Anxiety Counselling
in Singapore
Anxiety Counselling & Treatment in Singapore
If you are struggling with persistent, debilitating worry, seeking Anxiety Counselling in Singapore is a crucial step toward recovery. Clinical anxiety is a condition distinct from temporary stress, characterized by unfounded fears and excessive worry that significantly impacts everyday life at work, at home, and in social settings. At SG Counselling, we provide specialized therapy to help you regain control and return to a life of peace and stability.people experience in typical dangerous or stressful situations. It’s characterized by unfounded fears and excessive worry that significantly impact everyday life at work, at home, and in social settings. These intense fears can prevent participation in social activities and lead to academic or career difficulties.
Symptoms of Clinical Anxiety
Anxiety is broadly characterized by excessive worry, fear, and apprehension. While the specific symptoms can vary depending on the individual and the exact form of anxiety, common indicators generally include:
- Excessive Worrying: Individuals with anxiety often experience persistent and intrusive thoughts or concerns about various aspects of their life, such as work, relationships, health, or future events.
- Restlessness and Irritability: Anxiety frequently leads to feelings of restlessness, agitation, and irritability. You might find it challenging to relax throughout the day, feel “on edge,” or have a low tolerance for frustration.
- A Sense of Impending Doom: A pervasive and unfounded sense of danger, panic, or doom is often experienced on most days. These powerful feelings can make it challenging to relax or focus on everyday tasks and activities.
- Physical Symptoms: Anxiety can manifest physically as shortness of breath, rapid heartbeat, sweating, trembling, and dizziness. It’s also common to experience an upset stomach, headaches, or muscle tension. These symptoms can often mimic a panic attack and may be accompanied by that sense of impending doom.
- Sleep Disturbances: Anxiety frequently interferes with sleep, causing trouble falling asleep and staying asleep. It can also cause you to feel weak or restless, significantly disrupting sleep patterns.
- Difficulty Concentrating: Anxiety can impair concentration and focus, making it difficult to complete tasks or make decisions. You might feel easily distracted or experience persistent racing thoughts.
- Avoidance Behavior: To manage their anxiety, individuals often begin to avoid certain situations, places, or activities that trigger their worries or fear. Over time, this can lead to social isolation and significantly impact daily functioning.
Start Your Anxiety Counselling Journey with us
It’s crucial to note that anxiety symptoms can range from mild to severe, but even mild symptoms can significantly impact a person’s daily life. If you or someone you know is experiencing these symptoms, please reach out to us for effective counselling for anxiety in Singapore.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) Treatment in Singapore
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is a specific, chronic condition that demands attention.
GAD is characterized by persistent, excessive, and unrealistic worry about multiple areas of life—such as finances, health, work performance, relationships, or mundane daily responsibilities—for a period of six months or more. Unlike a momentary stressful reaction, the worry in GAD is pervasive and often feels uncontrollable, significantly interfering with daily functioning.
GAD is More Than Just “Being a Worrier”
Many people with GAD are mistakenly told they are “just overthinking” or “just worriers.” However, GAD is a distinct clinical condition that involves:
- Intrusive, Chronic Worry: The thoughts are not fleeting; they are a constant, low-level drone of anxiety that is difficult to stop or refocus. It’s like having an internal alarm that never turns off.
- Physical Manifestation: The body pays the price. GAD often presents with hallmark physical symptoms, including chronic muscle tension (especially in the neck and shoulders), persistent fatigue, frequent headaches, and significant sleep disturbance (trouble falling asleep or staying asleep).
- Impairment of Life Quality: The chronic feeling of being “on edge” (restlessness or irritability) drains mental resources, leading to poor concentration, difficulty making decisions, and avoidance of activities that could trigger more worry.
Why Professional Help Is Essential For GAD Recovery
You cannot simply wish or will your way out of Generalized Anxiety Disorder. GAD becomes a deeply ingrained habit of the mind and nervous system. It requires the specialized tools and structured environment that a professional counsellor or psychotherapist, like myself, can provide.
