Anxiety is a necessary and normal reaction to threat situations. It triggers the ‘fight/flight’ response which prepares your body for action. However, it becomes a problem when it is triggered too often and too intensely and makes you feel on edge, creates worry and affects your everyday life.

Stress is a common experience, and is the way you respond to demands made on you by other people or yourself. You may feel overwhelmed, out of control, procrastinating, or juggling too many things at once and feel you are not achieving what you want to. If severe, it can interfere with your ability to function and your physical well-being.

Depression can present as an inability to enjoy yourself, low mood, difficulty doing everyday tasks, sleep problems, irritability, poor concentration, fatigue, lack of motivation, and feelings of hopelessness.

OCD is characterised by recurrent intrusive/obsessional thoughts that create feelings of anxiety and distress, and lead to ritualistic behaviours such as excessive checking, washing, cleaning, or reassurance seeking.

Panic attacks are extreme anxiety attacks, making you believe that something awful is going to happen to you. This can affect your daily life, stopping you doing things for fear of having another panic attack.

Low self-esteem refers to having a generally low opinion about yourself. This low opinion can result in you frequently feeling very low or anxious, and avoiding new opportunities.

PTSD develops following exposure to extremely threatening or frightening events such as car accidents, natural disasters, witnessing others’ distress, abuse or bullying. Symptom may include: flashbacks, nightmares, extreme anxiety, feelings of danger, or avoidance of thoughts and situations which may trigger a memory.

A phobia is an extreme fear which develops when a person has an exaggerated or unrealistic sense of danger about something. If a phobia becomes very severe, you may organise your life around avoiding the thing that’s causing you anxiety. This can restrict your day-to-day life and cause distress.

Health anxiety is marked by an excessive worry about your health to the extent that it can dominate your life. Symptoms apart from worry may include checking your body for signs of illness, constantly seeking reassurance related to health, fearful that medical tests may have missed something, and avoidance of anything to do with illness.

Social anxiety is characterised by a fear of negative judgement from others. Anxiety may affect you in different situations, such as social events, public speaking, speaking on the phone or eating in front of people. You may often feel shy and self-conscious and may be fearful, for example, of embarrassment, sweating, blushing or your mind going blank.

Emetaphobia is the fear of vomit in oneself and in others and can lead to behaviours to avoid getting sick or being exposed to illness. These behaviours become problematic and limit what a person is able to do.

These relate to habits which are hard to stop and cause distress to the sufferer, mentally and physically. They include hair pulling (trichotillomania), Nail biting (onychophagia) and skin picking (dermatillomania)

Sleep problems have different origins, but the way you think about sleep and the bedtime routines you have can impact on your sleep. It may be difficult getting off to sleep, or you may have fitful sleep.

You may feel that you are working too much and have no time for family, leisure or a social life. You may have tried to address this but have not been able to see a way to change.

You may have goals you want to achieve but are not able to reach them due to self limiting beliefs, fears and behaviours. We will address the barriers to becoming the person you want to be.

CBT can help  you manage menopausal symptoms when HRT cannot be used or alongside HRT.

CBT will help you understand the physiological changes you are going through, look at lifestyle changes, use slow breathing and relaxation techniques, help you to look at stress in your life and try to reduce it and improve your sleep. It will also help you to understand  how some coping responses may cause vicious cycles and address these.