What is Anxiety?

Listen, anxiety sucks. It is this all encompassing feeling of worry that can weigh on you at all moments of the day and night, making it very difficult to enjoy anything. It can ruin relationships, your ability to perform, your self esteem and can have negative physical health consequences.

Anxiety can show up as emotional symptoms such as excessive worry, dread, unease/restlessness, physical symptoms such as racing heart, shaking, nausea, headaches and muscle tension, sweating and psychological symptoms such as ruminating, intrusive thoughts and unhelpful thinking traps. It often leads individuals to avoid people or have new experiences. It can be a vicious cycle of reassurance-seeking and feeling like it can’t ever be enough.

The thing is, anxiety is a normal human response that we all experience and can actually be very helpful. It is when our anxiety becomes frequent, intense and keeps us from engaging in our every day experiences is when it becomes troublesome.

Living with anxiety can be very difficult and overwhelming. You may be feeling confused as to why you’re feeling this way or you may know exactly the source of your anxiety - either way, treatment options are available to you.

Types of Anxiety

Anxiety comes in many different forms, shapes and sizes. One major characteristic of anxiety is what is called “catastrophizing”, which means assuming the worst. If you find yourself doing that, always believing that something terrible will happen, or notice that you avoid, avoid, avoid, this page is for you!

Other forms of anxiety include phobias, perfectionism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, social anxiety, health anxiety and panic disorder.

How I Treat Anxiety

All that being said, just because you have struggled with anxiety for a long time does not mean that changes can’t be made.

During counselling, we will first determine your cognitive, emotional, physical and behavioural factors that are increasing or maintaining your anxiety. We will determine how these are impacting and you will then learn to manage anxiety symptoms on a day-to-day basis, and you'll find the underlying causes of your anxiety - and heal them. Through goal setting, we create an individualized plan to meet your needs and desires to live your best life! As a team, we can work towards understanding your anxiety and address the underlying factors associated with your experience of anxiety. It is also my passion to educate individuals on how anxiety may have formed and how it continues to exist in our lives. My motto is, the more educated you are about your anxiety, the better you are able to tackle it!