Your Therapy Space

Accredited CBT and counselling Leamington Spa, Warwickshire and online

Perfectionism

CBT therapist in Leamington Spa: How Cognitive Behavioural Therapy may help with anxiety

by

Finding a CBT Therapist in Leamington Spa for Anxiety

If you are experiencing anxiety, you are not alone.  Anxiety is a significant problem which causes many people to seek therapy.  Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is recommended by the NHS and NICE guidelines as being effective in helping people overcome anxiety.

CBT is a practical, collaborative and evidence-based approach to therapy and it may help you to understand how your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours maintain anxiety.  CBT may help you to learn about alternative ways of thinking and responding.  It may help you to understand yourself and your triggers and learn how to reduce worry, panic, and avoidance so that you could start feeling more in control of your life.  Anxiety can make your life feel very small.  CBT may help you to live in a more fulfilled way.

How CBT Works for Anxiety

Anxiety can feel overwhelming and unpleasant.  You may experience racing thoughts, a pounding heart, muscle tension, or a sense of dread that something terrible will happen.

CBT may help by:

  • Identifying anxious thought patterns and thinking styles (e.g. “I can’t do this,” “Something terrible will happen”).
  • Challenging unhelpful beliefs that make you feel anxious.
  • Gradually face fears in a safe, structured way if relevant so that you can learn to handle situations.
  • Introducing relaxation and grounding techniques to help to calm the nervous system.
  • Developing a relapse prevention plan to help you after therapy has ended.

Common Anxiety Problems Treated with CBT

  • Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD): Persistent worry; muscle tension; difficulty relaxing; “what if” thinking.
  • Panic Disorder: Repeated panic attacks; fear of losing control; avoidance of situations.
  • Social Anxiety: Fear of being judged negatively, blushing, being embarrassed or public speaking.
  • Phobias: Intense fear of specific things (e.g. small spaces, spiders, heights).
  • Health Anxiety: Worrying constantly about illness or physical symptoms.
  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD): Unwanted intrusive thoughts and repetitive behaviours.

What to Expect in CBT Sessions

  • Assessment — Explore anxiety triggers & patterns and goals.
  • Formulation — Build a “picture” of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours (identify how anxiety is maintained) including how early experiences inform this map if relevant.
  • Skill Building — Learn tools to challenge thoughts & reduce avoidance
  • Practice — Apply CBT skills in between sessions (complete homework tasks).
  • Review — Consolidate gains and develop a relapse prevention plan.

Practical CBT Tools for Anxiety

Therapy may include the following:

  • Thought Records: Record thoughts, examine evidence for/against, and reframe them.
  • Behavioural Experiments: Test fears and beliefs in real life (e.g. going to a crowded place) to see if worst-case scenarios happen.
  • Exposure Therapy: Gradually face feared situations in a structured way with the aim of reducing avoidance and generating new learning.
  • Breathing & Grounding Techniques: To help to calm your body’s stress response when you feel overwhelmed.
  • Problem-Solving Skills: Break challenges into manageable steps.

Take the Next Step

If anxiety is affecting your life, CBT may help you to overcome your anxiety. If you are searching for a qualified and experienced and fully accredited CBT therapist in Leamington Spa.  I would be happy to talk with you about how CBT might help your situation.  I offer online sessions which can be arranged at a mutually convenient time to fit in with your schedule.  Please contact me by emailing info@yourtherapyspace.co.uk or ringing 07950064086.  I look forward to helping you.

It’s all my fault

by

“It’s all my fault.  I couldn’t make you happy.  Everything I tried ended up with a ‘yes but…’.  Whatever I did was never enough.  It was all up to me.  You wouldn’t even meet me halfway.  It’s as though I was a thing and my experience didn’t matter.  It was all about you and always was.  I spent so much time trying to help you, I’m the one who has now ended feeling low and anxious and not good enough.”

I hope the above does not resonate with you and you have loving relationships in your life.  I hope you have relationships with other people where you matter too and where mutuality and respect and boundaries exist.  I hope that you have a great relationship with yourself and that you like yourself and accept the human condition and don’t expect yourself to achieve perfection endlessly.

We can be so self-critical of ourselves.  Always shouldering the blame and beating ourselves up to be better and do more and try harder.  Think about how you speak to yourself when you make a mistake.  Do the phrases ‘I’m an idiot’, ‘I’m a loser’, ‘I always mess up’ or ‘I’m stupid’ seem familiar?  If so, I wonder how you see these thoughts as helping you?  How is  having a cruel voice in your mind working out for you?  Is this self-criticism consistent with developing resilience in your life?

If you are struggling with self-criticism or perfectionism and want to make some changes but can’t break out of the cycle you are stuck in, please get in touch.

 

What if something wonderful happens?

by

If you suffer from anxiety, it can be hard to believe that some people rarely worry.  When faced with an uncertain or new situation, the automatic thoughts for people who don’t worry are along the lines of ‘what if something wonderful happens’ or ‘I can’t wait to see what happens’.  People who don’t worry are often excited about novelty.

