Whenever we consider doing anything at all - crossing the road for example - it is obviously important that we also consider what might go wrong - like being hit by a passing car. This is anxiety, and anxiety is a normal function of the mind. Most of the time this kind of anxiety happens more or less automatically, and is positively useful - not a disorder, because the function of anxiety is to keep us safe.

Sometimes this function can begin happening most of the time. When levels of anxiety are excessive, and interferes with normal functioning, this is Anxiety Disorder. An acute episode of this is often called an Anxiety Attack. A person can be thinking more and more about things that might happen. This can include very unlikely events indeed. This way of thinking can become a frequent or constant habit, which continues without a person even noticing it much of the time.

Certain primitive parts of the brain, which control emotion, cannot tell the difference between something we are perceiving through our five senses, and something we are Imagining, or thinking about. The result is that these thoughts produce the same tension or fear response in the body that would occur if those events were really happening. This is the state usually referred to as anxiety.

This is one example of the fight flight response

Such thoughts may occupy a sufferer's attention progressively more of the time. The person may say they "can't stop worrying" about the problem - even though they know that is achieving nothing, as he/she has already done everything reasonably possible. To make matters worse, when a person is feeling fearful or uneasy, he/she is likely to notice the physical feelings, which can act as a cue to think again the thoughts that caused the problem in the first place - or even to begin to worry about the symptoms.

So the cause of anxiety is two-fold. A certain way of thinking leads to a fear response in the body, and that physical response or feeling can then generate thoughts that lead to more fear or unease.

Addressing the physical symptoms is usually comparatively straightforward, using stress management techniques including self hypnosis training. As a person learns to take control of the level of physical symptoms, so some of the thinking behind them may change as a result. Further work, using hypnosis or other psychotherapy techniques will usually be required in addition, to enable the client to make permanent changes in the thinking that was the cause.

It is commonplace for the beginning of real relief from anxiety to be noticed within the first one or two treatment sessions. It is important, if these changes are to become permanent, to do the further work to ensure that symptoms do not return later, by enabling the person to identify the first cognitive causes of the problem. A person can then become entirely free from excessive anxiety - and clients have frequently commented that the sense of freedom which results has allowed them to get on with enjoying life again.