Anxiety is a perfectly normal feeling that we all experience now and again. It’s the body’s natural ‘fight or flight’ internal alarm system to alert us to danger, which puts us into a state of apprehension or fear as a reaction to a perceived threat, situation or event. Healthy levels of anxiety can be a good thing in that it helps you stay alert and focused, motivates you to solve problems and motivates you into action.

While it’s normal to feel anxious when we face a challenging and stressful situation such as an exam or a job interview, it can be a problem when anxiety is activated during normal everyday situations. If you have overwhelming worries or fears with or without a cause that are preventing you from living your life to the full, you may be suffering from high levels of anxiety. At Zen Life Counselling we can explore what is underneath your anxiety. We can work together to reveal the root cause which may have created the pattern of repetition for the need to over protect and discover why your body’s internal alarm system is more active than it should be.

Everyone has periods of being down or at a low ebb, but when those feelings persist you may be depressed. Depression is far more common than most people think.

Recognising the signs of depression and talking to a therapist is the first step to working through and getting past the fog and despair, Counselling for Depression will help you to do this.

Depression affects people physically, emotionally and cognitively. All three of these are linked, and thus it can be hard to separate one from the other, and they fuel each other in an exhausting circle that can cause you to feel more trapped and hopeless. For example, if you are feeling low in mood, sad, a sense of hopelessness, you may not want to get out of bed or to move much . . . this then causes a sense of lethargy, heaviness and slow movement. These physical symptoms can cause feelings of low mood, sadness and tiredness and therefore you feel you can’t get out of bed, go outside, etc. and so the cycle continues.

At Zen Life Counselling Nez can help you understand what, for you, are the causes of your depression and thus, how to best approach it, to understand it and to heal it. Nez can also use cognitive-behavioural therapy, if it feels right for you, to provide practical tools that challenge the vicious cycle of depression. At Zen Life Counselling we believe that you are so much more than just depressed. We provide a safe and non-judging space for you to express all of the darkness that you feel so that together we can bring it to the light.