Anxiety
Do you feel like your mind never really stops?
Perhaps you feel like you're constantly thinking about what might happen. Your mind anticipates, checks, analyzes, prepares. Even when everything seems objectively fine, a part of you remains engaged, as if something demands your continued vigilance.
For some people, anxiety takes the form of incessant rumination. For others, it manifests more physically: muscle tension, fatigue, restlessness, difficulty relaxing or falling asleep. Still others describe a more diffuse feeling: the impression of never feeling completely safe.
Anxiety can take many forms. But behind this diversity, there is often a common thread: a nervous system that continues to function as if it were monitoring for a danger that never materializes.
What anxiety does to the brain
Neuroscience now allows us to better understand this phenomenon.
Chronic anxiety corresponds to a prolonged mobilization of the brain systems involved in vigilance, protection, and anticipation. Even when no objective threat is present, the brain may continue to function as if it were constantly monitoring its environment, detecting potential risks, and preparing to react.
This is not a weakness or a lack of willpower. Anxiety is based on protective mechanisms that often served a useful purpose at some point in a person's life. The problem arises when these mechanisms remain activated for too long or in situations where they are no longer needed.
Over time, this state of hypervigilance becomes costly. It continuously mobilizes the resources of the nervous system, contributes to fatigue, disrupts sleep, reduces the ability to enjoy the present, and can weaken relationships, self-confidence, or the general sense of well-being.
When presence becomes security
Behind many forms of anxiety lies a simple question: how safe does the nervous system really feel?
This question does not depend solely on the objective dangers present in the environment. It also depends on the person's history, their relational experiences, their experiences of loss, rejection, unpredictability, or threat.
The brain gradually learns what it can expect from the world and from others. When it has often had to remain vigilant to cope with uncertainty, this vigilance can become a habitual way of functioning.
From this perspective, anxiety is not simply an excess of fear. It can be understood as the consequence of a nervous system that is no longer able to fully release its protective mechanisms.
How I work
My approach is based on contemporary neuroscience, emotional regulation, EMDR, schema therapy and current knowledge about the functioning of the nervous system.
The goal is not simply to make the symptoms disappear.
The aim is to understand what maintains a state of alertness, to help the nervous system regain more flexibility, and to allow the emergence of a more stable sense of inner security.
Depending on your history and situation, the work may focus on understanding your anxiety mechanisms, regulating the autonomic nervous system, reprocessing difficult experiences that continue to fuel hypervigilance, or identifying certain relational patterns that maintain feelings of insecurity.
The therapeutic relationship itself often constitutes an important part of the process. It gradually offers the nervous system the experience of a presence that is sufficiently stable, predictable, and secure to allow the learning of new ways of being with oneself, with one's emotions, and with others.
The pace is always yours. The work is built gradually, respecting your history, your resources, and what you are ready to go through.
CONTACT FORM & APPOINTMENT BOOKING
EMDR EMDR – Understanding how reprocessing difficult memories can promote psychological healing.
Trauma Better understanding the consequences of simple or complex psychological trauma.
BORDERLINEt Understanding the brain gradually learns whether it can rely on the presence of others.
ANXIETY Borderline Personality Disorder – Understanding the difficulties of emotional and relational regulation.