Anxiety Counselling in Winnipeg

Anxiety counselling in Winnipeg is one of the most effective ways to deal with the debilitating effects anxiety can have on you. The tricky part is often that having anxiety can make reaching out particular hard. You worry about what your Winnipeg anxiety therapist will be like, and just taking the step of reaching out can feel impossible. And let's face it, if you're already struggling with anxiety, this can all feel like anxiety on top of anxiety on top of anxiety. It can feel so debilitating, and like at some point you just freeze up.

That's why we like to make starting as easy as possible for you. And one way to get started is by doing a free no-obligation consultation with a Winnipeg anxiety therapist before you decide. To help you "feel out" your therapist before you take the next step and book your first appointment.

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How Can Anxiety Therapy in Winnipeg Help?

Anxiety therapy in Winnipeg can help in a number of ways. Your Winnipeg anxiety counsellor might help you learn techniques to use that will help manage the anxiety. But the truth is, that's often no nearly enough. Because many people have already tried all the tools and techniques that everyone claims should help, and find that these techniques just aren't doing it. That's why at Empower Counselling Services we like to go deeper and explore ways to resolve what is leading to the anxiety in the first place. For example, EMDR therapy can be a very effective tool to help address anxiety at a deeper level and heal what's causing the anxiety in the first place.

EMDR therapy can be so helpful to treat anxiety in part because in many cases the anxiety is rooted in negative and/or traumatic past life experiences, even though people are often not aware of it. That's because for many people, these traumas are more like small-t traumas, complex grief, or complex relationship traumas that just felt normal to you growing up. This kind of trauma often happens over a long period of time, making it very difficult later on in life to identify these negative past experiences as having been traumatic to you. And it can be even more difficult to recognize these negative past life experiences as being in any way connected to your current anxieties.

What is Anxiety?

Having anxiety does not mean you are weak, or that you don't have enough willpower. Like any other health problem, anxiety is very much a physiological phenomenon.

Having some anxiety is quite normal, even healthy. We all have it, and it's a wonderfully helpful evolutionary thing. It helps us to rapidly assess and respond to risks and threats. Where it becomes problematic is when the brain sees threat in literally everything, just about all the time.

Anxiety can often become a debilitating and painful mental health problem. From a medical perspective, problematic anxiety includes numerous conditions that involve feelings of tension in the body, thoughts that are focused around worry, and physical symptoms such as an increased heart rate, difficulty breathing, cold sweats and so on.

Anxiety is a complex mental health struggle and can be caused by many factors. These factors can include genetics, difficult and/or traumatic life experiences, etc. Experiencing anxiety is the mind and body’s attempt at responding to stressful, unfamiliar, and sometimes even dangerous situations; the body often does not distinguish whether this is perceived or real danger.

The following are some of the main causes for anxiety:

Environmental:
- Childhood stress can affect a person all the way into adulthood, resulting in debilitating anxiety that sometimes develops into a fully diagnosable anxiety disorder.
- Learned behaviour: Anxiety can develop as a result of learned anxious behaviour from loved-ones and other role models.
Genetics:
- A family history with anxiety and/or other mental health problems in the family may increase the risk of developing an anxiety disorder.
- A chemical imbalance in the brain may be another factor in developing an anxiety disorder.

Anxiety disorders are some of the more common mental health struggles in Canada. Approximately one in five Canadians will experience an anxiety disorder at some point in their life.

Experiences with anxiety are often accompanied with a sense of overwhelm, fear of impending doom, feelings of uneasiness, nervousness, worry, and an overall sense of stress in the mind and body. It is common to have physical symptoms that stem from the anxiety.

If you are struggling with anxiety and would like to explore anxiety therapy in Winnipeg, please reach out to us. We'd love to explore how we can help you get your life and freedom back.

Types of Winnipeg Anxiety Counselling We Offer

We treat the following types of anxiety:

Social Anxiety Counselling in Winnipeg

You are feeling frustrated that you feel too anxious to participate fully in conversations when out in public. You know you are more than capable to contribute meaningfully to the conversation, but  then your social anxiety gets in the way of you finding the words.