1. The Necessity of Accurate Diagnosis and Ruling Out Other Issues
The first critical step is an accurate diagnosis. GAD symptoms can overlap with other conditions, such as major depressive disorder, other specific anxiety disorders (like Panic Disorder), or even medical issues (thyroid problems, heart conditions). As a professional, I can provide a thorough clinical assessment to:
- Differentiate GAD from general life stress.
- Identify Comorbid Conditions (e.g., Depression), which are common with GAD, ensuring a comprehensive treatment plan addresses all underlying issues.
2. Implementation of Evidence-Based Treatments
GAD does not respond well to simple advice. Effective treatment, which we provide, always includes evidence-based psychotherapy, which is the cornerstone of effective anxiety therapy:
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): The gold standard for GAD. CBT teaches you to identify the specific, often distorted, thought patterns that fuel your worry. We work to challenge the necessity of “what if” scenarios and replace them with more balanced, realistic thinking, effectively dismantling the worry habit.
- Worry Management & Mindfulness: You will learn practical skills to tolerate uncertainty, schedule dedicated “worry time” (to contain the worry), and use mindfulness and relaxation techniques to lower physical arousal and interrupt the anxiety cycle in the moment.
3. Breaking the Cycle of Avoidance and Isolation
Chronic worry often leads to avoidance—avoiding commitments, social situations, or even making decisions, all in an effort to control the uncontrollable. This avoidance is a temporary fix that ultimately reinforces the anxiety, leading to isolation and a smaller life.
In therapy, I offer a non-judgmental, safe, and collaborative space to:
- Unpack and validate the distress of chronic worry.
- Gradually challenge the need to control every outcome.
- Develop emotional tolerance for the feeling of uncertainty, which is the core fear in GAD.
4. Preventing Long-Term Health Consequences
Untreated GAD is not benign. The constant state of hyperarousal from chronic worry can significantly impact long-term health, leading to:
- Increased risk for Major Depressive Disorder.
- Physical ailments such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), chronic pain, and an increased risk for cardiovascular issues due to persistent high levels of stress hormones.
Specialized Anxiety Counselling for Other Conditions
While Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is characterized by persistent worry, anxiety often manifests in other distinct forms. Our professional Anxiety Counselling in Singapore is tailored to address a full spectrum of these conditions using evidence-based methods.
Panic Disorder and Panic Attacks
Panic Disorder is characterized by recurrent, unexpected Panic Attacks—sudden episodes of intense fear that peak within minutes.
Key Symptoms: Sufferers often experience intense physical sensations, including a pounding or racing heart, shortness of breath, chest pain, trembling, dizziness, and a terrifying feeling of losing control or impending doom.
Our Counselling Approach: Our therapists utilize techniques to break the cycle of fear, specifically the fear of the panic attack itself. Treatment involves psychoeducation to understand the attack mechanism, relaxation training, and targeted Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to reduce panic vulnerability.
Social Anxiety Disorder (Social Phobia)
This condition involves an intense and persistent fear of being judged, scrutinized, embarrassed, or humiliated in social or performance situations.
Key Symptoms: Avoidance of social events, professional situations, or public speaking. When forced into a feared situation, sufferers experience extreme self-consciousness, blushing, sweating, or difficulty speaking, often leading to isolation.
Our Counselling Approach: Social Anxiety Counselling in Singapore focuses on Cognitive Restructuring to challenge core self-critical beliefs. We use graduated exposure exercises (practiced safely in the counselling room) to slowly rebuild confidence and tolerance for social uncertainty.
Specific Phobias
A Specific Phobia is an overwhelming, irrational fear of a particular object, animal, or situation (such as flying, heights, needles, or small spaces). The fear is out of proportion to the actual danger.
Key Symptoms: Immediate and intense anxiety or panic when encountering the feared trigger, leading to active avoidance that can significantly interfere with daily life and activities.