Do you find yourself thinking that you wish you thought like that and that every ‘what if’ you have seems to be about something terrible happening.  Worry creates anxiety and is very exhausting.  It can ruin our days, our ability to be fully present and then it can ruin our sleep and keep us wake at night.

I have worked with many clients who worry and find their days full of dread.  It is so rewarding to help clients to realise that life does not have to be like this and to discover that there are other ways of showing up in the world.  Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has a significant evidence base for anxiety presentations.  If you think that it’s time to find a way to stop excessive worrying, please get in touch.

Image: Photo by Teodor Drobota on Unsplash

Being real

by

It’s coming up to that time of year again.  Everyone is getting excited about Christmas.  People are out and about, full of festive cheer, buying presents, attending office parties and catching up with friends.  You may have received some cards already and, possibly, some round ups of how great other people’s year has been.  Or so it seems.

We can be so talented at creating illusions.  The idea that all is well when it isn’t.  It sometimes feels like being real is not valued.  So, we sometimes slip on a mask and internalise all the niggles and worries and problems that keep us awake at night.  We start to feel lonely and misunderstood.  We can feel like running away from it all but we can’t do that either.

So we look for ways to cope.  Another drink, another mince pie, another new toy, working even more hours.  Anything to escape from our feelings.  And then the coping strategy becomes the problem.  And on and on.  People criticise us and call us weak because it’s easier than seeing our pain.

Imagine if there was another way.  Imagine being able to say ‘ I am finding things difficult and I need some support’.  Imagine being able to say ‘no’ as a full sentence.  Imagine being understood.  Imagine not having to focus on how stressed you are feeling all the time so that you could enjoy spending time with the people you care about over the festive period.  If you can’t find a way to achieve this, then talking to someone might be helpful to find a way forward.  Your therapy space is waiting, if you need it.

Good enough is not good enough

by

Imagine how your life would be if you felt comfortable with things being good enough?  Would you feel like a failure?  Or would you feel as though you had achieved an enviable goal?  Your response indicates how you dance with life and how you evaluate yourself.

For a perfectionist or someone who suffers from anxiety, the idea of being good enough might feel awful and a second-rate position to aspire to.  It might imply that you have not really tried hard enough to achieve excellence and that you are one of those people who is a bit on the lazy side and lacks ambition.  For someone who is comfortable with being good enough, the idea of being perfect is an unattainable goal and they may realise that there are many things they wish to focus on in their life apart from work or study or looking perfect.   Or it may be that things are far from good enough because you are procrastinating and feel overwhelmed and don’t know how to start changing things.

There is no right answer here and some people are happy with seeking perfection.  For others, this can be an anxiety-provoking and isolating pursuit which can be exacerbated by others failing to understand just how important it feels to get everything right or give 100% all the time.  In fact, the more others fail to understand the needs of the perfectionist, the more anxious and isolated the person can become.  This can lead to arguments and the breakdown of relationships with friends, partners, family and colleagues.  The same can be said of poor performance.

If you are struggling with perfectionism or with procrastination and  a lack of performance, it can be hard to understand how to change things.  You might be stuck and powerless and feel that no one is going to understand.  You might be falling behind at work or with your studies.  It might be useful to seek some help to explore what is going on and possible changes you could make to live live in a more fulfilling way.  Therapy can help you to do this, and to figure out how you would like the rest of your life to be.

 

I’m worried I’m going to be found out

by Leave a Comment

Have you ever wondered whether other people are going to declare that you are a fake and simply not up to it….whether it be a job or some studies….or a relationship….or something else that matters to you.  If not, that’s great.  It sounds like you feel confident about yourself.  If on the other hand you go through life feeling like this, then it sounds like you may have low self-esteem.  Or a critical voice inside your head which says you are not good enough, never have been and never will.  And it’s only a matter of time before everyone else finds out and rejects you.

I don’t want to start trying to analyse why you might have low self-esteem.  It’s not really my style.  However, I do think it can help to understand where it comes from.  Mainly because you can start to challenge some of the assumptions you might be making.  If you can remember feeling like this when you were growing up then it’s probably no surprise that you feel like this now.  Big people seem to be very good at telling little people about all their shortcomings.  Over and over.

Feeling like you are going to be ‘found out’ adds another layer of stress to a situation that might be stressful enough.  Imagine what your life would be like if you started to trust in yourself and your abilities.  Let go of the beliefs that you are inadequate or not good enough.  Who’s voice are you hearing?  Who is it that is telling you don’t add up to very much.

I think that counselling can really help if you feel like this.  I promise you that if you decide to work with me I won’t ask you to write down a list of all the things you are good at.  I can’t imagine anything worse.  If someone tried to work with me like that I’d run a mile.  After all, if you knew that stuff you wouldn’t need me in the first place.