Posts Tagged ‘anxiety’

Anxiety Leeds is closing. Since 2013, we’ve had thousands of people attend our support groups at the Leeds General Infirmary, supporting each other practically and emotionally. We hope that everyone who has come through our doors found some support from doing so.

Since the pandemic, we have been unable to hold face-to-face meetings. With myself and Chris having to step away from the organisation for personal reasons, we now do not have a venue, facilitators, or capacity to train new volunteers, and therefore it makes sense to close the group and allow others to take our place.

In terms of where you should go for support:

If you would like to access resources yourself and find out more about what is available in Leeds, MindWell remains the best place to visit.

In addition, you can access support at Linking Leeds. They provide Wellbeing Coordinators who can review your situation and help you access the most appropriate support.

I would like to extend a personal thank you to everyone who has attended, volunteered with, fundraised for, or otherwise been involved in Anxiety Leeds over the past nine years.

Two years ago we opened Leeds Anxiety Clinic and it has been a big success. Depending on your value of success. We have been very busy and are inundated with clients, which is a business success, but perhaps not a success for the state of society’s mental health.

We are now expanding and have opened a second branch in London, the Islington Anxiety Clinic. If you are in the London area and are looking for support in managing your anxiety, we’re here to help.

Anxiety Leeds has been running face-to-face groups since 2013. However, as we are based at the hospital, our meetings have been suspended since the pandemic arrived to ensure we keep both our clients and vulnerable hospital patients safe (from COVID, not from mental health problems, unfortunately).

So far, we have been referring people to other organisations who are better equipped to handle digital events and services. However, due to high demand, we are now trialling on an online community that allows attendees of Anxiety Leeds to interact digitally, hopefully providing the same level of warmth and support we were able to achieve in the group.

The Mindfulness for Anxiety app is now available for both iOS and Android on the Apple App Store and Good Play Store respectively. The app is completely free to use and comes with five guided audio practices, a self-timer mode that allows you to set any time length and a learning section where you can find out more about mindfulness.

I’ve just released my new course, Overcoming Fear of Driving with CBT. Course trailer is below.

They say that the necessity is the mother of all invention. With the impending COVID-19 crisis looming, we decided it was finally time to make virtual appointments part of Leeds Anxiety Clinic’s offerings.

That was easier said than done. Because of the social distancing recommendations already in effect, and Amazon having halted warehouse shipments, the few webcams that were available had all been panic-bought by other people. Luckily, we were able to beg and borrow the equipment we needed until we could get our own.

We’re still playing around with how to produce the best quality experience, both in terms of the technical setup and the differences between delivering therapy face-to-face, where you can easily scribble a diagram or analyse holistic body movements, and delivering it digitally. Early efforts are working well, though.

Last week, I presented a talk as part of Leeds Anxiety Clinic’s series of events on helping people manage their anxiety. It was entitled How to be incredibly productive, even when you have anxiety.

I thought it went well. Everyone turned up for a start. We weren’t expecting that. When Anxiety Leeds ran a trial, we invited 30 people and 4 turned up on the day. Everyone who had bought a ticket (it sold out a week in advance) turned up, so we were scrambling around for extra chairs just before the start.

Final course launch for April: overcoming the fear of public speaking. Here is the blurb:

Do you want to conquer your fear of public speaking, improve your confidence and build your communication skills?  Maybe you want to be an amazing speaker, or maybe you just want to feel less terrified every time you have to give a presentation at work or “say a few words”.

If so, this is the course for you.

We’ll start by learning 12 different strategies for managing public speaking anxiety. We’ll then move on to how to prepare, write and deliver amazing speeches. We’ll learn how to practise our skills in a safe space, with exercises workbooks and expert tips.

And here is the trailer:

Check it out on Udemy here.

Worfolk Anxiety is predominantly an English language website. However, for years we’ve also had some of our best articles professionally translated into Spanish and Portuguese.

As of this month, we’re also making content available in French, Estonian and Polish. Depending on the results, we’re looking at adding more languages in the future, allowing an even wider audience to benefit from our help.

Last week, Leeds Anxiety Clinic held its first public talk “How to build good stress into your life to make you immune to bad stress”.

As a first event, it has been a success. It was more than sold out: we had a waiting list with people emailing us asking how they could get tickets or just stand at the back. So, it is great to see there is demand for what we do.

Chris delivered the talk with confidence and the feedback we received via Survey Monkey afterwards was generally positive. We’re looking forward to announcing more events in the near future.