Psychological counselling for anxiety · Bucharest and online
Anxiety
When unease haunts you for no reason, you need to understand where it comes from, not just to manage it.
Anxiety is beneficial up to a point: it warns us that something is wrong, that we need to change something. It becomes a problem when the alarm is not accepted and understood, and it no longer switches off. Thoughts go round in circles, the body stays tense, nights grow shorter, and ordinary activities come to demand an enormous effort.
Anxiety is an experience of the whole organism, in which brain chemistry, sleep, exercise and diet all matter. Caring for the body helps, and sometimes so does the support of a psychiatrist. But when the unease remains, it is often a signal from within. A desire, an anger, a loss or a fear older than the present situation asks to be understood. Counselling looks for this meaning, for deep healing, not just for relief from the symptom.
Anxiety, from brain chemistry to inner experience →
How we can overcome anxiety
Change does not come from fighting anxiety, but from what happens when we begin to listen to it:
- Understanding. What has never been said frightens us more. When unease finds its meaning and its story, it loses its blind force.
- Acceptance. Anxiety is not an enemy to be defeated, but a part of you that is trying to say something. Ending the fight against it often brings the first relief.
- Mourning. Many anxieties hide a loss that could not be lived through: a person, a relationship, a stage of life, an image of yourself. Once the loss has been mourned, the alarm can stop.
- Inner growth. Gradually, emotions that are hard to bear become emotions that can be felt and thought about, without flooding the body or the mind.
- The relationship. Anxiety is often born in a relationship, and it is transformed in a relationship too. Being listened to attentively, without haste and without judgement, is already part of the change.
Areas of work
Constant unease
Worries that move from one subject to another, the feeling that something bad is about to happen, the inability to relax even when everything is fine. Sometimes constant worry keeps hidden a specific fear that would be too hard to look at directly.
Panic attacks
Your heart pounds as if it would leap out of your chest, you cannot get enough air, and the fear of dying or going mad seems to come out of nowhere. A panic attack is often an emotion that has not yet found a name: an anger, a separation, a fear that discharges directly into the body. That is why it often comes in quiet moments, when the usual defences relax. The fear of the next attack then comes to narrow your life. The first step is a medical consultation; the second, a place where what the body is screaming can, slowly, be thought about and put into words.
Anxiety in the body
Headaches or stomach aches, muscle tension, insomnia. Sometimes anxiety is not felt as unease, but only in the body. Psychoanalysis describes two ways in which this happens. In conversion, the body says through a symptom what cannot be said directly: a lump in the throat when you cannot “swallow” a situation, a weight on the chest when you have been carrying something for too long. In somatisation, emotions never come to be felt as emotions and discharge directly into the body. In both cases, once a doctor has ruled out other causes, what the body is trying to say needs to be understood.
Fear of others and of getting it wrong
The fear of speaking in front of others, of being judged, of getting it wrong. Perfectionism, procrastination. Behind them there is often a harsh inner judge, built long ago, whose voice we take for the truth.
Shyness
Blushing, a voice that fades away, the wish to become invisible. Paradoxically, the shy person often longs to be seen, and it is precisely this wish that frightens them. Shame is born of the distance between how we are and how we think we ought to be, and of the fear that others will see it. Sometimes, behind it, there is a child whose joy in showing themselves was not warmly received by any gaze.
Anxiety after a change
A breakup, a move, an illness, a loss, the birth of a child. Every change, even a wanted one, also means losing something: a place, a role, an image of yourself. Anxiety can be the signal of a loss not yet mourned. Sometimes it appears only after the difficult situation has passed: what could not be lived through at the time finds its meaning later, when it seems you have come safely through the crisis. At other times, a present change awakens much older separations that you thought you had left far behind. Grief and loss → · Breakup →
If you recognise yourself here, write to me →
Who it is for
- Adults and young people, when they feel that unease is taking up more and more of their lives
- Parents of an anxious adolescent: The adolescent →
What my experience is made of
I am a clinical psychologist licensed in Romania and a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in training. I work in the psychoanalytic tradition, which means that I am interested in the meaning of what you are experiencing, not just the symptom.
How it works
- Write to me using the form below or by email. A few lines are enough; there is no need to explain everything.
- I reply within 1–2 working days and we arrange the time of the first meeting together.
- The first meeting, 45 minutes long, at the practice or online, is devoted to understanding the situation. Only then do we decide together whether and how to continue.
The framework
Counselling is not psychotherapy, but it offers you a setting in which to understand what is happening to you. Sessions last 45 minutes and take place at the practice or online. Fee: 250 lei / session.
First meeting
Write me a few lines about what brings you. There is no need to explain everything.
Or write to me directly at radutudorache@protonmail.com.
Psychological counselling does not replace a medical or psychiatric consultation. When a psychiatric consultation is needed, I work together with the doctor.