Warwickshire Specialist Anxiety Centre
Warwickshire Specialist Anxiety Centre is headed by Psychotherapist Sarah Steventon, one of the UK’s leading experts in anxiety disorders.
Sarah holds an MSc in Neuroscience of Mental Health from King’s College London and has a specialist background in Psychopathology. This advanced training gives her a deep understanding of how the brain predicts, wires in threat, and creates the state we call anxiety. By combining clinical expertise with cutting-edge neuroscience, Sarah offers an approach that goes beyond traditional talking therapies.
Why Anxiety Feels Uncontrollable
Anxiety is not “all in your head” — it is built into how the brain works. Neuroscience shows that the brain is a prediction machine. Every moment it anticipates what will happen next, preparing the body before you are consciously aware.
Neurons send signals using electrical impulses and chemical messengers. When they fire together repeatedly, the pathway strengthens — this is how the brain wires in learning.
Prediction errors happen when reality doesn’t match what the brain expected. If the event feels threatening, it is more likely to be stored, shaping future predictions.
The salience network filters which signals matter most. If your brain once paired a racing heart with danger, this network tags it as important — so the same sensations can trigger anxiety again.
Concepts are built from this process: the brain categorises the experience as “threat” before your conscious mind has had time to think.
This is why anxiety feels so fast and automatic: the body has already reacted before you’re aware of it.
Why Traditional Talking Therapy Falls Short
One of the most common forms of therapy offered within the UK is called Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). This style of therapy assumes anxiety starts with thoughts - but research shows the sequence in the brain actually happens in reverse:
Prediction
Body response
Thought
By the time a thought like “I’m going to have a heart attack” appears, your body has already been set into alarm.
CBT works “top-down” at the level of conscious thought, but anxiety is wired “bottom-up.”
This is why CBT often helps only briefly and rarely creates lasting change.
Sarah’s Approach
Sarah works with the brain at the level where anxiety is actually created: its predictive wiring. This is not just talking — it is about using the brain’s natural plasticity to rewire threat pathways. This approach is fast, effective, and designed for lasting change.
It is suitable for a wide range of anxiety-related conditions, including:
Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
Panic Disorder & Panic Attacks
Health Anxiety
Social Anxiety
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Phobias
Booking Information
To book with Sarah, please use the Contact Page.
Due to high demand, Sarah cannot discuss individual cases by phone before booking.
Texts and WhatsApp are not monitored and will not receive a response.
Sarah works with individuals aged 18+ only.
Phone or text should only be used in an emergency.
Am I having a Panic Attack?
Understanding Panic and Anxiety
When anxiety escalates quickly, it can feel as though your body takes over. These reactions are the body’s way of preparing for what it predicts may be a threat — even when none exists.
Some of the physical sensations people commonly experience during a panic episode include:
Rapid heartbeat
Muscle tension or trembling
Light-headedness or dizziness
Tingling in the hands and feet
Shallow or rapid breathing
Tightness across the chest
Feeling faint or sick
Urgent need to use the toilet
Hot flushes or cold sweats
Dry mouth
Tension headaches
Shaking or trembling
Feeling disconnected or “unreal”
Changes in time perception — things feeling faster or slower than usual
What Panic Can Feel Like
A panic episode can come with intense physical and mental sensations such as:
Feeling out of control or fearing something terrible might happen
Thoughts of having a heart attack or collapsing
A sense of being watched or judged
Feeling detached from your surroundings
Feeling trapped, restless, or needing to escape
A heightened state of alertness, scanning for what’s wrong
These sensations can be deeply uncomfortable — but they are not dangerous. They are the result of your brain’s prediction system momentarily overreacting to uncertainty.
Why Panic Often Repeats
After one episode, the brain often predicts it will happen again. That prediction alone can create the conditions for another panic attack — a self-reinforcing loop of anticipation and reaction.
This doesn’t mean something is wrong with you; it’s simply how the brain’s predictive system works.
The good news is that this cycle can be broken — and often more quickly than people expect.
