Anxiety Treatment in Melbourne
It’s human to feel anxious, sometimes.
When anxiety gets out of hand, though, it drains you and your life. And it feels hard to shake.
When should you seek help to manage anxiety?
If anxiety gets in the way of work, relationships and everyday life, it might be time to get some support with how to manage anxiety. Even if there’s nothing major going on in your life, or you haven’t been through anything particularly stressful, anxiety can still creep into the picture sometimes.
Anxiety doesn’t have to rule your life though. Our anxiety psychologists can help.
What are the signs and symptoms of anxiety?
Here are some of the ways that anxiety can impact your thinking:
- Difficulty tolerating uncertainty
- Constant worry that feels difficult to control
- Obsessive or intrusive thoughts
- Excessive fear
- Assuming the worst
- Catastrophising
- Feeling critical of yourself and others
- Jumping to conclusions
- Underestimating how well you will cope
Here are some of the ways that anxiety can affect your body:
- Shallow or rapid breathing
- Racing heart
- Feeling restless and on edge
- Trouble winding down
- Difficulty concentrating
- Sleep problems
- Appetite and weight changes
- Nausea
- Dizziness
- Physical health issues such as IBS, stomach issues and rashes
- Hot or cold flushes
- Muscle tension
- Headaches
Here are some of the ways that anxiety can impact your behaviour:
- Avoiding feared or new situations
- Difficulty getting everyday tasks done
- Needing to control people and situations
- People-pleasing
- Procrastinating
- Withdrawing from others
- Not speaking up
- Engaging in rituals or compulsions to cope with anxiety
- Using drugs, alcohol or eating to cope with anxiety
- Sick days from work
So how common is anxiety?
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, anxiety is the most common mental health issue in Australia. In any 12-month period, 2 million Australian people will experience some type of anxiety. At some point in their life, 1 in 4 women and 1 in 5 men will experience anxiety.
According to Beyond Blue, in Australia, it’s estimated that 45% of people will experience a mental health condition in their lifetime.
Types of anxiety
Anxiety can come in lots of different shapes and forms including:
- Generalised anxiety and perfectionism
- Stress and burnout
- Social anxiety or social phobia
- Panic attacks and agoraphobia
- Post-traumatic stress
- Obsessions and compulsions
- Phobias and fears
- Health anxiety
- Perinatal anxiety
Anxiety treatment options
Depending on their training and background, anxiety psychologists at Inner Melbourne Clinical Psychology will work with you to tailor an approach that draws on a variety of evidence-based treatments including:
- Cognitive Behaviour Therapy
- Mindfulness
- Dialectical Behaviour Therapy
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
- Schema Therapy
- Compassion based approaches
- Solution Focused Therapy
- Positive Psychology
- Strengths based approaches
- Psychodynamic approaches
- Emotion Focused Therapy
- Internal Family Systems Therapy principles
- Cognitive Analytic Therapy
- Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing Therapy
- Narrative Exposure Therapy
- Cognitive Processing Therapy
- Trauma informed approaches
- Metacognitive Therapy
- Exposure Therapy
- Behaviour Therapy
- Motivational Interviewing
- Client Centred Therapy