Evidence-based support for chronic worry and Exhausted Minds
What Is Generalised Anxiety Disorder?
Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is more than just occasional worry—it’s a persistent and often overwhelming sense of dread, tension, or unease that can affect your body, thoughts, sleep, and overall ability to enjoy life. You may worry about many different things—work, health, finances, relationships, your future—without ever feeling fully at ease.
For many, GAD feels like living in a constant state of “what if?”, always bracing for something to go wrong, even when there’s no immediate threat. You may experience:
- Excessive worry that feels difficult to control
- Racing thoughts or mental overplanning
- Feeling restless, tense, or unable to relax
- Sleep disturbances—difficulty falling or staying asleep
- Muscle tension, headaches, or digestive discomfort
- Irritability or difficulty concentrating
- Fatigue from mental and physical exhaustion
- Reassurance-seeking or needing certainty to feel safe
GAD can often coexist with depression, perfectionism, or trauma-related difficulties, and may be mislabelled as “just stress” or “overthinking”—which can lead to underdiagnosis and unnecessary self-blame.
Why It's So Exhausting?
Unlike phobias or panic attacks, which are tied to specific situations, GAD tends to be more free-floating and persistent. The worry is often chronic, shifting, and hard to pin down—making it difficult to feel safe or settled. You may find yourself:
- Preparing for worst-case scenarios just to feel in control
- Mentally rehearsing conversations or decisions
- Feeling guilty for relaxing, as if you’re missing something important
- Struggling to be present, even during pleasant moments
- Feeling like your mind is constantly “on” and never switches off
Over time, this level of hypervigilance can take a toll on your nervous system, leaving you physically exhausted and emotionally depleted.
Where Did It Come From?
There’s no single cause of generalised anxiety. It often develops from a combination of factors, including:
- Early life experiences of unpredictability, criticism, or emotional invalidation
- A family or cultural environment where worry was modelled or normalised
- A tendency toward perfectionism or high self-expectation
- Chronic stress, burnout, or unprocessed trauma
- Neurobiological sensitivity to uncertainty or perceived threat
- Long-standing patterns of self-monitoring, control-seeking, or people-pleasing
Anxiety, at its core, is a protective response. Your brain is trying to keep you safe—but when that system becomes overactive, it starts responding to imagined threats as if they were real.
How Therapy Can Help?
Therapy for GAD is about more than just reducing worry—it’s about helping you rebuild a sense of inner calm, self-trust, and psychological flexibility, so that life feels less like a constant effort to hold things together. I offer evidence-based therapy for GAD, tailored to your specific patterns and needs. This may include:
- Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) – to identify and challenge worry-based thinking patterns, address cognitive distortions, and reduce safety behaviours
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) – to help you relate differently to anxiety, tolerate uncertainty, and act in line with your values
- Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) – to ease harsh self-judgement and support emotional regulation
- Mindfulness and grounding techniques – to manage rumination, reconnect with the body, and bring more presence into daily life
- Behavioural experiments and gradual exposure – to reduce avoidance and build tolerance of discomfort
Together, we’ll work to:
- Understand what’s driving your anxiety
- Gently loosen the grip of worry and overthinking
- Develop tools to soothe your nervous system
- Shift from control-based coping to values-based action
- Reconnect with rest, pleasure, and meaningful relationships
Next steps
You don’t need to “have it all figured out” to start therapy. Many people with GAD find it difficult to slow down, name what they feel, or accept support—and that’s okay.
My approach is calm, compassionate, and collaborative. You set the pace. Whether we begin with grounding skills, mapping your worry cycle, or working on self-criticism, we’ll build a space that feels safe, structured, and genuinely helpful.
If you’re living with constant worry or feel as if your mind is always racing, therapy can help you find relief—and reconnect with life beyond the anxiety.
I offer a free 30-minute consultation to talk through what you’re experiencing and explore whether working together feels like a good fit. There’s no pressure—just a chance to be heard and consider your next steps.
You don’t have to keep managing it all alone. Therapy can help you feel calmer, more grounded, and more able to move forward with clarity.
Sessions are available in-person at my London practice (Peckham Levels) and online.