Anxiety treatment overcoming anxiety and panic attacks

Anxiety and panic attacks are surprisingly common and affect a very large percentage of the UK population, usually it is called Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and, interestingly, once you fully understand  what is going on in your mind and in the chemical reactions within your body, it all actually makes a lot of sense.

So, if you have had enough of being hijacked by anxiety or panic attacks, fed up with the way the feelings hold you back and sick of  the same fearful thoughts running around inside your head.

Help to answer the following anxiety based questions:

• What is wrong with me?

• Why do I have these symptoms of anxiety?

• Where do anxious feelings and panic attacks come from?

• What treatment for anxiety works?

• How can I be free from anxiety and get my life back?

• Once you have helped me to overcome anxiety, will it come back?

I can answer all these questions and teach you how to take this knowledge and use it to stop yourself continually being the victim of these overwhelming feelings. When explained to you clearly and from two different perspectives the parts of the puzzle begin to fit together and you will see how your mind and your biological body are both screaming out for change – but not talking the same language.

The symptoms of anxiety you may experience include; a racing heart and fear of having a heart attack, headaches, feeling sick, drained of energy, a churning stomach, IBS like symptoms, sweats, aching muscles, feeling light-headed, trouble breathing and a tight restricted chest, trouble sleeping, difficulty concentrating – there are many more too.

Sadly, the majority of GP’s and NHS mental health professionals do not have enough time available to help patients fully through the recovery process. Is it a journey where you need to work with someone who understands anxiety and realises the powerful way it can hijack your emotions and bring up levels of fear, anxiety and depression. Someone who can teach you how to manage panic attacks and how to respond to this anxiety disorder in a new calmer way using a range of relaxation techniques – because trying to eliminate anxiety by avoiding what makes you anxious is NOT the way forward. Effective therapy for anxiety includes having someone with you whilst you face your fears, helping to keep you calm and showing you that the fear is not outside of you, you can’t blame it on other things – it is inside you.

“After 6 long dark months suffering from chronic anxiety and emetophobia, and following two failed attempts at finding the right therapist, I luckily found John and all I can say is; he was my lifesaver and the light at the end of my tunnel. John is a true inspiration and made me feel that the things I thought were not possible were. John made me understand the reasons why I ended up in such a dark place and what I needed to do to free myself from my fears and phobias. It has been a long journey but I am finally at a place where I can say I am a stronger person. John has taught me that it is only yourself that makes you feel the feelings you feel, and that it is all to do with changing your way of thinking and welcoming anxiety as your friend. I am still continuing my journey towards full health and I know this will take time. John has given me the tools and knowledge that I need to reach my destination. I am truly grateful for meeting such a kind, gifted person. Thank you John for helping me change my life.”

Anxiety sufferers often have a voice in their mind that goes around and around looking for answers and getting more and more frustrated and angry with themselves for feeling so helpless and a victim of these physical symptoms. They make fearful images in their minds of all the things that could go wrong and that makes them even more anxious. It is well known and well documented that your body responds to what you hold in your mind – so when I help with anxiety, I do a lot of work around understanding this concept and  showing you  how to look at your problem from a whole new point of view.

Experience advises to take action sooner rather than later, because, it’s not just the anxiety that causes emotional discomfort, if untreated anxiety slowly affects other aspects of your life and often becomes quite specialised, leading to issues such as:

• Agoraphobia – Feeling like you can’t leave the house because you will have a panic attack
• OCD – Where you become obsessive about certain habits or procedures
• Emetophobia – An unwanted fear of vomiting and this may limit the foods you are prepared to eat
• Social Anxiety Disorder – Where you cut yourself off from friends, fearing anxiety whilst in their company
• Irrational phobias – that tend to keep you away from recovery
• Low self esteem - As anxiety continues, restricting your activities, frustration lowers your self esteem
• With your confidence knocked for six, you do less things and believe in yourself less
• Dependency on family and relations for emotional and perhaps even financial support
• Depression - As you continue to restrict your life depressive feelings may begin to reign
• Insomnia and disrupted sleep

Where appropriate our initial meeting can be at your home as I understand what a big step this is and how your anxiety will be on full alert.  I often travel with clients to help them confront their fears too, my calm nature and understanding of how types of anxiety work allows me to keep you calm, as we  work through a range of behavioural therapy and cognitive therapy that allows you to get back on the road to recovery and back functioning with normal levels of emotion once more.

