Anxiety Therapy
I offer individual anxiety therapy in Kensington, near Earl’s Court, and online. Anxiety can affect your thoughts, feelings and body, including a racing heart, sweating, muscle tension or nausea. New or concerning physical symptoms should be discussed with a medical professional rather than assumed to be anxiety.
My approach explores anxiety through the lens of attachment, emotional experience and Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP). We look at what happens in your particular situation, rather than assuming that everyone’s anxiety has the same cause. In ISTDP, “intensive” means working carefully and collaboratively to help you make progress as efficiently and safely as possible; it does not mean being pushed into overwhelming emotion.
You may have attracted an anxiety diagnosis such as panic disorder (with or without agoraphobia), social phobia, health anxiety, or generalised anxiety disorder. You may have more than one diagnosis, have had different diagnoses at different times. A diagnosis is the beginning of understanding an individual and can help us feel less alone as we learn there are others who experience similar anxieties. You can read Understanding and managing anxiety.
Fear is about objective danger
Fear is the physiological alarm state that we experience when we face an external risk such as a bus coming our way, a sound in the park at night.
Anxiety and emotional experience
Anxiety has many possible contributors. In my work, we explore whether feelings such as anger, sadness, guilt or a wish for closeness become linked with anxiety. Understanding this relationship can give us a useful starting point for therapy.
Expecting criticism or rejection
You may well have heard about projection. If we are unable to fully experience our feelings we may resort to projecting them.
This is very often the case with anger. Projecting this onto others then means we are afraid we will be the recipients of anger and will think we are being criticised, judged, rejected, or excluded.
Or take the example of sadness or attachment longing. We may become ‘compulsive caregivers’, looking after others, but neglecting ourselves.
Anxiety in relationships
For some people, anxiety appears when they feel something strongly towards another person. It may arise during a conversation or simply when thinking about someone. We explore these moments carefully, without assuming in advance what they mean.
Why do emotions trigger anxiety?
The answer to this involves past experiences which shape how we relate to the world. Many of the experiences have occurred when we were very young before we had words. They are encoded, so to speak, in the body. Later trauma or discrimination/oppression can also shape our relatedness.
We essentially learn what emotions are OK to feel around our primary caregivers. If certain emotions are too distressing for them, they will begin to trigger anxiety in any situation where the risky emotion is likely to come up. Human beings also develop defences against the anxiety so often we don’t experience the anxiety either. This is commonly seen to those of us who appear unemotional or detached, for example.
Anxiety Therapy London
In therapy sessions, we pay careful attention to how you are feeling moment to moment. For example, your therapist may notice that in response to talking about a topic your body language changes. You appear tense and shift a lot. The therapist may say “I noticed we were talking about so and so and you started to become anxious. Can we look at what you feel inside towards so and so, so that you don’t get anxious instead?” Allowing oneself to experience emotions fully, in the presence of another person, reduces anxiety, provides information about what is important to you, and allows for deeper connection to that person. You can read a brief ISTDP vignette.
Anxiety Therapist London
282 Earls Court Road, Kensington London SW5 9AS
07805 945233
nikos.tsigaras@kensingtoncounselling.com
Photography by @enginakyurt, @magictype, @wocintechchat.com, & @wx1993
Benefits of therapy
Increased self awareness
- Discover your unique relationship models
- Identify otherwise invisible patterns of thinking and feeling that lead to unhelpful behaviours
- Explore your values and make decisions
Use your emotions
- Turn your emotions into information
- Identify your needs
- Become the truest version of yourself
Improve your relationships
- Connect
- Communicate
- Share
- Become more assertive
- Become more collaborative
Reduce suffering
- Reduce self-criticism
- Reduce doubt
- Reduce worry and rumination
- Reduce a sense of meaninglessness
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Considering therapy?
Arrange a free 15-minute introductory call to discuss what you are looking for and whether I may be able to help.