Social anxiety can make it very difficult to want to spend time with friends and family, or even go out to public spaces.

Social anxiety is not the same as shyness. A person can be shy but not experience debilitating social anxiety, and a person can have debilitating social anxiety but not be shy.

The following are some of the symptoms of social anxiety: 

Nausea
Blushing
Worrying about embarrassing yourself in front of others
Trembling or shaking
Excessive sweating
Missing school or work because of the debilitating anxiety
Difficulty speaking or finding the right words when in public
Dizziness or lightheadedness
Avoiding social situations and/or trying to blend into the background
Increased heart rate
Worrying irrationally about social situations
Excessive worrying for days or weeks before an upcoming event
Worrying that other people may notice that you are feeling stressed out and anxious
Needing mind altering drugs and/or alcohol to face social situations

If social anxiety is keeping you from enjoying healthy relationships, you might want to consider anxiety therapy in Winnipeg.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) Therapy in Winnipeg

You find that you easily feel stressed out. You find it difficult to slow down your busy body and get it to relax. You worry a lot about many things, including relationships, finances, health, world politics.... And your GAD makes it very difficult to shut off the business in your mind and body. It's hard to get your mind to slow down and allow you to get a good night sleep.

If you are are suffering from GAD and would like to explore anxiety therapy in Winnipeg, please reach out to us.

Anxiety Counselling for Phobias in Winnipeg

Are you experiencing extreme fear to certain situations or objects that keep you from living the life you want and deserve? Has this fear kept you from engaging in activities that you would otherwise quite enjoy? If so, it could be a specific phobia.

People often don't realize that specific phobias are a type of anxiety. We all experience anxiety and fear about something specific at one time or another in our lives. But phobias are different. With a phobia you experience panic or strong dread when faced with a situation that activates the phobia. These extreme and irrational fears can affect your work, your relationships, schooling, whether and/or how much you go out to socialize, and many more areas of your life. You might even develop an extreme avoidance to the phobia.

Having a specific phobia is different from having generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). GAD is generalized fear and anxiety about many areas of life (see more details above). However, when a person suffers from phobias, the irrational fear and anxiety is focused on specific situations or objects. In other words, the person will experience an irrational and intense fear of something specific.

Examples of phobias include but are certainly not limited to:

An extreme and irrational fear of specific animals such as spiders, worms, snakes, bears
An extreme and irrational fear of social situations
An extreme and irrational fear of driving
An extreme and irrational fear of elevators and other spaces
An extreme and irrational fear of natural events such as storms, heights, water
An extreme and irrational fear of health concerns

A person suffering with specific phobias cannot control their fear even when they intentionally try to face the phobia and even when the situation or object does not pose a real threat to the person. This is one of the reasons they will avoid the phobia at just about all cost.

Phobias can be extremely debilitating. And we are here to help. Anxiety counselling in Winnipeg for phobias may be what can get you back on your feet and allow you enjoy your life fully again. Allow you to become your true, genuine, and empowered self again. If you'd like to explore anxiety therapy in Winnipeg for phobias, please reach out to us today.

Panic Attacks Anxiety Counselling in Winnipeg

A panic attack is a sudden and unexpected episode of fear that triggers physical and emotional reactions for the sufferer of the panic attack. And this often happens when there is no apparent reason for the sudden spike in anxiety. This can be a frightening experience, and you may even feel so out of control that you now fear you are having a heart attack or that you are dying.

Panic attacks are different from anxiety attacks, though they share many similarities. The DSM-5 does not mention anxiety attacks, but it does define anxiety as being among other common psychiatric disorders.

Panic attacks come on suddenly and involve intense and often overwhelming fear about something specific or a more general state of fear. This fear is accompanied by debilitating physical symptoms.

