Anxiety Disorder – what is it?
Everybody suffers from anxiety at sometimes in their lives and for many people, it is a daily occurrence. However, sufferers of GAD feel in a near constant state of anxiety or stress which will interfere with many areas of their life. They experience excessive anxiety and worry about events or activities most days of the week for at least six months.
People with anxiety feel out of control of their thinking – even though they may appreciate that their anxiety is more intense than the situation warrants. They can’t relax, startle easily, and have difficulty concentrating. Often they have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep. Physical symptoms that often accompany general anxiety disorder include palpitations, fatigue, Irritable bowel syndrome, headaches, muscle tension, shaking, twitching, irritability, sweating, nausea or having to go to the bathroom often.
What causes anxiety and panic?
Anxiety does not just happen to us – it doesn’t appear out of the blue, even though that’s how it may seem. Negative, stressful thoughts are generated by unhelpful belief systems, which is why we can be quite unaware of them and the damage they do. Sufferers of anxiety are constantly occupying their minds with negative, catastrophic thoughts, either by worrying about situations that may occur (‘anticipatory anxiety’) or worrying that they don’t have the ability to cope with their current situation, eg, at work, with friends, etc (‘real time anxiety’).
At the very heart of anxiety lies a lack of self-belief: sufferers lack of belief in themselves and their ability to cope, which is why they spend a lot of time doubting themselves, berating themselves and planning for worst case scenarios. Another major component of general anxiety is social anxiety – feeling judged and worried about how others may perceive them. This also stems for self esteem issues: when we feel confident in our own skin, we feel confident around others.
Panic Attacks
If you’ve suffered a panic attack, you’ll understand the fear and anxiety they cause. They’re very common and symptoms include palpitations, shortness of breath – hyperventilating, sweating and feelings of loss of control. Every symptom you experience during an attack is a natural, harmless part of your body’s fight-or-flight reaction – but can very frightening at the time as you feel so out of control.
Panic symptoms are the direct result of the hormone adrenaline which is released when you perceive that you are in danger. With the release of adrenaline, your blood pressure increases and breathing speeds up preparing you for muscular effort. Although the feelings you experience are very unpleasant, they will do you no harm. You will not die, lose control or have a heart attack.
However, the fear of having a panic attack can often lead to the desire to avoid certain situations or even forcing yourself into feared situations but feeling full of dread and anxiety. You may well be building up anxiety about a situation days or weeks in advance but feel unable to change the way you think about it…
How do we help you overcome anxiety and panic?
If you are suffering from anxiety or panic, then this programme is all about YOU! This is a unique and highly effective six session training programme where I will teach you how to develop good self-esteem and feel in control of yourself and your life. Discover how to completely change the way you think and feel about yourself and challenging situations, overcome your symptoms and live a happier and positive life.
When you genuinely understand how your mind works, i.e. the interaction between your thinking, your beliefs and your feelings, you feel much more in control and empowered. When you recognise that nearly all of your problems, stresses, symptoms and ill-health are either caused or made worse by poorly-managed thinking, you feel fantastic… because you caused these problems, then you can change them!
This treatment does not involve hypnosis or therapy: it is an empowering and liberating psychological training program which, with your input, will allow you to overcome anxiety, and feel much more in control in your life. You’ll find that it's much simpler and faster than you may have ever believed to take control and get the life you want.
Isn’t your programme similar to CBT?
Thrive is entirely different to techniques such as NLP or CBT, even if on the surface they may sound similar.
Thrive doesn’t just focus upon giving a person some isolated insights, tools and techniques to cope with a symptom or problem. These approaches are ‘fire-fighting’ – trying to control or reduce the anxiety AFTER we have already created it by our thinking. Often people tire quickly of having to maintain this level of effort of fending of negative thoughts. The Thrive Programme is about Thriving and overcoming symptoms is just a part of that. It is about creating strong psychological foundations (eg, good self esteem) so that we are not creating anxiety. You don’t need to fire-fight if you are not setting fires in the first place.
The Thrive Programme is a comprehensive training course, which provides people with unique self-insights that enables them to develop the beliefs, resources and motivation to build resilience and make positive changes across all areas of their lives. It is of limited value teaching you any sort of ‘positive thinking’ or CBT or NLP techniques unless you understand the component parts of your thinking and beliefs that continue to create the anxiety. If you are not able to understand or alter the driving forces behind your symptoms or anxiety, it can feel as though you are ‘treading water’ trying to fend off negative thoughts.
The Thrive Programme is a life-changing psychological training programme that empowers you with the skills, insights and resources in order to take control of your life, overcome any symptoms or problems you have, and thrive!
If you would like to find out more about how I can help you to complete the Thrive Programme CONTACT ME to arrange a FREE, confidential, initial consultation. You may also like to take a look at some video testimonials to see how other people have overcome their anxiety and panic attacks and in doing so, learned to truly Thrive.
