Anxiety is characterised by feelings of uneasiness and heightened worry. It can niggle at the edges of your mind, sometimes flooding in to overwhelm your senses with intense dread, fear or panic.
Whenever you’re feeling pressured or threatened, anxiety is a completely normal response to stress. Your heart rate increases, breathing quickens, and your sympathetic nervous system releases a surge of stress hormones — also known as the ‘fight, freeze or flight’ response. Once the stressful situation has passed, physical symptoms of anxiety usually subside. But for many people, anxiety lingers long past the point it's needed, interfering with daily life and taking a toll on relationships.
Counselling can help you to regain control by harnessing your body-mind inner calm, and confidently start living on your own terms again.
Anxiety can be a general response to feeling stressed, or it can be triggered by specific situations or events. Catastrophic thinking frequently occurs with anxiety, leaving you feeling like something awful may happen, or anticipating the worst case scenario in any given situation. You may feel preoccupied with everyday matters such as finances, work or your relationships, and experience compulsive worry and tension.
Anxiety turns the emotional intensity dial up to 11, and is often accompanied by a body-based (somatic) panic response. A panic attack may occur without warning, though is often linked to an accumulation of stress. Panic is an extreme form of anxiety, when the body enters a sudden, intense, fearful hyper-arousal state. People experiencing panic may worry that they’re having a heart attack, have lost control of their bodily functions, or feel like they’re losing their grip on reality. Although the physical symptoms usually resolve after a few minutes, the apprehension and fear that accompanies a panic attack may take much longer to subside.
Generalised anxiety consistently interferes with your mood and stress levels, triggering dramatic emotional highs and lows. Although it is common to feel tense or fearful from time to time, anxiety can result in these feelings occurring intensely, and over a substantial period of time. Sometimes it is difficult to explain the way you are feeling to others; anxiety often leads to social withdrawal and isolation if left untreated.
Social anxiety is the most common form of anxiety, affecting 1 in 10 Australians at some point in their lives. It is an extremely debilitating form of anxiety. The fear of doing something to embarrass or humiliate yourself in public or online can override your ability to enjoy life and your interactions with other people. Common social phobias include public speaking, performing, eating and drinking, using public restrooms, dating, and general social encounters.
A number of evidence-based approaches are effective in treating anxiety. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is the most effective treatment known for generalised anxiety, surpassing the efficacy of other treatments (eg medication, relaxation training) in both the short and long-term. Other effective approaches include Mindfulness-Based Therapy, Narrative Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Psycho-educational Social Skills Training. The right combination depends on your needs and circumstances.
Social anxiety responds particularly well to counselling. Avoiding social events and interactions with other people can take a serious toll on your wellbeing and daily functioning. Professional therapeutic support can help you recover from social anxiety, with meaningful symptom reduction often achievable within 6 to 10 sessions.
Anxiety can seriously interfere with your day-to-day function, and take a heavy toll on your personal relationships, career, and ability to enjoy life if left untreated. Anxiety symptoms may also co-occur with depression. Counselling can help you to identify your existing coping skills, and amplify their effectiveness via a toolkit of evidence-based, practical anxiety management strategies that are tailored to your unique situation and needs. Specialist anxiety counselling has two core benefits - it can significantly reduce and resolve anxiety symptoms, and equip you with lifelong stress management skills to prevent symptoms of anxiety from reoccurring. For appointments or enquiries, please call 1300 735 030 or leave us an email via our contact page.
Counselling helps by providing a safe and supportive space to explore the causes of anxiety, understand triggers for feelings and behaviours related to anxiety, and develop adaptive coping mechanisms to utilise when they arise. A counsellor will work with you to foster self-awareness, confidence, and resilience, helping you to reduce and manage anxiety symptoms.
The length of a counselling course for anxiety depends on the person and the severity of their symptoms, but generally anxiety counselling using Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) can start to see effective outcomes from as few as 6-10 sessions. However, there is no hard and fast rule, and there does not need to be a clear end-point either – some people like to maintain counselling continuously to keep their symptoms in check, others might schedule check-in sessions every now and again to make sure they don’t slip back into old patterns.
Absolutely. That’s not to say that medication isn’t helpful or indeed necessary in some cases, but counselling has a proven track record of producing equally good and often more sustainable outcomes than medication in many cases. Anxiety counselling in the form of CBT is considered the gold-standard of anxiety treatments, and the most effective.
Additionally, research has shown that where medication for anxiety is required it is most effective when taken in addition to a sustained program of counselling.
A Cambridge University study looked at anxiety disorders from 1990-2010, and found that about 17% of people will experience it at some stage in their lives. Anxiety is therefore extremely common, and many of those people find that their anxiety alleviates or indeed disappears given a little time – it’s certainly not a life sentence. However, anxiety sustained over a long period can be really detrimental to your mental health and quality of life, so there’s no shame in seeking professional help to guide you towards a healthier life. Much like any other illness or condition, sometimes a little professional intervention is required to get you back fighting fit.
There are also plenty of lifestyle choices you can make that will improve your chances of alleviating your anxiety, including regular exercise, nutrition, and healthy sleep patterns. Strong social supports and new, exciting (but safe!) experiences can also help.
In your sessions with a counsellor, you can expect to work together to understand your anxiety triggers, explore thought patterns, and develop tools and strategies to help you manage your anxiety. Your therapist will want to understand as much as possible about you and how they can help you manage your anxiety. Expect a collaborative approach, working with your therapist to establish a clear set of goals and objectives to provide a sense of direction and purpose for your journey through counselling.
The duration of treatment and number of sessions vary depending on presenting concerns and severity of symptoms. While each person’s therapy journey is unique, in most cases, positive outcomes are seen in less than ten sessions with a counsellor. For people suffering from more complex and chronic symptoms, longer-term therapy options should be explored.
Before your first counselling session, it can be helpful to think about your reasons behind seeking therapy—this may include potential goals or simply what’s concerning you at present. It may help to write notes or keep a log of symptoms, emotions, or experiences you can share during your initial session. This gives your counsellor insight into the specific challenges you are facing and assists them with tailoring sessions to your needs.
However, coming into your session without specific preparation is perfectly fine. Counselling can also be very effective, even when you aren’t sure what you would like to discuss. Many prefer to explore the thoughts and feelings that come up naturally during conversations with their therapist.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) affects around 3% of the Australia population. This type of anxiety can generate unwanted, involuntary thoughts and specific, repetitive behaviours that interfere with daily life. Beyond those who have a clinical diagnosis of OCD, there are many more people who feel that their daily habits may be holding them back from living life to the fullest. You may sense that your thought patterns and ritualised urges are unusual, even irrational. Yet once the habits have been formed, the compulsion to repeat the behaviour can be extremely difficult to resist.
Germaphobia (fear of contamination, preoccupied with hygiene and sanitation)
Perfectionism (intense preoccupation with symmetry and exactness)
Fear of losing control (harming yourself or others)
Fear of losing things (includes indecision about discarding items)
Fear of being responsible for a terrible event occurring
Intense preoccupation with becoming sick (e.g. cancer, HIV)
Excessive attention to superstitious beliefs
Cleaning: excessive handwashing, showering and household/environmental ‘decontamination’
Repetition: double-checking appliances and locks; tapping, blinking, and touching things in preset ‘safe’ multiples; ordering and arranging items
Checking: that you didn’t cause harm; loved ones are safe; you didn’t make a mistake; monitoring your physical body
Excessive praying and performing religious rituals to ward off harm
Hoarding: collecting items to the point of significant household clutter, accruing an excessive number of domestic animals
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