Anxiety serves an evolutionary function. It alerts us to threat and prepares us to respond. In genuinely dangerous situations, anxiety is adaptive — it sharpens attention, quickens response, and mobilises physical resources. The problem arises when this system is activated in situations that are not genuinely dangerous, or when it's activated chronically, so that a person lives in a state of persistent alarm.
In therapy, I'm interested in understanding what's driving a client's anxiety — not just the triggers, but the deeper patterns, the beliefs about safety and threat, the historical experiences that may have shaped the alarm system. Anxiety that feels inexplicable often makes perfect sense once we understand its origins.
Many people find that therapy helps not just to reduce anxious symptoms but to develop a different relationship to anxiety — one in which it's understood as information rather than experienced as catastrophe. When you can sit with a degree of uncertainty without it becoming overwhelming, your world gets larger.