Looking beyond the symptoms

While anxiety and stress are often viewed as the primary problem to be fixed, it might be more helpful to think of them as symptoms similar to a "fever." Just as a fever is a non specific signal that your body is fighting an underlying infection, anxiety and persistent stress are often symptoms signalling that your internal system is struggling to process chronic emotional intensity or environmental pressure.

These experiences are often evidence of survival states that have become "stuck" within your body and nervous system. In therapy we explore where your nervous system might be stuck and work collaboratively to address the following:

• Hyper arousal: This manifests as chronic anxiety and high stress. Your system is trapped in a "fight or flight" response, characterized by increased heart rate, shallow breathing, and a persistent hypervigilance. Even when you are cognitively aware of your safety, your physiology remains mobilized for defense.

• Hypo arousal : Often following prolonged periods of high activation, your system may drop into a state of collapse or "freeze." This is a biological conservation strategy, the body’s way of shutting down to protect itself from overwhelming stress. It results in the "crash" often associated with low mood, emotional numbness, and profound fatigue.

• Autonomic dysregulation: When your system loses the ability to return to a state of social engagement and ease, it begins to cycle between hyper arousal and hypo arousal. This is the mechanism behind Emotion Dysregulation, where your capacity to process and recover from emotional intensity is compromised.

• Burnout: This is the cumulative "wear and tear" on the body and brain that results from chronic over activation or shut down. We recognize this as burnout, the point of systemic exhaustion where your physiological reserves are depleted, and your nervous system can no longer sustain the demand of survival-mode functioning