Begin to take back control today – call me 01280 823059

If you have really had enough of this give me a call or email me and we can informally and confidentially discuss what is possible to get you out of this very treatable condition. See what my clients had to say here.

I am located in Buckingham, Bucks. Close to Milton Keynes, Aylesbury, Bicester, Brackley, Winslow and Towcester and 20 minutes from M1 Junction 13 or M40 junction 9/10.

“The sessions I had with John have helped me enormously, I saw straight away that he was very concerned about my problems and I could tell that he has a genuine passion for helping people who need it! John was extremely knowledgeable and professional and approached my problems from an angle which I could understand. I feel that the sessions I’ve had have equipped me with tools I can use in my everyday life which I’ve found very empowering. I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending John to my friends and family as he’s an all round honest and genuine person. Thanks very much John for everything!!”

Not local to Buckingham, Buckinghamshire or Milton Keynes?

You can buy an anxiety relaxation mp3 here

Listen to a sample of this professional hypnotic recording press ► below. Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This professionally recorded hypnosis mp3 will gently relax you and begin the process of updating your unconscious mind on how to handle anxiety and take relaxation into your day. It is not a substitute for professional anxiety therapy, however, it is a great starting point and you can download this immediately and begin to relax.

Hypnotherapy for anxiety & panic attacks

Feeling anxious? – We all have certain levels of anxiety in our lives, so it’s not the presence of anxiety alone that creates problems; it is the severity of the anxiousness and how much it gets in the way of our lives and leaves us feeling low and out of control that makes it so uncomfortable.

In my experience, anxiety and panic attacks are very real and they can be very distressing – when a full blown panic attack fires off, a person could be anywhere and all they’ll want to do is run away, to flee that environment. Their heart will be racing, their chest constricted, often feeling like they are experiencing a heart attack. These anxiety symptoms are often compounded because they can feel their heart pumping violently (even in the neck area) and hearing the blood pumping around their ears and head. They experience trouble breathing, their hands begin to sweat and they feel faint, other symptoms include tingling sensations, headaches and muscle tension – all in all, a very scary situation.

Many people after a major panic attack visit their doctor or hospital fearing something is wrong and are often surprised (and embarrassed) when they are told it was a panic attack or overwhelming anxiety and that just adds to the feeling of being out of control.

Anxiety builds up slowly over time, until, one day it spills over and manifests itself in uncomfortable episodes. Often there are underlying drivers in peoples life for this – stress, upheaval, change, bereavement, pressure, depression, feeling lost or alone – then, when they throw in some disrupted sleep they have the right circumstances for anxiety to thrive.

And that’s just the beginning!

Because as they try to understand what is going on, the voice inside their head (internal dialogue) is racing around trying to figure it out and it makes no sense. That frustrates and worries them and they begin to question themselves and their abilities. This leads to what I call “anxiety paralysis” – because they are questioning their own competence and are fearful of another anxiety attack they tend to restrict the things they do and try to stay in a safe world, trying to avoid events or environments where they previously experienced anxiety.

Associations begin to form, for example; if the original anxious moment was in a car then subsequently, enclosed spaces may be a trigger and driving long distances may become difficult and generate more stress anxiety. By this point everything seems to blur into one, what started off as a panic attack or anxiety attack becomes General Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and can often escalate and include depressive feelings and may become anxiety depression (a combination of anxiety and depression).

Whenever it comes on and whatever you call it, it is fear based and feels very real. It may seem ridiculous that a person cannot even walk to the end of his street, but that ’s the power of fear. It may seem totally out of proportion, however, it is paralysing.

Anxiety depression in all forms is very treatable. Our initial target is to reduce the anxious symptoms down to an acceptable level, this is done by teaching you a range of therapeutic techniques that allow you to remain calm and relaxed whilst anxious this will reduce the intensity of any uncomfortable feelings. With this new ability you can begin to go about your day and get back to the things that need doing knowing that whatever happens you will stay in control.

We then use a range of therapy for anxiety, including hypnotherapy for anxiety and NLP for anxious feelings, where we work with your unconscious mind to understand and mitigate whatever the underlying issues are that caused your unconscious to “keep you safe” by forcing you to move away from certain events or circumstances. Once done the anxiety tends to dissolve of its own accord.

