Starting Without the Stress

Before anyone treats stress, it is worth ruling out the conditions that look exactly like it, because several are common and all are treatable.

An overactive thyroid. Palpitations, heat intolerance, weight loss, tremor, irritability, poor sleep. Indistinguishable from anxiety from the outside and diagnosed on a blood test.

Caffeine. Measured rather than estimated. Four coffees and a pre-workout produce a convincing imitation of an anxiety disorder, and people routinely undercount by half.

Sleep apnoea. Irritability, poor concentration, low mood and exhaustion. Needs a sleep study, not a relaxation plan.

Iron deficiency and B12 deficiency. Both present as being unable to cope with ordinary demands.

Perimenopause. In women in their forties and fifties, the irritability, broken sleep and brain fog are frequently attributed to stress when the transition is the driver, and there is a specific conversation to have with a GP about it.

Alcohol. Drinking to manage stress reliably worsens sleep and mood, and the pattern becomes self-sustaining.

So I ask for bloods and a caffeine and alcohol count before building any plan. What I then treat is the physical side, with two changes and a review. And where it is an anxiety disorder or depression, your GP and a mental health treatment plan for psychology will do more than I can. The clinic is in Lane Cove, opposite the library.

The hardest part is usually the first phone call

Most people put this off longer than they meant to. Not because the problem went away, but because booking means admitting it is a problem, and because nobody wants to arrive somewhere and discover they have come to the wrong place.

So before anything else: asking costs nothing and commits you to nothing. You can describe what is going on, hear whether it is something we work with, and decide afterwards. Plenty of those conversations end with us pointing someone somewhere else, and that is a perfectly good outcome.

What you do not need before you book

You do not need a referral. You do not need a diagnosis. You do not need to have tried everything else first, and you do not need to have it clearly explained in your head — "I just do not feel right" is a reasonable way to start, and it is how a lot of people start.

You also do not need to be in crisis to deserve an appointment. Waiting until something is unbearable makes it harder to shift, not easier.

What is useful to bring, if you have it

Any test results, scans or specialist letters. A list of what you are taking, including supplements. And if you can, a rough sense of when this started and what makes it better or worse — not a timeline to the day, just the shape of it.

If you have none of that, come anyway. It is a first appointment, not an exam.

How to tell whether this is the right place

Three things worth asking before you commit to anything:

• Do they work with what I have? A straight answer here is a good sign. So is "not really, but I know who does".
• What happens in the first session? You should get a clear answer, not a mystery.
• What will it cost and how long usually? Nobody can promise a result, but everyone should be able to tell you the fee and roughly how many visits is typical.

And if something is urgent

This kind of care works over weeks. If you are dealing with severe pain that came on suddenly, a serious injury, chest pain, or thoughts of harming yourself, that needs a doctor or an emergency service now — not an appointment next week. In Australia, 000 is the emergency number and Lifeline is 13 11 14, at any hour.

Ready when you are

When you want to take the next step, the contact page is the way in. The next thing that happens is the first consultation, and it is worth knowing what that looks like before you walk in.