Notice: My therapeutic practice is currently closed to new clients as I train full-time to become a high-conflict family lawyer. Please see my homepage for the full update.
Professional Note for Legal Employers & Firms
As a future high-conflict family lawyer, my specialized understanding of social anxiety, performance anxiety, and the subconscious threat response is a significant asset in complex litigation. In high-stress family law matters, clients, witnesses, and children frequently experience overwhelming performance anxiety or social dread, which can severely impact their communication, deposition presentation, or courtroom testimony. My deep clinical background in de-escalating panic responses and understanding the root causes of psychological dread allows me to bring elite client management, tactical risk assessment, and trauma-informed preparation to the legal system.
Understanding Social Anxiety vs. Ordinary Nervousness
Many people get nervous and self-conscious at times, such as during a job interview, going on a date, or maybe even doing a presentation at work. But with Social Anxiety or Social Phobia, it is more than just being shy or occasionally being nervous.
Social Anxiety involves an intense fear of social situations, especially where you feel you are being watched by others. Even just thinking about a social situation can send anxiety sufferers into a panic attack or flashback—turning on the fight-or-flight response to protect you—and cause them to go to great lengths to avoid social situations altogether.
With Social Anxiety, once you have had your first-ever panic attack, you often go on to fear having another one, especially in front of people. Hence, you learn to actually fear the panic attacks themselves, which makes you try to avoid having that situation happen, leading to even further isolation.
A Personal Understanding of the Struggle
Social Anxiety interferes with people’s normal routines and causes severe distress on a daily basis. Simple tasks like going to the shops can cause high levels of anxiety and dread. This is something which I myself know a lot about, as I had Social Anxiety and Social Phobia from the time I was a teenager up until my late 30s.
In short, Social Anxiety is a fear of being judged, performing in public, being watched, and a fear of being embarrassed in front of others. This anxiety can go on to develop into a full Social Phobia, especially during prolonged flashbacks.
Common Social Anxiety & Performance Triggers:
- Meeting new people and making small talk
- Public speaking and performing on stage
- Being watched while doing things
- Being teased or criticised
- Taking exams
- Speaking up in a meeting or being called upon in a class
- Talking with “important” people or authority figures
- Making phone calls
- Eating or drinking in public
- Attending parties or other social situations
The Subconscious Architecture of Anxiety
A child who grows up with no reliable human source of love, support, and protection typically falls into a great deal of social unease. Extensive childhood abuse installs a message that people are dangerous, which becomes programmed in their minds. Relational trauma during childhood heavily influences the development of social anxiety; severe Social Anxiety is frequently caused by physical, sexual, or emotional abuse.
Everybody’s minds are hardwired to look for danger or what might go wrong, which naturally triggers anxiety to keep us alive. This is our automatic, maladaptive survival mode.
Your mind does not know or care what you tell it—whether it’s good or bad, right or wrong, true or false, helpful or unhelpful—it just lets it in. Your mind is simply doing its job. It doesn’t care whether you are happy or not; it only cares about keeping you alive.
This is why our minds create stress, fear, or anxiety to protect us from harm. To shift this, we need to explain to our mind that it has made a mistake, that it didn’t have to protect you by making you fearful, anxious, or stressed, and give your mind better instructions.
Resolving Anxiety at the Subconscious Level
Therapy and coaching with me help you to stop the panic attacks and social anxiety, or any other form of anxiety including depression, by fixing the problem on a subconscious level. Because the problem was created in the subconscious, the resources to fix the problem will also be found in the subconscious.
By getting to the root cause of the Social Anxiety and fixing it, we address the true issue—as the social anxiety itself is merely the symptom, not the root cause.
How I Can Help You:
- Achieve a higher level of self-esteem and confidence.
- Feel relaxed and calm in social situations and find it easier to be yourself.
- Be comfortable giving presentations, speeches, and speaking up to get your point across.
- Enjoy special occasions such as weddings, parties, and graduations.
- Be able to go on holidays, enjoy them, and feel comfortable going to the shops.
The Scope of Anxiety Support:
Types of Anxiety I Can Support You With:
- Generalised Anxiety Disorder
- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
- Social Anxiety Disorder & Performance Anxiety
- Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
- Specific Phobias (an overwhelming, incapacitating fear of a specific object, place, situation, or feeling)
Common Symptoms and Issues Caused by Anxiety:
- Mental Toll: Stress, insomnia, poor focus/concentration, low self-esteem, low confidence, an inability to switch off, a feeling of dread, and depression.
- Physical Responses: Palpitations, flushing/red-faced responses, sweating, panic attacks, dizziness, headaches, dry mouth, and shortness of breath.
- Emotional Impact: Fear, nervousness, a feeling of powerlessness, disconnection, dissociation, anger, irritability, and feeling constantly on edge.
The Subconscious Reasons Behind Anxiety:
- Believing you are not enough or that you cannot cope with situations.
- Re-living a traumatic past experience or managing toxic people and emotional/physical abuse in your life.
- Believing that “what goes up must come down” (constantly waiting for things to go wrong because you feel good things won’t last forever).
- A fear of failure or rejection because you subconsciously expect to fail, feel incompetent, or feel inadequate.
- Believing you are unlovable, disliked, or engaging in chronic self-sabotaging cycles.