The Anxiety Paradox: Therapist in Sydney for Anxiety
When anxiety strikes it can lock us into a mental loop of the "worst-case scenario." It might that your partner will break up with you, or you’ll get sick or that you’ll suddenly lose your job.
Anxiety means you’re often stuck in the hot, horrible moment of imagining something going wrong. Your mind isn’t the best at telling the difference between reality and imagination, so it often feels horrible and real.
However, when things go wrong in real life, time moves on. You are forced into a pathway forward. Take the break up example…if it actually happened you’d be handling logistics, seeing a therapist, building or leaning on your support network, processing the emotions, and you eventually learn what you want for your future. In reality, you move on.
In anxiety, you remain stuck in a horrible scenario for years, even though had it actually happened, you would have recovered long ago. Often anxiety is actually about a lack of self trust.
As we go through life, we inevitably face setbacks. Each time we come out the other side, we gather evidence of our own resilience. It doesn't mean we want hard things to happen, but it proves that we have a much higher capacity to cope than our anxiety gives us credit for.
Anxiety thrives in the "no-man's-land" of passive thought. When we are stuck in a loop, we aren't actually problem-solving; we are just suffering.
One of the most effective ways to break this cycle is to move from passive worry to active problem solving. This involves:
Identifying what you can control: Taking immediate action (like exercising or organising a task) to shift the nervous system out of "freeze" mode.
Using "Worry Time": Instead of worrying all day, you set aside a specific, limited window (e.g., 30 minutes at 4:00 PM) to think through your concerns. I use Sunday evenings to plan my week personally, and that really helps set me up for a good week where I know when i’ll be able to get to different tasks.
Worry Postponement: If a worry pops up at 10:00 AM, you acknowledge it and tell yourself you’ll think about it during your worry time.
If you’re looking for a therapist in Sydney who works with Anxiety, please reach out today.
My name is Rebecca Anderson and I am a clinical psychologist and Schema & EMDR therapist in Sydney, Australia.
Photo by Joice Kelly on Unsplash