Counselling and EMDR for PTSD, Anxiety and Depression
Everyone experiences anxiety from time to time, and this is normally experienced as a bunch of symptoms that leave us feeling a bit (or a lot!) dysregulated. Anxiety has a purpose; it is our mind and body's way of letting us know that something needs our attention. We may be having an acute stress reaction to a run of difficult life events or suffer with a constant low-grade discomfort that bubbles beneath the surface but doesn't have a debilitating effect on our day to day functioning. Regardless of severity and origin, feeling anxious often links into a lack of safety - this may relate to feeling a lack of control or choice, not having all the information we need to make sense of a situation, or a lack of meaningful connection to others. Anxiety wants you to check your current reality for the absence or presence of cues of safety and explicitly tend to those that are missing.
Anxiety is not just 'brain-based' it is a response that stems from what is stored in our nervous system about past experiences. Subtle visceral sensations are the beginnings of autonomic nervous system dysregulation. When these warning signs are missed or ignored they progress to thoughts, feelings and behaviours. You can ask yourself, what do I fear in this moment, and what am I afraid might be the future impact of this concern? This will help you to get to the implicit underlying narrative that is really driving the anxious thoughts and feelings.
Anxiety can be meaningful, it shows what we care about and can mobilise us into taking action. However, common symptoms of anxiety are catastrophic thinking and spiralling thoughts which can lead to a catalyst of chemical responses and changes in the body which then trick our nervous system (below the level of conscious awareness) into feeling like something bad is about to happen now. Cue activation of survival mode. The downside of survival mode when we don't really need it, is that our thinking brain starts to go offline to allow for autonomic responses, so we then have to contend with what is known as logic relapse.
Logic relapse is the inability to think clearly, even though we may claim to be 'over-thinking'. In this state we are not allowing our thoughts to go beyond the bad thing that will happen. The climax becomes the conclusion, and we are not thinking about how we'd get through it, what we would do to respond or how we would eventually move on with our life.
Use of negative visualisation is a technique that allows us to focus on potential outcomes in a healthy and effective way. Can you imagine getting to the other side of the issue, and perhaps even treating it as an opportunity to create something you otherwise couldn't? How would you cope if the thing that you fear happened? What tools, resources and support networks would you access to help you overcome this challenge? The chances are that life would go on and you would heal, recover and move forwards. That process might be ugly, distressing and uncomfortable but all life events, even the really awful ones, offer some opportunity for personal growth and development.
The thing we fear is usually the thing that is least likely to happen. We justify our catastrophic thinking as 'preparation' but we are envisaging a future response based on current life circumstances and how we feel today - not based on our overall levels of wisdom, knowledge and inner resources. What we fear the most is the least likely threat that we cannot control. If the threat is highly likely, we don’t fear it we respond to it.
The positive intention of anxiety is protection. Chronic fearful thinking comes from a need to focus our energy and attention on the potential threat so we can protect ourselves from it. If we keep it in our awareness it can't surprise us and we can retain some control over it. However, when the bad thing doesn't happen we start to associate worry with safety 'I thought about it so many times that I avoided it'. And so the cycle continues. If the bad thing does happen, worrying about it ahead of time is unlikely to lessen the pain or suffering it causes. Instead, we have less energy and capacity to deal with the event itself, because we drained our system of essential resources leaving us vulnerable and more likely to suffer an acute stress reaction.
I have listed below some prompts below to help you challenge your beliefs about worry, based on the ideas and concepts discussed above. Tend to your answers with curiosity, and be compassionate towards any pain or suffering that you notice is at the heart of your concerns.
Coping strategies, tools and resources can bring immediate and short-term relief from symptoms of anxiety whilst you identify and heal from the underlying root cause. If you are interested in working towards long term resolution of your symptoms please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me to discuss how EMDR or Internal Family Systems informed talking therapy could help you reach that goal and find inner peace. I adopt a relaxed client-centred approach, and believe that we have an innate human instinct to grow and self-actualise, even in the most challenging circumstances.
Most people benefit from an initial consultation as a starting point. This would take the form of a 50 minute session, held online via video call. The cost of this initial appointment is £65, payable at the time of booking. At this session we will explore your symptoms or concerns and discuss what you would like to gain from therapy. You are also free to ask any questions about the therapy process and my way of working. If you feel that I am the right counsellor for you and would like to continue with regular sessions, we can then explore the frequency, day and time of future appointments. To book an initial consultation please email me at calmthechaoscounselling@gmail.com
A more in-depth explanation of the concepts and ideas described in this article can be found in 'The Mountain is You' written by Brianna West.
Wiest, Brianna (2020) 'The Mountain is You'. Thought Catalog Books, New York
