Therapy with Anna
It might be that you haven’t made sense of what or how you are feeling or haven’t identified it as anxiety. You might just know that things feel really hard and overwhelming. Or maybe, you’re at the other end of the spectrum, you know you have anxiety, you’ve tried what you’ve been told to try – the breathing, the journaling, the reframing your negative thought and even therapy, but anxiety continues to show up. You find yourself stuck; spending time intellectualising your emotions and struggling to move forward. Anxiety thrives when we continue doing what we’ve always been doing. Wherever you are in your journey, you need therapy that works.
What does Therapy with Anna look like?
Therapy with me is evidence-based, and grounded in warmth, curiosity, and lived experience.
Throughout our time together, we will move through:
Our Foundation:
Therapy doesn’t work if you don’t feel safe and seen. This is why the foundational layer of our time together will focus on humanistic therapeutic approaches to create a sense of warmth, understanding, trust, and safety.
Your Context:
You are unique, and therapy is ineffective if you are not understood. We look at you, your background, your current context, internalised expectations, your wiring, your values, belief system and cultural expectations. We explore your experiences of anxiety and understand what may be behind the immediate challenges anxiety presents, identify how anxiety is impacting you and the thoughts feelings and behaviours that are no longer serving you.
The Intervention(s):
We tailor an approach for you. Based on the evidence-based, gold standard therapeutic approaches that I use. This will be framed within a trauma-informed lens and a neuro-affirming model so that we feed in your background, current challenges and wiring (see trauma-informed and neuro-affirming sections below for more detail). We will introduce interventions to change your relationship with anxiety, recover from the impact anxiety has had on you, and re-strengthen yourself and capacity for life and relationships.
The Reinforcement:
This is the work. Therapy with me isn’t about surface-level advice, simply talking things through or pretending that there’s a quick fix to this. It’s possible that you will feel better, and then worse again - it takes time and needs reinforcement. I know this from my own experience.
You don't have to figure things out alone, and you don't need to have all the answers; we can work it out together. Through this process, you will be able to find a way forward.
What does Therapy with Anna feel like?
The most important thing for me as a therapist is that you feel truly seen, heard and understood. I want you to feel you are not alone in this journey. Whether we are working on how anxiety is currently impacting you, and looking to reduce the symptoms you are experiencing, or understanding past struggles which may have contributed to your anxiety, we’ll move at a pace that feels right for you. I encourage a collaborative approach, you are an active participant in therapy, identifying what areas you want to focus on. We have regular reviews to ensure we’re professing toward your goals and that the therapeutic approach continues to be aligned with your needs. I’m here to ensure you get value from each session.
I’m not the type of therapist who will sit back, observe and nod along to you. I listen closely, I talk, I ask questions, offer reflections and provide psychoeducation. I will gently challenge too. And I want you to feel you can do that with me too, if I misunderstand or misinterpret you, you are safe to say; ‘actually Anna, that’s not quite it’. I want to fully understand what’s going on for you, one person’s manifestation of anxiety is not the same as another’s. Whilst therapy with me isn’t about quick fixes, it’s also not about pushing yourself too far before you’re ready. Therapy IS challenging, and can feel serious, but in my practice, there is also room for laughter and celebration.
What Therapeutic Approaches does Anna use?
I blend CBT, ACT, ERP, alongside Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, and Somatic Therapy. I use these therapeutic approaches to support you to respond differently to anxiety, explore what anxiety may be protecting you from, gain deeper insights and find practical solutions to re-connect to yourself, move forward in your life and ultimately recover from the hold anxiety has over you. Therapy with me isn’t about surface-level advice, simply talking things through or (on the flip side) pretending that there’s a quick fix to this. With my expertise and training in the gold standard treatment of ERP, we can work together to overcome your anxiety. I will be with your every step of the way.
Therapeutic approaches are very important, but the important thing to know is that I meet you where you are, tailoring my approach and drawing from these therapeutic models to support you. Every client is unique with their own history, personality, and coping mechanisms and therefore therapy should be as unique as you are.
Whilst anxiety is a very common and well-known condition, there is still a lot of misunderstanding of it. Many people receive therapy from skilled professionals who find that their anxiety has been missed, or the care provided has felt harmful or ineffective. There are many skilled and compassionate therapists who have not received the correct or adequate training to recognise and assess anxiety, or in the crucial interventions needed to treat anxiety such as ERP, ACT, and CBT. This is why it’s so important to look for these qualifications when searching for a therapist.
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CBT is an evidence-based approach. It’s practical, action focused and helps you make meaningful changes. It’s founded on the understanding that our thoughts, feelings and behaviours are all connected. CBT explores how each element contributes to the preservation of emotional difficulties. Through working with CBT, we can gain a greater awareness of unhelpful thinking patterns, reframe them and break the cycle the anxiety cycle.
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ACT is categorised as third wave CBT. It strongly supported by research as an effective therapy for anxiety. It aims to reduce psychological distress not by eradicating all negative thoughts and feelings, but by beginning to accept them without judgement. Using tools such as mindfulness, as we begin to witness our thoughts, feelings and sensations without being dragged down by them, they begin to matter less, and in turn they start to reduce. ACT uses six key process: contacting the present moment, diffusion, acceptance, self-as-context, values and taking commitment action. ACT encourages us to engage with life despite anxiety and live through our values, which eventually re-programmes our brain; changing our relationship with anxiety.
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ERP is gold standard evidence-based behavioural technique used to overcome anxiety. Anxiety thrives on avoidance; teaching our brain that our heightened fight-flight response to perceived threat is accurate and needed. So, we continue to avoid, it’s how we cope, but we are actually making our anxiety and fear worse. Through exposure and response prevention therapy, we will safely, and with intention, face your anxiety triggers, whether that be feared objects, situations, or memories. By doing so, we begin teaching our brain that the perceived threat is manageable, or is not a threat at all, gradually reducing fear over time.
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Somatic Therapy is a bottom-up approach, rather than a top-down approach. I would use this approach if past challenges/trauma is identified. It’s not just the brain that experiences stress and trauma, the body does too. When trauma is not actioned through the body and is unprocessed it becomes ‘stored’ in the body; meaning the body stays stuck in a form of the trauma response. In turn, this means that the body, and the nervous system, reacts to current triggers as if it were the past event, sending us into a trauma response, which often looks anxiety, fear and panic spirals. Through somatic work, we are working with the body to create a felt sense of safety. We allow our body sensations to tell us what’s needed and respond to them, to allow the body to process what’s happened to us. Please see the trauma-informed section for more details.
Note* if you are experiencing OCD, I would advise against this therapeutic approach.
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Psychodynamic therapy explores the potential underlying cause of anxiety in the form of past challenges or trauma. Together, we will explore early childhood experiences (as well as later difficulties) and relationship patterns that may be fueling your anxiety. Through self-reflection and analysis within a safe and supportive environment, you will be able to gain deeper emotional insights and change old patterns; developing healthier coping mechanisms. Please see the trauma-informed section for more details.