Working With Panic and Anxiety
Sarah is highly experienced in helping clients overcome a wide range of anxiety-related conditions, including:
Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
Panic Attacks and Panic Disorder
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) linked to anxiety
Stress and Burnout
Phobias (e.g. fear of flying, public speaking, being sick, or someone else being sick around them, confined spaces, )
Health Anxiety
Social Anxiety
A Different Way of Working
Some medications and traditional approaches can, in certain cases, heighten the sensations of anxiety rather than reduce them.
Sarah’s approach uses neuroscience-based techniques that target the predictive mechanisms behind anxiety — helping the brain relearn safety and calm where it once predicted alarm.
This process is both efficient and evidence-based, designed to neutralise the automatic responses that fuel anxiety rather than simply managing them.
To learn more about the method and the science behind it, please see the Process and Neuroscience section.
If you’re currently experiencing anxiety or panic and would like to explore how this can change, please get in touch via the Contact page — you’ll receive a response within 24 hours.
OCD
One of the most debilitating forms of Anxiety is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder or OCD for short, which can completely take over your life.
This is simply the brain tying to manage the uncertainty - and OCD shows itself in many different formats.
There are the compulsions, which is the brain's way of trying to stop the uncertainty - so it says, 'if I touch the desk three times as I walk past, then nothing bad will happen'.
Through to obsessive thoughts, known as Pure O - which is the constant 'what if this or that happens' or 'Did I do something', such as did I hit a cyclist with my car when I drove home' - which then creates a need to drive back to the place you felt you may have hit someone and retrace your steps, often driving back several times.
Many therapies are purely talking therapies, and therefore are not effective.
We need to change the neural connections to change response patterns before they reach consciousness. The OCD trigger is caught and stopped in it’s tracks preventing it from firing up again in the future.
We work on both the triggers and behavioural elements of OCD, provides long lasting results without the need for any ongoing coping strategies.
Anger Managment
Anger can be split into categories.
Chronic anger, which is prolonged, and can impact the immune system.
Passive anger, which doesn’t always come across as anger and can be difficult to identify
Overwhelmed anger, which is caused by life demands that are too much for an individual to cope with.
Self-inflicted anger, which is directed toward the self and may be caused by feelings of guilt
Judgmental anger, which is directed toward others and may come with feelings of resentment
Volatile anger, which involves sometimes-spontaneous bouts of excessive or violent anger
Do you ever get so angry that you want to lash out, shout or throw something? Does your partner enrage you so often that you find yourself screaming at them?
We have all experienced the heated surge of anger, and while being angry from time to time is an integral part of our evolutionary make up (it can help us detect and respond to threatening situations or motivate us to change aspects of our lives we are not happy with), constant, uncontrollable anger can be an incredibly destructive and dangerous emotion.
Anger and high adrenaline trigger physiological reactions such as raised heartbeat, higher temperature and palpitations. This level and intensity of emotion over a prolonged period of time can lead to serious physiological and psychological health problems including depression, anxiety, high blood pressure, and lower-functioning immune system to name just a few.
PTSD
At the extreme end, constant high levels of arousal are generated by post-traumatic stress. Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can be a truly terrifying experience - however this can be resolved, both safely and quickly.
PTSD doesn't just affect people who have served in the military, or worked in the forces - PTSD can be brought on by any trauma that is experienced.
Someone with PTSD may be very anxious and find it difficult to relax. They may be constantly aware of threats and easily startled.
This state of mind is known as hyperarousal.
Hyperarousal often leads to:
irritability
angry outbursts
sleeping problems (insomnia)
difficulty concentrating
Resolving trauma of any kind, including abuse, whether sexual, physical, or emotional, or a trauma from an accident or an attack can be done just as effectively.
Sarah sees clients on a one-to-one basis at her Specialist Anxiety Centre in Warwick. Her consulting room is ideally placed to serve clients across the whole of the Warwickshire area.
Leamington-Spa - Warwick - Stratford Upon Avon
