When the worry doesn't need a reason.
Generalised Anxiety Disorder isn't worry about one thing. It's worry about everything, and nothing, on rotation. Work, money, health, the people you love, whether you left the oven on, whether that email sounded off. The subject changes. The feeling underneath it doesn't.
You don't always know what you're anxious about. You just know you are — and you've usually been anxious for longer than you'd admit out loud.
No GP referral needed. Speak to a BACP-registered therapist this week.
What GAD actually is
Generalised Anxiety Disorder is persistent, excessive worry across multiple areas of life — work, health, family, money — that lasts six months or longer and is difficult to control. It's one of the most common mental health conditions in the UK: roughly 6 in 100 people have GAD in any given week.
GAD is often mistaken for personality ("I've just always been a worrier") rather than recognised as a treatable pattern. The difference matters, because a personality trait doesn't respond to therapy. A pattern does.
You might recognise some of this. Worry that moves between subjects faster than you can resolve any one of them. Physical restlessness — a jaw that won't unclench, a stomach that won't settle. Difficulty concentrating because part of your attention is always elsewhere, scanning for the next thing to worry about. Sleep that's either hard to reach or doesn't hold. A sense that if you stopped worrying, something bad would slip through.
None of this means you're broken. It means a system built to anticipate threat has stopped being able to tell the difference between a real one and an ordinary Tuesday.
How we treat GAD.
We use Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), both NICE-recommended for GAD. Which one leads depends on how you tend to think.
CBT works well when the goal is identifying and restructuring the specific thought patterns that keep worry moving — the catastrophising, the "what if" chains, the certainty-seeking that never actually delivers certainty. It's typically 6–12 sessions of structured, skills-based work.
ACT tends to suit GAD particularly well when the worry has become chronic and self-sustaining — when you've already tried to think your way out of it and the thinking became part of the problem. Instead of challenging every worry, ACT teaches you to notice it, put some distance between yourself and it, and act on what matters regardless of whether the worry is still there. It's typically 8–16 sessions.
"GAD clients often arrive brilliant at identifying risk and terrible at switching the scanning off. The work isn't teaching you to see fewer risks — it's giving the system permission to stand down once it's done its job." — Albie Mew-Davies, MBACP, Co-founder & Clinical Lead, Eunoia Health
Book your free 15-mnute consultation →
What a session actually looks like
Fifty minutes, usually weekly to start, moving to fortnightly once you've built some momentum. Online via secure video, or in person at our Horsham practice. Each session opens with a brief check-in, focuses on what's most live for you that week, and ends with something concrete to practise before the next one. Every six sessions, we step back and check whether the approach is working.
You don't need to arrive with a clear account of what you're anxious about. Most GAD clients can't give one — that's part of what makes it GAD rather than a specific phobia. You just need to turn up.
Related reading
GAD often overlaps with other patterns — see our pages on high-functioning anxiety and burnout and work-related anxiety for related territory, or the main anxiety page for an overview of how we work across all anxiety presentations.
Start with a conversation, not a commitment
Fifteen minutes, one honest conversation, no clinical assessment required. If it's a good fit, we'll talk about what comes next. If it isn't, you'll still have fifteen minutes back and a clearer sense of what you're looking for.