What I help with
Anxiety
Anxiety is not a flaw in the system; it is the system doing its job too often and too well. It can exist on its own, or become closely intertwined with eating, body image and the rules and behaviours of an eating disorder. Either way, anxiety has a mechanism. Understanding what keeps it going gives us something we can actually work with, rather than simply telling you to relax or think more positively.
Anxiety is not a flaw in the system. It is the system doing its job too often and too well.
What it feels like
Anxiety is often far more physical than people expect. A tight chest. A stomach that will not settle. A jaw that aches by the evening. Sleep that comes late or breaks early. Alongside it runs the thinking: rehearsing conversations that have not happened, scanning for what you might have missed, anticipating what could go wrong, or carrying a background sense that something is not quite right.
What therapy involves
Anxiety can be something you are struggling with on its own, or it can sit alongside an eating disorder. Either way, the work starts with understanding what keeps it going.
Not being told to relax. Cognitive behavioural therapy for anxiety works by identifying what you have come to predict will happen, and then finding out, carefully, gradually, and at a pace you agree to, whether it does. Nothing gets sprung on you. You will never be pushed into something you have not chosen.
We also look at what the anxiety may be protecting, and at the safety behaviours that have quietly accumulated around it. Most people are surprised by how many they are running.
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