Anna Howarth

Hi, I'm Anna. I am an Anxiety Psychotherapist and Coach, specialising in anxiety, worry, rumination, and anxiety disorders. 

I offer compassionate, science-based therapy for anxiety that's grounded in warmth, curiosity and lived experience. I uniquely blending CBT, ACT, and ERP through a Trauma-Informed framework, incorporating Psychodynamic and Somatic Psychotherapy, and Yoga and Mindfulness. 

If you are struggling with: 

• An overwhelming sense of doom washing over you, especially first thing in the morning
• Replaying situations over and over if your mind so it’s difficult to focus on the present moment
• Overwhelming and, what feels like, constant worry about the future, usually defined by ‘what if…’
• Unwanted, repetitive or irrational thoughts that draw your attention inwards
• Finding that you are not able to enjoy the things you used to enjoy
• Avoiding situations or people that you think will trigger anxiety
• Never ending self-doubt and comparison to others
• Catching yourself in intense negative thought cycles
• Trouble concentrating, brain fog and memory slips
• Compulsive behaviour, such as constantly checking things
• Low self-confidence and self-belief
• Difficulty moving into a rested state

These are very normal symptoms of anxiety. You are not weird. You are not crazy. Your brain isn’t broken; anxiety is just really loud. 

Anxiety doesn’t discriminate, and most of us will experience it at some point in our lives.

Together, we can work through this; anxiety recovery can look like this: 

• You feel hopeful, maybe for the first time in a long time
• You have a deeper understanding of yourself and your anxiety
• You have self-belief and confidence that you are enough
• Anxiety exists but it bothers you so much less, it’s just not as important as it used to be
• You have far more compassion for yourself
• The worry that is solvable, you work through, the worry you can’t, you let go
• Intrusive thoughts become unimportant, they just don’t carry the weight they used to, you notice them, but you know they are not you
• You start enjoying things again, not just the things that you used to enjoy, but maybe new things too
• You can turn up as you are, you may still feel triggered, you may still feel some anxiety, but it doesn’t destabilise you like it used to
• You believe in yourself again, you feel good about yourself
• You can finally rest, genuine rest!

It might be that you haven’t made sense of what or how you are feeling or haven’t identified it as anxiety. You might just know that things feel really hard and overwhelming. Or maybe, you’re at the other end of the spectrum, you know you have anxiety, you’ve tried what you’ve been told the try – the breathing, the journaling, the reframing your negative thought and even therapy, but anxiety continues to show up. Wherever you are in your journey, you need therapy that works...

My Therapeutic Approach includes: 

Our Foundation 
Therapy doesn’t work if you don’t feel safe and seen. This is why the foundational layer of our time together will focus on humanistic therapeutic approaches to create a sense of warmth, understanding, trust, and safety. 

Your context
You are unique, and therapy is ineffective if you are not understood. We look at you, your background, your current context, internalised expectations, your wiring, your values, belief system and cultural expectations. And, of course, how anxiety is impacting and what you want from therapy. 

The Intervention
A tailored approach based on the evidence-based, gold standard therapeutic approaches that I use. This will be framed within via a trauma-informed lens and a neuro-affirming model so that we feed in your background, current challenges and wiring (see below for more details). 

The Reinforcement
This is the work. Therapy with me isn’t about surface-level advice, simply talking things through or pretending that there’s a quick fix to this. It’s possible that you will feel better, and then worse again - it takes time and needs reinforcement. I’m not here to mismanage your expectations, to imply the recovery is linear, or to say that anxiety will be totally eliminated. But I am here to say that things can get so much better. I know this from my own experience. 

My ambition for you 

Everyone, including you, deserves to feel OK (even if you don’t believe it yet). I want to show you that you can feel better than you do now. To feel more comfortable and connected with yourself and others around you and have space again for things that bring you joy.

My goal is to help you reduce the distress of anxiety, step out of the constant thinking patterns, stop getting pulled into every thought your brain throws at you, alleviate the pit of doom in your stomach, and bring anxiety down from a full body alarm to something that feels more like background noise. In time you’ll be able to return to yourself, your life, your relationships, your values, and everything anxiety has taken away from you. My ambition is for you to leave feeling like yourself again, able to fully engage in the world, and feel more resilient to future challenges that may come your way.

False promises don’t exist here, just the work from someone who’s been there too.

My practice is/offers:

Trauma-Informed - Some of us face long-term anxiety due to difficult childhood experiences or the burden of past challenges. 

Neuro-affirming therapy that adapts to how you're wired - I am particularly passionate about supporting neurodivergent clients especially as neurodivergent people are far more likely to experience anxiety. 

1:1 Nature Therapy - In its most simple form, nature therapy it is the combination of gentle physical movement with sensory immersion in a natural environment. 

1:1 Yoga Psychotherapy - Practicing yoga within therapeutic environments can allow us to better understand ourselves, and our patterns. 

The therapy fee I have set reflects my experience and qualifications as well as my commitment to high-standard, evidence-based care and support bounded by ethical accountability. The fee includes regular, high-level clinical supervision, and my continuous professional development. I hold dedicated space each week to ensure my practice is aligned with current psychotherapeutic research to keep your support relevant, safe and targeted. 

I offer Psychotherapy for adults in the UK online, via telephone, in person, and in nature.

Availability 

Monday 9am-5pm (Online/Telephone)

Thursday 4:30pm-8pm (In-Person Therapy slots)

Friday 9am-1pm (In-Nature Therapy slots)

Sunday 5pm-8pm (Online/Telephone)

Free discovery/introductory call

Whether you are interested in Therapy with me, Nature therapy, Yoga Psychotherapy, or any of the other practices I provide. I offer a free, no obligation 15-minute consultation via telephone or video, or an extended consultation for a reduced fee. In this consultation we will 1) explore the difficulties you are experiencing, 2) give some space to any questions you have for me. Therapy is most effective when you find the right therapist for you, this is an opportunity for us both to explore whether working together is the right next step.

You can use my website booking system to book in your introduction call. 

Your first session

Following your complimentary introductory call, if you would like to work together, we’ll book in an initial assessment session. In this session: 

1) I will ask you a number of questions to better understand how anxiety/other difficulties are impacting you and how they developed.

2) We will explore what you want the focus of your therapy to be, what you want to get out of therapy. 

3) We will formulate a bespoke plan to decide on why of my therapeutic approaches feel most appropriate for you. 

There is no pressure to share everything immediately; we will work at a pace that feels comfortable for you.