their own, they’re not quite in a position for whatever reason to fully understand your experience underneath the surface. You then part ways with your considerate friend and when you are left to your own devices anxiety rears its head again. Or, if you are unfortunate enough to have social anxiety it can tend to be around a lot, reminding you of its presence and that it’s not going anywhere.
Since its nature feels overwhelming to delve into and examine by ourselves, it can help us to label it as “anxiety.” By doing this, it can help us feel like we are not going mad. There is an issue with this though: it oversimplifies the problem, and when it is oversimplified, its apparent power grows in its obscurity, leaving you more afraid of the thing itself, paradoxically having the opposite effect than what was intended, and then we naturally look for ways to escape from it, because it’s human nature to want to feel soothed after distress. But it’s still there when we come back round, the damned thing!
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It goes without saying that this experience can make people feel more alone than ever, and this makes sense because anxiety and loneliness are common bedfellows. It can start to feel like a heavy coat thrown over everything in your life, and underneath that coat are layers of personal meaning, unmet needs and survival responses.
And this is the thing. Anxiety is different for everyone. For one person, it might come in waves of chest-tightening panic. For another, it could be a fog of disconnection, irritability, or obsessive overthinking. Some feel it as a pounding heart in social situations and others feel it as a sinking dread before getting out of bed.
Therapy looks to gently open that word “anxiety” up and see what it means for you because it is deeply personal, a nuanced phenomenon, and contains a story. As a counsellor and hypnotherapist, we want to see how it shows up for you in a safe and non-judgemental environment, how it interacts with you (and vice versa) and what it might be trying to tell you. The goal isn’t to make it disappear in one fell swoop, but to understand it better, so you can loosen its grip on your life.
Let’s look in more detail on what happens in therapy when we work with anxiety.
Image Credit: Kelly Sikkema
What Happens in Therapy for Anxiety?
Therapy for anxiety isn’t as straightforward and transactional as getting your taxes sorted. It’s about learning to relate to yourself differently with patience, curiosity, and care. This process can feel like the opposite of how you’ve coped with anxiety before, which, without making assumptions, may have involved trying to avoid it. That’s totally understandable because you’ve likely faced other challenges in life that stirred discomfort and you found ways to solve them. Naturally, you’d hope to apply that same mindset to anxiety. But this time, it’s not quite so straightforward.
In our work together, we slow things down, a speed which anxiety is not used to operating in. You’re not expected to unravel and immerse into your most overwhelming fears straight away. Instead, we create space to explore how anxiety shows up for you. This isn’t just in your thoughts, but it’s in your body, in your habits, and the hidden rules that you may have learned to follow over time.
You might begin to notice the way your shoulders tense when you feel watched, or how your mind spirals when plans change. It might seem or reinforce the message that there’s something wrong with you but that couldn’t be further from the truth. They’re actually protective responses that once served a purpose. This makes sense, because neurologically, your brain’s threat detection system can’t determine whether it’s a sabre tooth tiger or a P45 coming towards you, it just reacts to danger, real or perceived.
In therapy, we start to untangle those patterns and gently ask: what are they trying to protect you from? And what might you need now, instead?
The therapeutic relationship is a big part of this process and it mustn’t be underestimated. Research consistently shows that when you feel safe, accepted, and not judged, anxiety begins to soften. That safety can help the nervous system gradually shift from survival mode into something more open, grounded, and connected.
As things start clicking, what does that look like?
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When Clients Begin to Feel Understood
There comes a moment in therapy that can feel almost like a proper breath after holding it in for years, there is an inexplicable moment where you feel genuinely understood, and if you’ve had that feeling you know what I mean. Not analysed, not fixed, not coddled, but feeling seen. This is more than just hearing the words you say. It’s the felt sense that your inner world is resonating in another human being. That your pain, confusion, or fear has landed and been received without judgement.
A client’s experience of resonance with a person’s accurate understanding can mean everything to them. For many, this is a first. Especially if they’ve grown up in environments where their emotional world was dismissed, minimised, or misunderstood.
When this connection begins to settle in the nervous system, something shifts. The anxiety, which was once a constant and unwanted companion, no longer feels like it has to scream to be heard. It can begin to soften. Slowly, the client starts to internalise the possibility that perhaps they are not broken, but just waiting to be understood. And in that understanding, a more grounded, compassionate relationship with themselves can begin to take root. Studies show that social support, including a trusting therapeutic connection, can stimulate oxytocin release and lower cortisol production, which is a primary stress hormone. This oxytocin–cortisol balance signals safety and reduces anxiety at a biological level.
How does all that sound?
If anxiety has been keeping you stuck or quietly siphoning joy from your life, you don’t have to figure it out alone. Therapy can be a space to begin exploring it, not to fix it overnight, but to understand it more deeply and with care.
If this resonates with you, I invite you to book a discovery call with me and we can work together, and at your own pace, in building a future where you get to live life on your own terms.
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References
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