To My Client Who Has Anxiety
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Counsellor Klara Sharples reflects on working with a client with anxiety – do you resonate?
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If you're looking to start therapy, we can help – find yours here
You told me about your anxiety. You told me all about it. If felt private, intimate and raw. As we sat together in that room, summer breeze gently flapping the blinds as if to say “I hear you.”
I recognised the strength that you forgot you once had within. It was there somewhere, shattered with years of giving you a hard time. You were tired, fed up and scared. You hardly slept last night and when you have finally gave in to your dreams, the nightmares had a field day. You have not recognised that the first step towards freer mind started the moment you picked up that phone and called the counsellor. You may have called a few, just to make sure that I am the right match for you .
You have been through a lot. You know you have but what is the point of talking about it, right? Nothing changes, just relentless feelings of anxiety that stick to you like sand on wet feet. But perhaps the most consuming part of your life has been that feeling...the feeling that something bad is coming your way, something that is so hard to describe but it is ever so present. That feeling that leaves you breathless with fear, that is so hard to describe; a looming sense of the inevitable, dreaded unpredictable things to come.
Every day you wake up, this feeling settles into your day, it controls everything you do and like a loyal assistant never leaves you alone for too long. You shout at it, you try to ignore it, you bargain with it and fill your long days with endless activities to escape it. The faster you move, the closer it gets. Or instead of fighting you have given up. What is the point, right? It is who you are and it will never change… Do I dare to challenge that thought?
Anxiety likes to make itself present, and it does not like being ignored whilst also hating any attention you give it to it. It is complicated but solvable.
It can be unpredictable and it shows up with panic and fear for companion. It loves to occupy every space that you dare to claim for yourself and it gets bigger and louder. “Why?” you may wonder…
The answer is simple yet complicated again. Because it wants to dominate you. It likes being in control, it behaves without rhyme or reason.
Anxiety wants to play with you like an annoying relentless wind up toy. And just when you think that the cycle has finished it strikes again.
Anxiety is all about safety, deeply rooted sense of danger that is there to protect us from that grizzly bear that is hiding within the nooks and crannies of our souls.
When you decided to come to therapy, by exploring all of these dark corner with your therapist, the toughest dark thoughts become less scary and overwhelming. How, you wonder? Well, while in therapy you were able to let go of the irrational fears that kept you stuck in anxiety.
You allowed yourself to relax by learning a few coping strategies, you have changed your perspective by letting go of unhealthy and unhelpful thoughts and replacing them with a new kinder perspective.
You identified what you wanted to change to help yourself. This subtle shift had a huge impact on how you are feeling now. Sometimes it is just about opening up. Sometimes it is about making sense of your situation. Sometimes it is about speaking about things that you have never told anyone else.
Sometimes it is about creating a space that allows for deep exploration of your thoughts, feelings and behaviour to change the patterns. And with a qualified counsellor it can be a life-changing experience in finding who you are and what do you need.
Whatever it is, I hope you find yourself.
Klara Sharples is a verified Welldoing counsellor in Liverpool and online