Whilst anxious other factors should be considered, try to restrict your intake of caffeine, this will also help you sleep and refrain where possible from smoking and alcohol, as they are known to worsen the symptoms of anxiety and do disrupt sleep.

Light aerobic exercise is good as you can regain confidence in your heart and body (remember, as horrible as an anxiety attack is – it won’t kill you!) and you can burn off the chemicals and adrenaline that is pumped into your body during anxious moments. In addition, it is important that you accept that you are working through your anxiety at this time in your life and ensure that you are not taking on too many responsibilities – It is OK to say no, explain your circumstances and ask people to help; you’ll be surprised how they may respond.

Overcoming anxiety & panic attacks

Most fears include a huge amount of stress anxiety, so it’s good to understand where this comes from and what you can do about it. Most people, who face anxiety, do so, because they are trying to prevent life from being what it is, they explore in their minds all the different scenarios of what might happen – and because they are trying to cover every eventuality, which, of course, is impossible – the unconscious mind gets anxious.

At a more basic level, we want life to be a certain way to give us a better chance of survival and through surviving we find happiness, so if you think life will present situations that will prevent your ideal plans from happening, then you begin to get anxious. Our human survival mechanism is based on two concepts; firstly, on animal based fears, such as, fear of spiders, fear of being bitten by a dog, fear of suffocation (claustrophobia) etc. Then secondly, we have ego based fears, like, feeling embarrassed, looking like a fool, fear of being judged by others or not being accepted into a group.

These ego based fears are often approval seeking mechanisms, for example, ‘needing to be accepted by the group’ could be translated as ‘I might not survive without the group’ at an instinctual level. Approval seeking from parents too, because if they withdrew their love and care, what impact would that have on your survival?

So, people who are good at becoming anxious are very efficient at looking to the future and trying to prevent what’s coming, they generate a wide spectrum of scary ‘what if’ scenarios which, unsurprisingly, can overwhelm them.

If we just accepted that life doesn’t always go to plan, if we accepted that people might not like us, if we accepted that there are variables that we just can’t change, if we accepted that there will be spiders and dogs around, if we accepted life just the way it is – we could then just do the best job we can – and we would be better at coping with anxiety.

Anyone can have anxious feelings or find themselves feeling anxious, sometimes these feelings can be helpful, for example, by increasing a person’s ability to perform in a race. These feelings are normal. Only when the symptoms are more intense or long-lasting do they interfere with a person’s concentration and ability to do routine tasks. People may avoid situations that could provoke feelings of anxiety. This interference with daily living, as much as the symptoms of anxiety, may lead a person to seek help.

Anxiety therapist Buckinghamshire

Anxiety counselling – I can help you to manage your anxious feelings using a variety of therapies – including hypnosis for anxiety, cognitive therapy, relaxation techniques and working on the motivation to begin a light exercise regime which is known to be good for lessening the levels of adrenalin in your body.

My office is in Buckingham Buckinghamshire – I will focus on your problem and will do all I can to get your emotions back under control in the shortest time and with empathy, integrity and professional knowledge. You can read about my guarantees, fees and FAQ’s about my therapy. Please have a look around the site and get a feel for how I work, perhaps read some of my client testimonials and when you are ready give me a call we can informally talk about what is possible.

Villages and towns close to my office include; Milton Keynes, Aylesbury, Banbury, Tingewick, Finmere, Gawcott, Padbury, Steeple Claydon, Brackley, Silverstone, Stowe, Nash, Winslow, Little Horwood, Great Horwood, Leckhampstead, Beachampton, Wicken, Deanshanger, Stoney Stratford, Old Stratford.

“When I went to see John at the start of the year I was in a very difficult place. I felt paralysed and unable to move since being made redundant from my job. I was depressed, uncommunicative and desperately unhappy. My family’s happiness was also compromised and my mindset was stuck in negative. Since seeing John, my life has turned around; I am comfortable with change and feel able to try almost anything. My self-confidence has reappeared and I have been able to launch two businesses. I feel energised and invigorated and look forward to each and every day – I no longer panic about the future or obsess about the past and how I have been wronged. At the same time, I am still very aware of the past and what happened in it, but I now feel that I own my history and accept it; and I take responsibility for my life and choices every day. I have a clear view of what my values are and my strengths and weaknesses and I continue to work daily on those areas that I need to improve further and life feels much better. I highly recommend John.”