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When the worry will not switch off.

Anxiety can change your life, leaving you overwhelmed, frustrated, lacking focus, emotional and just out of control. Learning effective ways to manage your thinking, build on what is going well and become more resilient can help you feel more in control.

Alison Gifford

Understanding anxiety, and changing it

Early on we look at what anxiety actually is, physically and psychologically, because it is much easier to change something once you understand it. From there we work on the specific patterns that keep yours going, and I teach you techniques you can use on your own, between sessions and after we finish.

Hypnotherapy is part of the approach, not the whole of it. I blend it with counselling, parts therapy and other therapeutic techniques, tailored to you. If you have never experienced hypnosis, it is a relaxed, focused state in which you stay fully aware and in control. Most people find it calmer than they expected.

Alison at her desk, looking out over the Derbyshire hills

Anxiety, in more detail

What it can look like

Racing thoughts that will not switch off at night. A tight chest, a churning stomach, a heart that seems to have its own agenda. Avoiding the meeting, the motorway, the phone call. Snapping at people you love and hating yourself for it afterwards.

Some people have a clear trigger; many do not. Panic attacks, health anxiety, social anxiety and generalised, background dread all respond to the same underlying work.

What we actually do

We begin by making sense of what your body and mind are doing and why, because anxiety loses a lot of its power once it is understood. Then we work on the specific patterns keeping yours going: the thoughts, the avoidance, the physical alarm.

Each session ends with something practical to take away. Session by session you build a set of tools that are yours, so that when we finish you are not dependent on me.

What people tend to notice

Sleep usually shifts first. Then the gap between a worry arriving and you reacting to it starts to widen. Further in, most people are doing things they had been avoiding, and describing the anxiety as a visitor rather than a resident.

Progress is rarely a straight line. Bad weeks happen, and are part of the work rather than a failure of it.

How the sessions work

I work one to one, in person near Matlock or on Zoom. There is no set programme: we start from what is happening for you now, and the work is shaped around it.

If you are new, the free 20-minute call is the place to begin. It costs nothing and there is no obligation either way; it is usually enough for us both to tell whether working together is the right fit.

One to one, in person or on Zoom

  • Sessions last about an hour.
  • Hypnotherapy and counselling together, in whatever balance suits you.
  • Something practical to take away from each session.
  • No fixed number of sessions, and no obligation to continue.
  • £75 a session, paid at the time of booking.

If the worry has been running things for a while.

Book a free 20-minute call and we will talk about whether working together is the right fit, with no obligation either way.