Anxiety Counselling in Vancouver
Hello, our team of Registered Clinical Counsellors, Canadian Certified Counsellors and Registered Social Workers offer anxiety counselling from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
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You may be constantly worrying about how you come across, hypervigilant of others around you, unable to relax and feeling tightness in your chest or always have a stomachache. We hear you, and are here to help.
We are committed to helping people courageously change - feel less anxious, worried or nervous - through emotional awareness and resilience, mindfulness, and evidence-based practices. Ultimately, we want you to feel better.
If you’re curious about creating a change, schedule a free phone consultation today.
Our approach to anxiety therapy in Vancouver
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Anxiety is a change in mood that happens to many of us. Anxiety is characterized by feelings of worry, stress or nervousness and is accompanied by somatic symptoms like muscle tension and stiffness, butterflies in the stomach, or jaw clenching. Folks who experience anxiety talk about being “wound up or on edge”, feeling unsettled and hypervigilant, or having ruminating or catastrophizing thoughts. Folks with anxiety can also get stuck in "what ifs" thinking patterns. This worry is often exaggerated and unrealistic, with nothing specific to provoke it. In Canada, anxiety disorders affect 5% of the household population, causing mild to severe impairment (CMHA, 2021).
Anxiety is not uncommon, but still misunderstood. Like other mental health challenges, anxiety can impair our social, occupational and/or familial engagements. For example, since COVID-19, some folks have been experiencing anxiety that interferes with their ability to do activities of daily live (ADL), such as grocery shopping, dog walking, or hanging out with friends.
Anxiety can impact each of us differently. It is not a one-size-fits-all challenge. Anxiety symptoms go from butterflies in the stomach, muscle tension, hypervigilance to paralysis and panic attacks. You might even experience an upset stomach or diarrhea, even with the use of Pepto Bismol.
A different way of understanding anxiety that has helped us over the years, and that is borrowed from theories of the Stress Response and Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP), is understanding anxiety as an inhibitory emotion or protective emotion to threat. This can be a real or imagined threat that stems from the mental, emotional, social, or physical environments. We have come to appreciate this perspective of anxiety because it helps explain its symptoms as an automatic response to real or perceived danger that keeps you ready to survive. It is a sort of protective mechanism that is unconsciously triggered to keep you safe and alive, even if it demands a lot of mental and physical resources.
Anxiety can also appear when core emotions (like sadness or anger) are too intense and your brain wants to push them away, or are in conflict with what pleases others you need like parents, partners and friends. For instance, like shame and guilt, anxiety shows up as poor sleep or difficulty concentrating at your workplace when being angry with your colleague threatens your involvement in a passion project.
While there are a lot of self-help resources and tools that you can do to improve your anxious mood, sometimes a powerful way to turn anxiety and stress around is by going to counselling. To help your anxiety in counselling, we will explore your story, make connections between past, present and future experiences, uncover and expand new truths, and start healing what is keeping you worried.
Together we will have the opportunity to integrate mindfulness, somatic experiencing, emotional awareness while using evidence-based practices, such as person-centred therapy, accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP), internal family system (IFS), sensorimotor psychotherapy, and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR).
If you have any questions about this perspective of anxiety or want help in Vancouver, feel free to get in touch.
Anxiety Therapy in Vancouver FAQs
What type of counsellor helps with anxiety?
There are many different types of counsellors that can help with anxiety. Historically cognitive therapists, who offered CBT, CT, or CPT were popular for treating anxiety disorders, and other mental health challenges. And in the last few decades, many other reputable and evidence-based therapy models have been developed and adopted by counsellors to successfully treat anxiety and other mental health challenges. For instance, some of the interpersonal therapies that I practice, like accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP), have found great results in helping and relieving anxiety. There are multiple ways of treating anxiety, being open to many treatment and support possibilities will lead to greater success in alleviating the symptoms of anxiety.
Does counselling help with anxiety?
Yes - anxiety counselling can be very helpful in improving mood and overall quality of life. However it is very important to find a therapy style and counsellor that is the right fit for you. Counselling therapy is not a one-size-fits-all model, but rather more of a one-size-fits-one model. This means that some people may ‘shop around’ for the right therapy and counsellor in order to really gain the benefits of counselling. It is normal to try a few different therapy styles and counsellors along the way. It is also important to note that what works at one point in time may no longer work at a different point in time, and so being open to different styles and types of support is really important to getting the results that you want and deserve.
How can I get free counselling in BC?
There are some organizations and programs in British Columbia (BC) that offer free counselling. However free counselling services are not the norm. What is more common is to have organizations, clinics and counsellors in private practice offer sliding scale options so that counselling is made more accessible. For instance as a private practice counsellor, I offer a sliding scale option and work with clients to find the fee that works for us both. If you would like to learn more about free counselling options, low-cost counselling options or sliding scale options please contact me for more information.
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How much does it cost to treat anxiety?
There is no specific or generalized cost to treat anxiety. Everyone is different in the way that their anxiety shows up, and therefore in the way that it is treated. In British Columbia (BC), the average cost per counselling session or appointment is between $120 to $150 per 50 minutes.
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Get anxiety help in Vancouver from a Registered Clinical Counsellor
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We know taking the first step to getting support is hard. Thank you for being here.
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“Shopping around” for a counsellor is normal, and it can take some time to find the right one. If you feel a tad bit curious about us or our counselling services, please reach out for a free 15 minutes phone consultation.
