Anxiety Issues

Counselling for Anxiety

Feelings of anxiety are common in most people. However, when these feelings begin to congest normal thought patterns with negativity and confusion, daily life can be severely impacted.

Severe anxiety occurs when feelings of uneasiness become overly prominent in your mind. Worry, fear and nervousness can become all-consuming thoughts and difficult to control, affecting how you go about your day-to-day life. Anxiety can interfere with sleep patterns, eating routines and social interaction.

There are many types of anxiety, ranging from panic attacks to phobias, post-traumatic stress, social anxieties and Generalised Anxiety Disorder.

At Hertford Counselling Service we help combat these feelings of anxiety, which can be difficult to deal with alone. Talking therapy enables a person to share the worries and fears with another so that together you are able to work towards overcoming them.

Family Anxiety

Anxiety can be passed down through families. Often when talking to clients we discuss how they were brought up and the history of their families. Levels of anxiety can be linked to the environment that our parents and grandparents were brought up in. Families who have experienced high levels of anxiety through living in traumatic times can unconsciously pass down these feelings to the next generation.

This is called inter-generational trauma. An example of this is the children who were evacuated in the Second World War suffered from high levels of anxiety. Another well-documented example is the survivors from the Nazi death camps, who not only have survivors guilt, have high levels of anxiety. Refugees and immigrants are particularly susceptible to these forms of anxiety.

The following form is used by professionals to assess whether an individual may be suffering from anxiety and may also be a helpful resource for you:

GAD-7 Anxiety Assessment Form

Re-entry Anxiety 

As COVID-19 vaccinations continue and we move towards full reopening, many people are feeling re-entry anxiety- an uneasiness about returning to the old normal of schools, offices, hugs and handshakes and social gatherings, large and small.

There is no right or wrong way to handle re-entry and each of us will have a different experience but mental health professionals believe that going at your own pace and think of the changes is a way to build resilience.