Signs That Anxiety May Be A Problem:

• you often feel anxious or on edge
• you find it hard to stop worrying
• you're constantly thinking about worst-case scenarios
• you feel weighed down by "what ifs?"
• you fear or dread certain things or experiences
• you procrastinate or avoid things
• you experience physical symptoms like difficulty breathing, sweating or a racing heart
• worry or anxiety affects your daily life
• you struggle to fall asleep or stay asleep
• you have anxiety or panic attacks

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What is anxiety?

Anxiety is our body's natural alarm system, and it's incredibly useful when it functions properly. Our brains are programmed to sound the alarm when we're threatened. We experience that alarm as anxiety- our body prepares us to fight, flight, or freeze in order to protect ourselves from the danger. This helps us react quickly in order to keep ourselves safe. If we never experienced anxiety or fear, we wouldn't be able to react quickly in the face of danger. Anxiety disorders occur when our fight or flight system isn't working in a functional or optimized way. You might be experiencing lots of false alarms where your brain or body is alerting you to danger that doesn't actually exist in the here and now.

We don't need to get rid of anxiety entirely (and wouldn't want to!), but it's not helpful for your stress response system to go off when there is no actual threat. If your body is sending you false alarms left and right, you probably feel restless, jumpy, on edge, overwhelmed or exhausted. If this is happening for you, we need to kick anxiety out of the driver's seat. An experienced anxiety therapist will help you learn how to calm your nervous system in these moments. Over time, we can work together to re-wire your fight or flight system so that it's only sounding the alarm when it really needs to.

Anxiety Treatment

Our experienced therapists will start with a detailed assessment to better understand how anxiety is affecting your life. Using a variety of evidence-based therapies, we will help you learn how to manage and overcome anxiety. This usually involves calming your nervous system, learning how to manage distressing emotions, facing your fears, re-wiring anxious thinking, reducing worry, and supporting you in building a life that is in line with your values.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) for Anxiety

One of the most effective treatments for anxiety disorders is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). In CBT, we'll break down anxiety into more manageable parts. This includes identifying links between triggering situations, feelings, thoughts and behaviours.

Often anxiety involves unhelpful behaviours like avoidance and negative thoughts such as jumping to worst-case scenarios or assuming you won't be able to handle an upcoming situation. CBT addresses this by slowly helping you face feared situations and teaching you how to challenge your unhelpful thoughts.

Our therapists are also trained in other evidence-based therapies for anxiety. During the assessment, you and your therapist will talk about what approach is the best fit for you.