Anxiety therapy for adults, in Enniskillen and online
What anxiety looks and feels like
It takes several shapes, and people often have more than one.
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Panic
Sudden, overwhelming, physical. Racing heart, breathlessness, dizziness, a certainty that something is badly wrong. Often followed by the fear of it happening again, which becomes its own problem.
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Health anxiety
Noticing every sensation and needing to know what it means. Checking. Searching. Brief relief after reassurance, then it starts again.
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Social anxiety
The rehearsing beforehand and the replaying afterwards. Reading faces for signs you have got something wrong. Exhausting even when it goes well.
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Generalised anxiety
No single focus, just a sense that something is not right, attaching itself to whatever is going on: work, money, family, health.
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The physical experience
Nausea, tension headaches, digestive trouble, a chest that never quite loosens. Tests come back clear and the symptoms continue, which tends to make people feel dismissed rather than reassured.
What anxiety is costing you
This is the part that rarely gets talked about, and in my view it matters most.
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Anxiety does not usually announce itself by stopping you. You take the quieter route. You sit near the door. You go, but you drive separately so you can leave. You decline the invitation, but you have a good reason, so it does not feel like avoidance.
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Each of those decisions is small and sensible on its own. Together, over a few years, they can narrow your life considerably.
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Most people cannot say when it started. They can only say that there are places they no longer go, things they used to do easily and now plan around, and a sense that the world available to them has become smaller than it was.
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And avoidance works, which is the difficulty. Every time you step back, the anxiety drops, and your system learns that stepping back is what kept you safe. The relief is real, immediate, and it teaches exactly the wrong lesson.
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This is where my counselling and occupational therapy background changes what we look at. Not only what you think and feel, but what you actually do, your days, your routines, the environments you move through, and what has quietly dropped out of them. That is often where the most useful work is, and it is rarely where people expect to start.
Why the techniques have not held
Many people arriving here have already tried a great deal. Breathing exercises. Apps. Challenging the thought. Reading about it, sometimes extensively.
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None of that was wasted, and none of it means you have failed at it.
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Your system decides whether a situation is safe below conscious thought, and much faster than thought. When it reads danger, reasoning with it is like arguing with a smoke alarm. The alarm is not being unreasonable. It is doing its job with the information it has.
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Techniques applied in the moment can help you get through something. They rarely change the underlying setting, because they arrive after the decision has already been made.
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I have written about this at more length: Why Can't I Just Think My Way Out of Anxiety?
How I work
I am a counsellor accredited with the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society, an occupational therapist registered with the HCPC, and a clinical hypnotherapist. We would draw on whichever fits best.
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Talking
Understanding what your anxiety is organised around, and where it learned to be. Not analysis for its own sake, most people find that what looked irrational makes complete sense once its history is visible.
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Working with the body
Building actual capacity for your system to settle, rather than techniques for managing it while it stays high. This is slower than a coping strategy and it lasts longer.
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Getting your life back
Looking honestly at what has narrowed, and rebuilding it deliberately and at a pace you set. Not exposure for its own sake. Widening the range of what is available to you again, in an order that makes sense.
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Clinical hypnotherapy, where it fits
Anxiety is one of the clearest uses for it, much of what keeps it running is automatic and below conscious argument, which is exactly the level hypnotherapy works at. It is never used without your agreement, and never as the whole of the work.
What a session is actually like
There is no requirement to arrive with something prepared, and no expectation that you can explain what is happening. A great many people describe their anxiety as making no sense to them, and that is a normal place to begin.
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Some sessions involve a great deal of talking. Some involve noticing what your body is doing and working directly with that. Nothing happens that you have not agreed to.
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I keep substantial gaps between clients so that I arrive settled and unhurried. A regulated nervous system in the room is part of what makes this work.
Online and in person
Online, across the UK
Anxiety work translates well to video, and for some people the first appointment is considerably easier from their own kitchen than from an unfamiliar waiting room.
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In person, in Enniskillen
A quiet consulting room, with no communal waiting area, you come straight to your appointment rather than sitting among other people, which for some is the difference between attending and cancelling.
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Sessions are 50 or 80 minutes. Most people start with 50.
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Who this suits, and who it does not
It tends to suit people who:
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Have noticed their life getting smaller and want that back
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Experience anxiety physically as much as mentally
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Have tried techniques and apps and found the relief temporary
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Want to work with the underlying state rather than get better at managing it
It may not be the right fit if:
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You are currently in crisis or at immediate risk, urgent support is the right first step, and I can help you identify it
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You want a short, structured, protocol-led course of treatment, which other approaches deliver better
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Your anxiety has a physical cause not yet investigated: thyroid function, heart rhythm and some medications all produce genuine anxiety symptoms, and a GP appointment belongs alongside this rather than instead of it
If you are not sure, the free 30-minute call is the place to find out.
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Common questions
Will I have to face the things I am avoiding?
Eventually, and at a pace you set, never before there is enough steadiness to make it workable. Nothing is decided without your agreement, and nothing happens in a session that you have not chosen.
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Is hypnotherapy going to be part of it?
Only if you want it to be. It is offered as one option among several, discussed properly first, and it is not the whole of the work. You remain fully aware and in control throughout.
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I have been anxious my whole life. Is it too late?
No. Long-standing anxiety usually has more history attached, which sometimes means the work takes longer, but the nervous system remains capable of learning something new regardless of how long it has held a pattern.
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What if I cannot explain what I am anxious about?
That is extremely common, and it is not an obstacle. Anxiety without an identifiable object is still anxiety, and we can work with what your system is doing without a tidy account of why.
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Should I see my GP as well?
Often, yes. Some physical conditions produce anxiety symptoms directly, and medication and therapy work perfectly well alongside each other. It is not a choice between them.
A conversation first
Before anything is booked, we have a free, no-obligation 30-minute conversation, by phone or video. A chance to describe what is going on, ask whatever you need to ask, and get a sense of whether working together feels right.
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There is nothing to prepare and no pressure on the call.
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It is rarely just worrying
Most people are able to describe it accurately. A low hum of dread that is there on waking. A mind that runs ahead into every version of what might go wrong. Chest tight, stomach unsettled, jaw held. Awake at 3am with the whole thing rehearsing itself again.
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And underneath it, usually, a second layer: being anxious about being anxious. Watching for the first signs. Bracing for the next episode. Arranging the day around not setting it off.
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Anxiety is not simply a habit of negative thinking. It is a physical state, and the thoughts are as much a symptom of it as a cause.