MORE VITALITY ON THE INSIDE AND IN LIFE
Help with anxiety
Welcome to book a session, and we will talk through what you would like help with. I am a reg psychologist and meet clients online and at my practice in Stockholm, Sweden. You can get help with anxiety, for example, worrying, panic attacks, social phobia, and generalized anxiety disorder. I offer in-depth sessions (individual therapy) where you can gain perspective and understanding of yourself and change in your life.
About anxiety
Symptoms of anxiety can take different forms. The symptoms can be lighter or heavier and might have existed for a shorter or longer time.
Anxiety is an automatic response to a threat of any kind, meaning it is involuntary, and the experience of anxiety consists of thoughts, bodily reactions, and behaviors. For anxiety to occur, there doesn't need to be a stressor or an external threat present.
The symptoms can be negative thoughts, overthinking, pressing anxiety on the inside, low self-worth, palpitations, muscle tension, restlessness, etc. The symptoms affect well-being and may lead to difficulties to experience joy and harmony in life. Sometimes problems arise in relationships, leisure, and work besides the immediate suffering from anxiety.
Causes of anxiety
The causes of anxiety can also vary. External stressors in the present may have triggered anxiety and depression, for example, stressors of various kinds, divorce, loss, accident, illness, or trauma. Sometimes clients talk about neglect and trauma in relationships in childhood or adulthood. In the case of exhaustion and long-term stress, anxiety and depression might be present.
Anxiety may also have arisen if you have not learned to be guided by your emotional life and needs (but instead have learned to put feelings and needs aside). When a person has developed a habit of dismissing feelings and needs for some reason, there is a risk that anxiety and depression occur in the short and long term.
Anxiety and individual therapy
We will start with what you want help with and how to find ways to reduce anxiety symptoms. In the sessions, we will remain open to other areas where you wish changes to occur.
Those who come to me may have experiences of previous therapies where they feel that they learned a lot ('thinking and knowing') about themselves and anxiety, but symptoms may have remained. There is a big difference between understanding the problems intellectually and experiencing emotionally what can be done constructively about anxiety.
I work with affect-focused (ISTDP) therapy, which differentiates between 'thinking and knowing' a lot about anxiety and 'feeling and knowing' about anxiety and emotional processes.
Usually, the client and I work with an arrangement where the focus is on relational and emotional processes according to ISTDP. I experience that this arrangement has better results than a more intellectual approach to the problems. Other times we work based on a combination of ISTDP and seeking understanding and knowledge or a more cognitive-behavioral approach. The arrangement depends on what the client wishes to work with and what is needed for change.
