Individual Counselling
& Psychotherapy

Anxiety is not always visible from outside. It often looks like someone who is coping well, hitting deadlines and showing up for people, while privately running a constant background calculation about what might go wrong.

People describe difficulty sleeping, a body that stays tense for no clear reason, avoiding situations that used to be ordinary, or physical symptoms that have been checked medically and found to be fine.

In sessions we look at what the anxiety is responding to, how it has been managed so far, and which of those strategies help. Avoidance is the usual example: it works immediately, which is exactly why it becomes a habit and why the world slowly gets smaller.

The work here often draws on CBT and REBT. Noticing the thought that sets off the response, testing whether it holds, and rebuilding tolerance for the situations that have been dropping away.

Low mood gets described as sadness, but people more often describe flatness. Things that used to matter stop registering. Getting through an ordinary day takes effort nobody else can see.

It can arrive with changes in sleep or appetite, withdrawal from people, irritability that feels out of proportion, or a self-critical commentary running most of the day.

Sessions begin with the shape of it. When it started, what surrounds it, whether it shifts at all. Some low mood is a response to circumstances. Some has been present long enough that circumstances are no longer the whole explanation.

The work usually involves re-establishing small amounts of activity, examining the self-critical thinking that holds it in place, and understanding what the low mood has been protecting against.

If there are thoughts of self-harm, that gets discussed directly and early. Safety comes before any other part of the work.

Overthinking is one of the most common reasons people get in touch, and one of the most frustrating, because while it is happening the thinking feels productive.

It looks like replaying a conversation for hours. Drafting a message eleven times. Making a decision and then reopening it. Researching a worry until the research becomes its own problem.

The distinction that matters in session is between thinking that goes somewhere and thinking that circles. Circling has a function even when it produces nothing. It creates the sensation of doing something about an uncertainty that cannot actually be settled.

The work involves catching the point where useful thinking turns into circling, understanding what the circling is trying to prevent, and building a different response to not knowing. That is harder than it sounds, because the mind tends to treat stopping as carelessness.

Overwhelm is what happens when what a person is carrying exceeds what they can process at the speed it keeps arriving.

It can look like crying without a clear trigger, going numb, snapping at people who did nothing, or being unable to think clearly about anything at all. Some describe it as too much feeling. Others describe it as none.

Pace matters more than almost anything else here. Trying to analyse everything at once usually adds to the load.

Sessions focus on slowing things down enough to separate what is happening now from what has accumulated, working out which pressures can move and which cannot, and building ways to steady yourself in the moment. Understanding tends to arrive after the intensity settles, not before.

Self-esteem concerns rarely arrive under that name. People describe being unable to accept a compliment, apologising constantly, or feeling like an impostor in a role they have held competently for years.

Usually there is a harsh internal voice that the person would never use with anyone else, and which they have stopped noticing because it has been there so long.

In session we look at where those standards came from, what they have been protecting against, and what happens when they are examined instead of obeyed.

Worth saying plainly: this work does not mean swapping criticism for praise. Most people do not believe the praise. What tends to help is building an accurate view of yourself, difficult parts included, and being able to hold it steady when something goes wrong.

Not everything fits a category, and it does not need to before you begin.

People come with a decision they cannot make. A situation they have told nobody about. A sense that something is off that they cannot name yet. A question about themselves that has been sitting there for years.

Some arrive with something specific and find the work moves somewhere else entirely. That is ordinary, and it usually means the sessions are doing what they should.

You do not need a diagnosis, a referral, or a tidy description of the problem. If you can say what has been on your mind, that is enough to start with.