What can I do when worry is taking over my life?

Mental Health Awareness Week (15 – 21 May) is all about anxiety, so let’s take a look at the most common cause of anxiety problems – worry.

Known as Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD for short), worrying too much about everything is often normalised. ‘I’m just a worrier!’ your friend says as they check their phone for the 20^th time, but over time it can start to take over. If you feel unable to stop or control your worrying, then it might be time to consider getting some support from a service like TALKWORKS.

What is Generalised Anxiety Disorder?

Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is the most common anxiety disorder. It is more than just being worried when faced with an important meeting or a first date, this is normal. GAD causes more constant feelings of anxiety and it can look very different for different people.
The common signs to look out for are:

• Feeling nervous anxious or on edge
• Regular physical anxiety feelings
  For example your heart racing, muscular tension or butterflies.
• Not being able to stop or control worrying
• Worrying too much about different things
• Struggling to relax or sleep
• Becoming more easily annoyed or irritable

When experiencing GAD, it can feel a bit like living in a giant game of whack-a-mole. Every time you sort out one cause of stress, another pops up! But there is help available.

What support is available for generalised anxiety disorder?

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) has been proven to be very effective in managing symptoms of GAD. At TALKWORKS we can offer therapy face-to-face, over the phone, by video call, via online self-help or through live text-based therapy. We also offer group CBT and a range of wellbeing workshops which teach you a range of tools and techniques to help you get back on track.

CBT can help to untangle the cycle of worrying, fear about the future and physical anxiety. The more we worry, the more anxious we feel, and then the more we feel we need to worry – and so the cycle continues. CBT will help break this cycle by understanding what physical feelings of anxiety really mean. It will teach you how to differentiate between worries we need to act on and those we need to learn to let go of. The therapy will also help you identify and change behaviours that may be helping to maintain this cycle of worry.

Following an initial assessment at TALKWORKS, if you and your therapist agree that you may be struggling with anxiety, you will work together to develop strategies to help you manage this and get back to feeling likd your old self.

For most people, coming to therapy can become another thing to worry about, but the only way to find out if it can help is to give it a go. What if it helped you feel less anxious? What if it actually set you free from the worry? Call TALKWORKS on 0300 555 3344 (Monday to Friday from 9am - 4:45pm) or complete an online form to self-refer today. If you would like to access text-based therapy support, you can find out more about it here.