Our Counselling Approach: Specific Phobias are highly responsive to specialized treatment. We primarily use Exposure Therapy—a core component of CBT—where you are gently guided through controlled, systematic confrontation with the feared object or situation. This process helps the brain recalibrate its danger response, leading to rapid, lasting relief.
Work-Related Stress & Burnout
Though not strictly an anxiety disorder, chronic work-related stress often leads to clinical anxiety, depression, and Burnout. Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged or excessive stress.
Key Symptoms: A pervasive sense of exhaustion, cynicism or detachment from one’s job, reduced professional efficacy (feeling ineffective), irritability, difficulty concentrating, and persistent physical tension (headaches, muscle pain).
Our Counselling Approach: We help you identify the specific causes of stress (e.g., poor boundaries, perfectionism, toxic work environment). Counselling focuses on teaching effective coping and boundary-setting strategies, restoring work-life balance, and using Mindfulness and relaxation techniques to regulate the nervous system and prevent the progression to clinical anxiety.
Health Anxiety (Illness Anxiety Disorder)
Health Anxiety is characterized by excessive preoccupation and worry about having or developing a serious illness, often despite medical reassurance.
Key Symptoms: Frequently checking the body for signs of illness (e.g., checking heart rate, looking at moles), excessive research of symptoms online (often called “Dr. Google” searching), frequent doctor hopping, or, conversely, avoiding medical care entirely out of fear of a diagnosis.
Our Counselling Approach: Treatment focuses on interrupting the checking and reassurance-seeking cycle, which maintains the anxiety. Using Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), a specialized form of CBT, we help you gradually reduce health-checking behaviors and tolerate the uncertainty of health, rather than trying to achieve impossible certainty.
Relationship Anxiety (Attachment-Related)
This is chronic anxiety and worry specifically focused on one’s intimate relationship, often stemming from underlying attachment issues (fear of abandonment or engulfment).
Key Symptoms: Constantly seeking reassurance from a partner, extreme jealousy or possessiveness, difficulty trusting, ruminating on potential breakups, hyper-analyzing a partner’s words or actions for signs of rejection, or difficulty committing fully to a partner.
Our Counselling Approach: Therapy addresses the underlying attachment patterns and core fears. We help clients move from anxious reactivity to thoughtful, secure responses. This often involves techniques from Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) or Interpersonal Therapy (IPT) to improve communication, emotional regulation, and self-soothing, leading to healthier and more stable relationships.
Seeking professional help is an act of prevention and self-care. It is the most effective way to regain control over your thoughts, soothe your nervous system, and return to a life where your worries no longer dictate your choices. If you recognize yourself or a loved one in these symptoms, we at SG Counselling are here to provide the support and resources needed through comprehensive Anxiety Counselling in Singapore.
You may benefit from anxiety counselling if you experience persistent worry, overthinking, restlessness, difficulty relaxing, panic attacks, sleep issues, or if anxiety begins affecting your work, relationships, or daily functioning. If your symptoms last longer than a few weeks or keep returning, seeking professional support can help.
Your first session focuses on understanding your concerns, symptoms, personal history, and goals. Your counsellor will help you explore what triggers your anxiety and create a personalised therapy plan. You do not need to prepare anything — simply come as you are.
We use an evidence-based, personalised approach that may include Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), mindfulness-based interventions, somatic techniques, solution-focused strategies, and emotional regulation skills. Your treatment plan will be tailored to your specific needs.
Yes. Many people recover or significantly improve through counselling alone. Therapy teaches tools to manage thoughts, regulate emotions, reduce physical symptoms, and improve coping strategies. If medication may be helpful, your counsellor can discuss referral options.
Yes. Counselling is effective for both mild and severe anxiety, including frequent panic attacks. If symptoms are intense, your counsellor will work with you to stabilise immediate distress and gradually build long-term strategies.