Typical Experiences in Anxiety Counselling
Anxiety counselling typically involves a process of exploration, learning, and skill-building to help clients manage their anxiety. Here’s what someone might generally expect:
- Initial Assessment: A therapist will begin by gathering information about your anxiety, including the types of situations that trigger it, its intensity, and how it impacts your life. They might use questionnaires or rating scales to help with this.
- Understanding Anxiety: You’ll learn about the nature of anxiety, how it manifests in your body and mind, and how it differs from fear. This can involve exploring the physical, emotional and cognitive symptoms of anxiety, as well as identifying personal triggers.
- Exploring Past Patterns: You might discuss your past experiences to understand how your anxiety developed and the specific patterns that perpetuate it, such as avoidance or control strategies. This is an opportunity to look at the costs of these strategies and see how they affect your life.
- Focus on the Present: A key part of counselling is focusing on your present experience of anxiety, learning to notice your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations without judgement .
- Skill Development: You’ll learn techniques and strategies to manage your anxiety, such as mindfulness and acceptance. This will include techniques to help you defuse from difficult thoughts, and to make room for difficult feelings and sensations.
- Values-Based Living: Therapists help clients to identify what is truly important to them, then focus on taking action in line with these values rather than being guided by their anxiety.
- Experiential Exercises: You may engage in exercises that encourage you to experience your anxiety directly, while learning not to struggle with it. This may involve actively making space for uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, and observing them rather than fixing them.
- Gradual Exposure: You will be encouraged to take small steps to approach the situations you find anxiety provoking, without the aim of reducing anxiety, but rather to increase flexibility and improve your ability to do things that are important to you.
- Home Practice: Therapists may suggest daily practices to help reinforce what has been learned in sessions, creating new patterns of behaviour.
Why People Choose Coaching or Havening Practitioners
While traditional anxiety counselling remains effective for many, there’s a growing trend towards seeking help from coaches or Havening practitioners. This is because:
- A Focus on Solutions: Coaching tends to be more forward-focused and solution-oriented. Clients are taught tools and techniques to improve their performance and achieve goals. The focus is on increasing capacity to think, plan, lead, and manage more clearly.
- Less Emphasis on Diagnosis: Some clients may prefer a non-medical approach, where they are not labelled as ‘patients.’ Coaches tend to use a client centered approach, focusing on what the client wants, rather than a traditional medical model.
- Shorter Term: Coaching is often perceived as a shorter-term intervention, focusing on specific areas of improvement rather than long term changes.
- Client Control: Havening is considered a self-help technique where clients feel in control as they are finding their own way through it. Clients who seek out Havening may have issues with control and avoid traditional hypnotherapy because they feel out of control.
- Content-Free Option: Havening can be content-free, so clients don’t have to disclose past traumatic experiences if they don’t want to. This can be beneficial for those who are unwilling or unable to talk about their experiences.
- Workplace Focus: Coaching is often work-related, where the business pays and the focus is on work performance and improved effectiveness.
- Accessibility: Coaching and Havening can often be easier and quicker to access, than traditional therapies.
Summary
Anxiety counselling typically involves a detailed look at your symptoms, a deep dive into your past patterns, and the teaching of new skills such as mindfulness and defusion techniques. It will likely involve some discomfort as you learn to sit with uncomfortable thoughts and sensations. The process aims to help you identify your values and take action towards a more meaningful life, even when you experience anxiety. However, people may choose coaching or Havening because of a preference for a more forward-focused, solution oriented approach that avoids a medical model. Coaching offers clients practical tools to increase performance and reach work goals, while Havening is a self-help technique that offers a content-free way of overcoming difficulties. Both coaching and Havening can offer a shorter term, client led approach that appeals to those who want a different experience to traditional anxiety counselling.