Worry and mental rehearsal
Running through future conversations, problems or worst-case outcomes in the hope that enough thinking will leave you prepared.
In person in Plymouth · Online across the UK
Anxiety therapy for worry, panic and a mind that won’t switch off
You may know that the worst-case outcome is unlikely and still feel unable to stop preparing for it. I offer counselling and hypnotherapy for anxiety to help you understand what keeps the pattern going and practise responding differently — so your mind can become quieter, decisions can feel easier, confidence and clarity can grow, and more of your energy can return to the people and things that really matter to you.
- BACP Accredited
- NCH Accredited
- Supporting clients since 2008
When worry takes over
You can know the feared outcome is unlikely and still feel as though you must prepare for it
Anxiety is not only a stream of worried thoughts. It can arrive as dread, tension, nausea, a racing heart, a restless urge to do something or a strong sense that it would be unwise to relax. Once that feeling is present, another search, plan or check can seem sensible rather than anxious.
Your mind and body use past learning and present cues to anticipate what may happen next. When threat is expected, attention narrows towards possible danger and protective responses become easier to trigger. This is one useful way of understanding anxiety — not a single explanation for every person.
Therapy is not simply about telling yourself that everything is fine. It helps you learn that an anxious feeling does not always need to be solved, prevented or obeyed before you decide what to do next.
Feelings are not facts. Thoughts are not always true.
Anxiety patterns you might recognise
How anxiety pulls you in
These responses are understandable attempts to protect yourself or reduce discomfort. The difficulty is that they can gradually teach the mind and body that uncertainty, sensations or ordinary situations are harder to handle than they really are.
Avoidance
Putting off situations, journeys, conversations, decisions or responsibilities because facing them feels too uncomfortable or risky.
Reassurance and checking
Asking others, researching, checking plans or revisiting information to make sure you have not missed something important.
Bodily monitoring
Scanning your breathing, heart rate, dizziness, tension or other sensations for signs of danger, illness or an approaching panic attack.
Over-preparing and perfectionism
Working harder, planning further ahead or trying to remove every possibility of error so you can feel safe enough to proceed.
Waiting for the right feeling
Delaying action until you feel calm, confident, certain or fully ready — while life becomes increasingly organised around anxiety.
The pattern that keeps returning
Why short-term relief can fuel anxiety
Worry, avoidance and preparation often work in the moment: they reduce uncertainty or discomfort. That relief can also reinforce the idea that the situation or feeling needed a protective response.
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Step 01
Something feels uncertain
A thought, situation, memory, responsibility or bodily sensation catches your attention.
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Step 02
Your system anticipates danger
Worry, dread or physical activation rises and the possibility begins to feel urgent.
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Step 03
You try to reduce the risk
You analyse, prepare, check, avoid, escape, seek reassurance or monitor how you feel.
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Step 04
Relief reinforces the response
The discomfort may fall, but the system becomes more likely to call for the same response next time.
The difficulty is not simply that anxiety appears. It is how much attention and behaviour can become organised around preventing, controlling or escaping it. Therapy creates opportunities for a different kind of learning.
When fear surges suddenly
Panic can make bodily sensations feel like evidence that something is seriously wrong
A panic attack may begin with a racing heart, breathlessness, dizziness, trembling, tingling, a sense of unreality or a sudden wave of fear. The sensations are genuinely intense. When they are interpreted as dangerous, they can generate more fear and physical activation.
Escaping, monitoring your body, tightly controlling your breathing, avoiding particular places or relying on another person to feel safe may bring relief. Over time, this can increase fear of the sensations themselves and make the next episode feel even more threatening.
Therapy can help you understand your panic pattern and, where appropriate, gradually experience sensations and situations without relying so heavily on the responses that keep the fear in place. The aim is not to force calm, but to build confidence that activation can rise and fall without deciding what you do next.
Important: New, severe or unusual physical symptoms should not automatically be assumed to be anxiety. Seek appropriate medical advice, particularly if you are uncertain about chest pain, breathlessness, fainting or another significant change.
Different ways anxiety can show up
Anxiety can centre on different fears — and more than one pattern may be present
A label can sometimes help organise experience, but it does not tell the whole story. We will consider your history, current pressures, relationships, sensory needs, physical health and the situations in which anxiety becomes hardest to ignore.
Persistent worry or GAD
Worry that moves across work, health, family, money or everyday responsibilities.
Panic and agoraphobia
Fear of intense sensations, another panic attack or being somewhere escape feels difficult.
