Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety is a natural protective response to perceived threats, involving a complex pattern of physical changes, racing thoughts, and heightened awareness. While a normal reaction to stress, it becomes problematic when it feels chronic, overwhelming, or triggered by situations that others might find trivial. Whether it manifests as a persistent sense of unease or more specific fears like social anxiety, these feelings can disrupt your daily life and leave your mind unable to rest. Our clinical psychology services are designed to help you understand these patterns and provide evidence-based treatment tailored to your specific experience, with the goal to help you move from a state of constant worry back to a life of calm and focus.

  • Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) is a condition which can lead you to become extremely anxious about different situations and issues rather than one specific event. It’s characterised by chronic, uncontrollable worrying.

    People who suffer from Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) feel anxious most days and often struggle to remember the last time they felt calm or relaxed. As soon as one anxious thought dissipates, another thought appears and takes hold for a completely different issue.

    The symptoms of GAD are both psychological and physical symptoms of GAD and these are:

    • Restlessness

    • Feeling constantly ‘on edge’

    • Difficulty concentrating

    • Sense of dread

    • Fast, irregular heartbeat

    • Difficulties sleeping

    • Headaches

    • Excessive sweating

    • Shortness of breath

    • Dizziness

    • Irritability

    Anxiety can manifest itself in lots of different ways and so this isn’t an exhaustive list. The most characteristic feature of Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) is the experience of endless and persistent worries that can feel very overwhelming.

  • Health anxiety is a type of anxiety that can cause you to worry excessively about your health or to fear that you have a serious physical illness – often when there is no reason to think this. This excessive worrying can cause a great deal of distress and affect your everyday life.

    Some people with health anxiety have a medical condition which they worry about excessively while others have medically unexplained symptoms. Others may just be persistently worried about their future health.

  • Social anxiety, is an intense fear of social or performance situations that feels far bigger than the situation itself. If you live with it, you might dread being judged and find yourself worrying long before an event and replaying it long after. The fear often centres on doing something embarrassing in front of others, like shaking, sweating, blushing, freezing, or simply looking anxious.

  • Panic attacks can strike suddenly, causing intense fear or discomfort. These attacks often include physical symptoms like chest pain, shortness of breath, or a racing heart, which can make you feel like you’re having a medical emergency.

  • A phobia is a debilitating fear of an object, place, situation or animal. If you have a phobia, you likely experience a deep sense of panic whenever you encounter your fear.

    If your phobia has become severe, you might find that you’ve started to organise your whole life around avoiding the situation or object that is causing your anxiety.

  • OCD is a condition which can cause you to have unwanted recurring thoughts, ideas or urges (obsessions) that drive you to carry out a particular behaviour repeatedly (compulsions). These repetitive behaviours – or mental acts – are meant to relieve the unpleasant feelings brought on by the thought or stop something bad from happening. However, they tend to only provide short-term relief and leave you feeling much worse in the long-term.

    OCD symptoms can vary in terms of their severity. For some people, these thoughts and compulsive behaviours can take up to an hour of their day – whereas for others it can take over their entire life.

    What are the symptoms of OCD?

    • Obsessions – where an unwanted thought, image or urge repeatedly enters your mind

    • Anxiety – the obsession provokes intense anxiety 

    • Compulsion – repetitive behaviours -or mental acts – are performed to bring about relief from the anxiety

    • Temporary relief – the compulsive behaviour brings about temporary relief but soon enough, the anxiety and obsession returns

    The compulsive behaviours people engage in can also vary from: counting, reassurance seeking, repeating words silently, extensively overthinking, thinking ‘neutralising thoughts’, cleaning and hand washing, checking – and other behaviours.

  • Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a group of stress reactions that can develop after we witness a traumatic event, such as death, serious injury or sexual violence to ourselves or to others.

    Complex trauma (cPTSD) usually occurs as a result of repeated trauma experienced by a child or young person, although it can also occur as a result of experiences as an adult. Some people experience trauma across their lives.