The following are just a few of the symptoms of panic attacks:

Difficulty breathing
Pounding in the chest
Heart palpitations
Dizziness
Excessive worry
Irrational fear

Panic attacks can come suddenly. Sometimes panic attacks are intense, sometimes mild, but they almost always feel quite frightening. And it's common for panic attack sufferers to frequently fear or ruminate about when the next panic attack will happen.

Although there is not one thing that causes panic attacks, the following are just a few reasons a person's anxiety may escalate to a panic attack:

Traumatic or very challenging life experiences
Big life changes or transitions
Losing a loved-one to death
Painful intimate partner or friendship breakups
Finances
Health concerns

If any of the above resonates with you then anxiety therapy in Winnipeg may be what you have been looking for. A trained anxiety therapist in Winnipeg can help you learn about the underlying causes for the panic attacks and then help you reduce, and eventually eliminate, your panic attacks.

Trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Anxiety Counselling in Winnipeg

Post-traumatic stress disorder is among the more debilitating forms of anxiety disorders. However, like other forms of anxiety, anxiety therapy in Winnipeg can help you heal from the trauma and PTSD so that you can once again be your genuine and empowered self.

People with PTSD often experience different types of anxiety problems. Examples of anxiety that stems from PTSD include:

Generalized anxiety disorder, or GAD
Social anxiety
Panic attacks
Depression
Social isolation

Living with trauma and PTSD can limit just about every area of your life. Start your anxiety therapy in Winnipeg today. Healing from trauma and PTSD might open potential and positive change that you have not been able to imagine until now.

How We Treat PTSD 

Our primary approaches to treating trauma and PTSD include eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, or EMDR and talk therapy.

You can learn more about our treatment for trauma and PTSD at this link.

Levels of Anxiety

The following videos are helpful resources for learning about the difference between normal levels of anxiety and debilitating anxiety, or GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder).

Does Anxiety Therapy in Winnipeg Work?

When you live with debilitating anxiety, any moment can become one that creates a slow-rising panic within you. Life is normal one second and the next, you feel your chest tighten and your heart begin to race. You may begin to hyper-focus on future events and find yourself getting lost in “what-ifs.” You struggle to manage the anxiety and get it under control. To make matters worse, you may then begin to berate yourself for allowing the panic to get the best of you and begin to believe that all of those what-ifs are indisputable facts. Anxiety counselling in Winnipeg works by helping gain awareness and understanding for your anxiety. And awareness and understanding often start by understanding how thoughts influence feelings and behaviours, and vice versa. Anxiety counselling in Winnipeg can also help you learn cognitive behavioural techniques that will help you manage anxiety, and in time, help you heal what's causing your anxiety.

When it comes to treating anxiety disorders, research shows that therapy is usually the most effective option. In many cases, medication alongside anxiety counselling can significantly reduce the anxiety by addressing the underlying causes of the anxiety. Medication alongside anxiety counselling can also give you the space to do the work of changing, growing, and healing so you no longer have to live with the debilitating effects of your anxiety. As the anxiety goes down, you will be able to return to a healthier, happier, and more empowered you.

Don't delay your healing journey. Start your anxiety therapy in Winnipeg so you can start to live the life you want and so very much deserve.

Symptoms of Anxiety

Though there are many commonalities as to how people experience anxiety, anxiety disorders can affect people in a number of ways. And anxiety doesn't discriminate by age. It can affect any person at any stage of their life. Seniors, adults, adolescents, children—each of these age groups can experience debilitating anxiety at any stage of their life.

Symptoms of anxiety often include the following:

Nervousness, restlessness or being tense
Feelings of danger, panic or dread
Rapid breathing or hyperventilation
Increased or heavy sweating
Trembling or muscle twitching
Weakness or lethargy
Difficulty focusing or thinking clearly about anything other than the thing you’re worried about
Insomnia, even though you feel sleepy and tired
Obsessions about certain ideas, a sign of obsessive-compulsive disorder
Anxiety surrounding a particular life event or experience that has occurred in the past, which can be a sign of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)