Health anxiety
Persistent concern about symptoms, illness or the possibility that something important has been missed.
Social anxiety
Fear of being judged, exposed, embarrassed or replaying interactions afterwards.
Specific fears and phobias
Anxiety attached to a particular situation, animal, procedure, journey or experience.
Perfectionism and performance anxiety
Pressure to prevent mistakes, meet very high standards or feel completely prepared.
If unwanted intrusive thoughts, persistent doubt and compulsive checking, analysing, reassurance or rituals are central to your experience, you may find my specialist OCD therapy page more relevant.
How therapy can help
Understand what keeps anxiety going — and discover different ways of responding
We will begin with your experience rather than fitting you to a generic anxiety checklist. Together, we can explore what triggers the pattern, what your mind and body seem to predict, where your attention goes, what you do to feel safer and what those responses cost over time.
Understanding matters, but it is not the finish line. Therapy also creates opportunities to approach uncertainty, sensations, decisions and meaningful situations with less avoidance or over-control. The work is collaborative and paced with care; discomfort is not manufactured for its own sake.
Counselling provides the relational foundation. Depending on your needs, our work may draw on CBT and ACT-informed ideas, behavioural experiments, graded exposure, attention work, hypnosis, and EMDR or Rewind where difficult past experiences are relevant. Each method should serve a clear purpose within a shared understanding of your pattern.
Explore the LIBERATE Approach™ →-
01
Make sense of your pattern
Build enough understanding to reduce shame and identify what keeps anxiety going, without turning explanation into another search for certainty.
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02
Create more room around activation
Notice worry and physical sensations, widen attention and support your capacity to choose while the feeling is still present.
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03
Test old predictions through experience
Use carefully chosen real-life practice to reduce avoidance and discover what happens when the usual protective response is changed.
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04
Return attention to living
Re-engage with decisions, work, rest, relationships and ordinary activities without waiting to feel perfectly calm or certain first.
Where hypnotherapy may fit
Hypnosis is not about giving up control or being made to switch anxiety off. It can use focused attention, imagery, metaphor, expectancy and rehearsal to support experiential learning — for example, practising a different relationship with sensations, imagining flexible responses or consolidating learning from therapy. It is used selectively and collaboratively, not as a promise of instant calm.
Research also suggests that hypnosis can help reduce anxiety and emotional distress. A meta-analysis of 17 trials found hypnosis reduced anxiety more than control conditions, with stronger effects when it was combined with other psychological interventions. An earlier narrative review found broad support for hypnosis in state and procedure-related anxiety, while noting that more randomised research was needed for generalised anxiety disorder and lasting changes in trait anxiety. Randomised trials involving people with refractory IBS and women receiving breast care have also reported improvements in psychological wellbeing, emotional upset, anxiety and depression. These findings support hypnosis as a useful therapeutic addition. Read the anxiety meta-analysis, the anxiety and stress-related disorders review, the IBS trial, the breast-surgery trial and the breast-biopsy trial.
A wider view of improvement
Symptoms can ease as your responses become more flexible
It is entirely understandable to want less anxiety. As the cycle loosens, you may feel calmer and steadier, worry less often, experience fewer panic episodes or recover more quickly when anxiety appears. We will also keep sight of what that change allows you to regain.
A quieter, less demanding mind
Worry may arise without taking over the whole evening, and it can become easier to leave a question unfinished and move your attention elsewhere.
More confidence in decisions
You can make a reasonable choice, notice the aftershock of doubt and continue without repeated checking, comparison or reassurance.
Greater presence and freedom
More of your attention and energy can return to relationships, work, rest and experiences that anxiety had pushed to the edges.
Working together
Therapy that is collaborative, thoughtful and shaped around you
I’m Carolyn Gillan, a BACP Accredited counsellor and NCH Accredited hypnotherapist. I have supported clients since 2008 and specialise in anxiety, panic, OCD, intrusive thoughts and persistent uncertainty.
You will not be treated as a diagnosis or pushed through a rigid programme. We will build a shared understanding of what is happening, agree what you want therapy to change and review whether the work is helping. I will bring professional knowledge and honest challenge; you bring the experience of being you.
The aim is not dependence on therapy or a growing collection of techniques. It is to help you become more able to understand what is happening, respond flexibly and trust your capacity to cope, adapt and choose.
Find out more about meWhen you’re ready to do the work
Ready when a suitable space becomes available?
Join my priority list and I’ll let you know when an appropriate appointment becomes available for anxiety counselling or hypnotherapy in Plymouth or online.