We help young people, adults and families keep anxiety in check.

WHAT IS ANXIETY?

Anxiety symptoms manifest in different ways and include:

• Emotional: feeling afraid and nervous
• Physical: having a racing heart, sweating, feeling pained and shallow breathing
• Behavioural: avoiding certain situations or places, or doing things to try to control the fear
• Cognitive: worrying about something bad or frightening happening

There are different kinds of anxiety, such as: separation anxiety; Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; panic attacks, trauma related anxiety and social anxiety.

WHAT CAUSES ANXIETY?

Anxiety can be triggered by a range of factors.  As with trauma, anxiety is often the result of the brain being over protective- encouraging us to avoid an experience we have learned to be dangerous.

For example, anxiety may be connected to being separated unexpectedly from a partner or caregiver, or experiencing bullying or abusive relationships. It may be linked to a medical phobia, or stem from returning to driving after a car accident.

THE IMPACT OF ANXIETY

Anxiety can really impact how we live our lives. A lot of time is taken up with worry and avoidance leaving us little time for learning or doing the things we enjoy.

We recommend you seek treatment, if you, your child, or your family find anxiety is restricting your everyday life. The types of restrictions caused by living with anxiety, could mean you:

• Avoid certain social situations, such as work or school
• Stop enjoying hobbies
• Find it difficult to communicate with friends, family and loved ones.

TREATING ANXIETY

By working together we identify and deal with the cause of the anxiety. In therapy we may use Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) or Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) to help break these anxiety cycles.