Anxiety disorders

Nearly all living animals (perhaps all? I can’t think of any without) have anxiety, meaning a threat detection system designed to keep the animal alive. Without anxiety we would likely perish early as we would live very dangerously and not even realise the danger. 

As part of our everyday lives experiencing anxiety is natural and normal and highly useful to keep us alive. 

Problematic anxiety however occurs when our threat-detection system goes into overdrive, and we interpret mundane everyday situations as threatening (interpretive bias), when we constantly live with heightened anxiety and there is no reasonable danger (hypervigilance), when our lives are plagued by avoidance, and when we engage in constant safety behaviours under the banner ‘just in case’. 

Anxiety disorders are among the most common mental health issues facing people in the modern world. We often distinguish between ‘trait anxiety’ being the internal default arousal state and ‘state anxiety’ as the arousal experienced in relation to specific situations. 

The most common type of problematic anxiety includes social anxiety (related to other people), performance anxiety, generalised anxiety, health anxiety, phobia(s), and panic disorder. Anxiety may also be a feature of other mental health issues (such as major depressive disorder with anxiety or adjustment disorder with anxiety). 

The experience of anxiety is very uncomfortable for most people, and often people who experience a panic attack believe they are having a heart attack. It may lead to significant life problems due to ongoing avoidance, health problems (e.g. stress cortisol reducing the immune system), relationship issues, sleeping and eating problems, as well as impoverished lifestyles.  

In my practice we work collaboratively to better understand how the problematic anxiety evolved over time, how it generalised from a normal and healthy emotion to becoming the mammoth monster inside, and the many factors that maintain the problematic emotion over time (e.g. safety behaviours, avoidance, etc.). 

In my experience anxiety disorders are treatable using a variety of therapeutic approaches. We will work together to find the most suitable approach (treatment planning) and we refine our therapeutic plan based on progress. We will never talk about anything you don’t agree or want to talk about, and you will always be in the driver seat of therapy. If you are feeling anxious about engaging in therapy, I would like to assure you this is very common, especially for our first session together. I have myself felt anxious about attending therapy (yes, us psychologists do at times attend therapy as well) and feel I can relate well to this situation. 

I have more than 20 years of experience but yet I can still experience anxiety before seeing new people in my own consulting room. Due to my mirror neurons working well I can also experience anxiety when I work closely with anxious people. In my opinion the anxiety I feel improves me as a therapist, demonstrates a high ‘care factor’ for people, and allows me to be honest and real in my interactions with other people.