Sarah and her son Sam, aged 16 on Anxiety:

“Sam was always a bit clingy and as a young child he felt safer in adult company. He was close to his cousins but making friends at school was always tricky. He is so shy.

“Academically he was doing excellently but the pressure of GCSEs and the thought of Sixth Form just got the better of him. He felt sick, was physically sick all the time, his heart was racing and he drove us both mad pacing up and down all the time. He also started to tear up tissues.

“He sometimes couldn’t go to school so in the end we went to our GP and Sam got antidepressants, but then he couldn’t sleep so that was no good.”

Sarah had heard of my work through a friend and called for a WayForward consultation. Based on her story of Sam’s early years I recommended Anxiety/level 2 as Sam’s need for safety and protection went back a long way.

First of all, I taught Sam some first aid tapping for his anxiety and the relief was quite instant and he felt much safer by the end of our first session, knowing he had an efficient tool at hand to help. I also taught him ‘stealth tapping’ which he really liked.

Sam and I then started by simply listing everything that triggered his anxiety – thoughts, events, people and situations both past, present and future.

As we worked we began to see patterns of association and discover the meaning Sam had given to those incidents and we were able to change the limiting beliefs that he had formed around them.

Sam soon experienced a domino effect of release that led us to look at ‘perfect’ v. ‘good enough’ and Sam now feels ‘lighter, happier, braver and more flexible’.

Best of all, he feels safe. He now has a girlfriend and the person he had previously only dared to be at home is now shining and showing through in the world outside.

Sam’s crippling anxiety and sense of impending doom is, for the most part, now absent and when it does occur, he knows how to handle it and how to extract opportunities from the anxiety.