Anxiety Therapy in High Barnet

Since you've found your way to my site and are reading this now, something has brought you here. Perhaps you're feeling somewhat stuck in your life at the moment. You may be aware of a persistent feeling of unease; a sense of holding back and not being fully present in your own life. The chances are that you are still functioning fairly well. Perhaps to others who know you everything looks fine but deep down you know something doesn't feel right. If this sounds familiar, then you are far from alone.

What anxiety actually is

In over thirty years of working with people in my therapy practice, I've come to understand that anxiety is one of the most challenging of human experiences.

We have become very good at naming and categorising anxiety into various subsets such as social anxiety, health anxiety, generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) as if the right label might in itself provide some relief. This is entirely understandable but in my experience is the wrong move. Anxiety is not something you have like a common cold, rather it's a fundamental human given. In other words, it's a feature and not a bug!

I like to think of anxiety being rather like a barometer. It takes the temperature of your situation, and the reading tells us the extent to which something is concerning you. The more acute the anxiety, the more significant the thing it’s pointing at.

The paradox at the heart of it

Getting to grips with anxiety requires us to understand its paradoxical nature. When we feel anxious, what we want more than anything is to get out of the anxiety as soon as possible and this often means avoiding the things which we really need to do. We may for instance struggle to leave a failing relationship, turn up for a job interview or attend social gatherings because we tell ourselves that the anxiety of doing so is more than we can tolerate.

The issue in my experience, isn't so much the anxiety that's the problem; it’s our relationship with that anxiety and turning towards rather than away from it is where the work really begins.

"Imagine that anxiety is like your shadow, only the harder you try to run from it, the larger it becomes."

Imagine that anxiety is like your shadow only the harder you try to run from it, the larger it becomes. I believe that anxiety, however awful it may feel, is always meaningful and can be understood. My approach to therapy is one in which I encourage you to very slowly and gently, begin to try and lean into your anxiety. Doing so puts us in a far better position to understand what it is trying to tell us and once this becomes clear we can begin to deal with the issues and difficulties which have been making us anxious in the first place.

An Illustration

Consider James,  a composite rather than a real client. When he first came to see me, he wasn’t  particularly emphasising anxiety as a problem. Rather it was his bland and monochrome existence that was causing him distress. To the outside world, he appeared to have all the trappings of a successful life. He was married, financially comfortable and had held down a senior managerial job in a prestigious company for many years.

Internally, however, James felt completely stuck. His relationship had been broken beyond repair for many years, but he lacked the courage to end it and walk away. He felt similarly about his job and had avoided seeking any further promotions because they would have required him to take more of a lead in projects and engage in a great deal of public speaking. Something that made him feel enormously anxious.

Working with the tried and tested maxim that anxiety can best be tolerated in moderate amounts, I helped James to begin to face up to situations he felt he needed to change even though they felt anxiety provoking. This enabled him to slowly but surely transform his life.  

Think of it like titrating the dose of a medicine. Too much and you are left feeling completely overwhelmed and destabilised but not enough and you can't really begin to develop the psychological muscles required to make a meaningful difference in your life.

James was not "cured" of his anxiety. How could he be since it's a fundamental human experience. Rather and most importantly, he was no longer letting anxiety set the limits of what he was prepared to do or not do in his life.

What becomes possible

It's not a life without fear and in all honesty, I don't think that would be a good thing. On the contrary, what I'm describing here is a life in which anxiety no longer calls the shots. By learning to gradually lean into and tolerate anxiety, you may be surprised to discover that it loses much of its intensity, its sting.

And this is where the real magic happens. As you find the courage to face up to aspects of your life that previously you have avoided, as you build your own psychological muscles by gradually titrating the dose, you may well come to understand that the feeling of "I did it" — the realisation that you were able to find the courage and really dig deep to make things happen in your life, things you didn't think were possible — is a moment that builds significant self-worth.

"Own your anxiety. Don't let it own you!"

I like to think of anxiety as the embodied experience of freedom and that good therapy is about helping you to reclaim your agency, to empower you to live to the fullest. Own your anxiety. Don't let it own you!

How I work

If you decide to have therapy with me, then I will try to get to know you and understand you as thoroughly as possible. Not just your anxiety but you as a whole person.

I begin from a position of unknowing and encourage you to help me understand your experience so that we can begin to build a picture from the ground up. This is a very thorough process since it's really important for me to be able to see and understand how things are from your point of view.

Therapy for me is a collaborative process with the aim of helping you gain a clearer picture of what you need to do to get your life back on track once again.

Ultimately, therapy for me is a process involving change and transition and by the time we end our work together, my hope is that you will have learnt to become your own therapist.

Get in touch

If what I have said in any way resonates with you and you would like to explore working together then do get in touch and I would be delighted to discuss this fully with you.