Anxiety & Worry

Anxiety & Worry Therapy | Psychologist in Maastricht | English & Greek

When your mind finds it difficult to switch off

Anxiety is something we all experience. It can help us prepare for an important situation, pay attention to potential danger, or respond when something feels uncertain or threatening.

But sometimes anxiety starts taking up more space than we would like it to.

You may find yourself constantly thinking about what could go wrong, replaying conversations, anticipating problems, seeking reassurance, or struggling to relax even when things are objectively okay. You may avoid situations that make you uncomfortable, spend a lot of time trying to make the “right” decision, or feel as though you always need to be prepared for something.

And sometimes, it may be difficult to understand why you feel anxious at all.

You don't need to have a diagnosis to recognise that anxiety is affecting your life. Therapy can provide a space to understand what your anxiety is trying to protect you from, what keeps it going, and how you can begin responding to it differently.

Does this sound familiar?

Anxiety doesn't look the same for everyone. For some people, it feels like constant worry. For others, it shows up through overthinking, perfectionism, avoidance, physical tension, difficulty making decisions, or a strong need for reassurance.

You might find yourself:

worrying about things that haven't happened yet
imagining different ways something could go wrong
replaying conversations and wondering whether you said the wrong thing
constantly analysing your decisions
needing reassurance from other people before you can feel okay
finding uncertainty particularly difficult to tolerate
avoiding situations because you are afraid of how you might feel
preparing excessively because you are afraid of making a mistake
struggling to relax because there is always something else to think about
experiencing physical symptoms such as tension, restlessness, a racing heart, or an unsettled stomach
feeling anxious even when you know, rationally, that you are probably safe
becoming frustrated with yourself because you “know you shouldn't be worrying this much”
feeling as though your mind is always scanning for the next problem

Sometimes anxiety can be hidden underneath behaviours that initially seem unrelated to anxiety.

Perfectionism can sometimes be an attempt to prevent mistakes.

Procrastination can sometimes be a way of avoiding the possibility of failure.

People-pleasing can sometimes be connected to a fear of rejection or conflict.

Constant planning can sometimes be an attempt to create certainty.

Understanding what sits underneath these patterns can be an important part of therapy.

Understanding anxiety

Anxiety is a normal human response designed to help us respond to potential threat. When our brain perceives danger or uncertainty, our body can become more alert and prepared to act. Our heart rate may increase, our muscles may tense, our attention may narrow towards possible threats, and we may experience a strong urge to do something to make ourselves safer. This response can be useful. Feeling nervous before an important presentation may encourage you to prepare. Feeling alert when you are somewhere unfamiliar may help you pay closer attention to your surroundings. The presence of anxiety does not mean that something is wrong with you. The difficulty can arise when the alarm system becomes activated too often, too intensely, or in situations where the response is no longer helping you in the way it was intended to.

When does anxiety become a problem?

There isn't one specific point at which anxiety becomes “too much.”

A more useful question is: What is anxiety asking you to do, and how much is it shaping your life?

Anxiety may be worth exploring when it:

takes up a significant amount of your mental space
feels difficult to switch off
affects your sleep, concentration, work, studies, or relationships
leads you to avoid things that matter to you
makes everyday decisions feel unusually difficult
causes you to repeatedly check, analyse, prepare, or seek reassurance
makes you feel that you need to control situations in order to feel safe
continues even when there is no immediate problem to solve
prevents you from doing things you would otherwise like to do

In other words, the question isn't simply whether you experience anxiety. It is whether anxiety is beginning to determine how you live.

Anxiety doesn't always feel like anxiety

Sometimes the most noticeable problem isn't worry itself. It might be:

Overthinking

You analyse conversations, decisions, possibilities, and potential outcomes long after you have already thought about them.

Perfectionism

You feel pressure to get things right because mistakes seem to carry consequences that feel much bigger than the mistake itself.

Procrastination

You keep putting something off because beginning it brings up discomfort, uncertainty, or the possibility of not doing it well enough.

People-pleasing

You find yourself prioritising other people's feelings, approval, or expectations because disappointing someone feels particularly difficult.

Indecisiveness

You keep searching for the “right” decision because making the wrong one feels unbearable.

Reassurance seeking

You repeatedly ask others whether something is okay, whether someone is upset with you, or whether something bad is likely to happen.

Avoidance

You organise your life around preventing situations that might make you anxious.

These patterns can look very different on the surface but sometimes they share a common function: trying to prevent discomfort, uncertainty, rejection, failure, or threat. Understanding that function can help us approach the problem differently.

How anxiety can affect everyday life

Anxiety doesn't always stay contained within the situations that trigger it. Over time, it can influence different parts of your life.

Work and studies

You may struggle to concentrate because your mind is occupied with possible mistakes or future problems. You may over-prepare, procrastinate, or find it difficult to submit something unless it feels “good enough.”

Relationships

You may worry about being rejected, upsetting someone, being misunderstood, or not being enough. You might seek reassurance or avoid expressing what you actually need.

Decisions

Even relatively small decisions can become exhausting when you feel responsible for finding the perfect choice.

Rest and sleep

Your body may be tired while your mind continues to analyse, plan, predict, or replay.

Your relationship with yourself

You may become critical of yourself for being anxious in the first place. You might think:

“Why can't I just relax?”
“Why am I like this?”
“Other people seem to cope with this. Why can't I?”

This can create another layer of distress on top of the original anxiety. Therapy can provide space not only to understand the anxiety itself, but also the way you have learned to respond to yourself when you experience it.

How we can work with anxiety in therapy

There is no single way that anxiety looks, and there is no single way that therapy needs to look. Our work would begin by understanding your particular experience. We might explore:

What triggers your anxiety
What situations, thoughts, relationships, or uncertainties tend to activate it?
What you fear might happen
What does your mind predict? What feels threatening about that possibility?
What you do when anxiety appears
Do you avoid, overthink, check, prepare, seek reassurance, withdraw, control, or try to suppress the feeling?
What happens underneath the anxiety, sometimes anxiety is closely connected with deeper concerns around rejection, failure, criticism, control, uncertainty, self-worth, or safety.
What you need in order to feel safe
And perhaps most importantly: what have you learned you need to do, be, or achieve in order to feel okay?

Depending on your needs, we may draw from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Schema Therapy.

CBT can help us understand the relationship between thoughts, emotions and behaviours and identify patterns that may be maintaining anxiety.
ACT can help you develop a different relationship with difficult thoughts and feelings, rather than making the elimination of anxiety the condition for living your life.
Schema Therapy can help us explore deeper patterns that may have developed over time, particularly when anxiety is connected with longstanding beliefs about yourself, other people, relationships, safety, criticism, or your own worth.

The aim isn't to force anxiety out of your life. It is to help you understand it, become less controlled by it, and develop more freedom in how you respond.

Taking the First Step

You may know exactly what you are struggling with.

Or you may simply know that you're tired of overthinking, worrying, avoiding, or feeling on edge.

You don't need to arrive with a diagnosis, a clear explanation, or a perfectly articulated reason for seeking therapy.

Part of our work can be figuring that out together.

Therapy can be a space where you don't have to immediately solve the problem. We can slow things down, understand what is happening, and make sense of the patterns that may be difficult to see when you're inside them.

If you'd like to explore whether working together could be a good fit, you can arrange a short introductory call.

Arrange an introductory call