When you call, they will schedule a telephone appointment with a therapist where they will ask you some questions about your anxiety and then they will discuss options to help you. I think I had to wait a couple of weeks for an appointment.

A few days before the telephone appointment, they sent me written confirmation of the date and time along with a questionnaire to fill in. You need to fill in the questionnaire before the appointment as they will refer to it during the conversation. By filling in the form you will get a rating (score) for anxiety and depression, and this helps the therapist to see how severe your symptoms are. They also asked me questions about how it affects my day to day life, what medication I'm on, my family history (they only ask about that briefly to see if anything in your upbringing could have contributed to your problems), and what sort of help I'd like.

In total, the phone appointment lasted about 20 minutes. Even though I was nervous beforehand it was nothing scary and the lady was very friendly. She gave me the details of the next available Stress Control course - luckily there was one starting in 10 days so I got help quickly.

When I went to the first class, there were about 50 people, which did seem a bit daunting but you're not expected to speak in front of the whole group, so it's not so bad.

This is what the 6 week course covers:

Week 1: Introduction and information about stress
Week 2: Control your body: relaxation and exercise
Week 3: Control your thoughts: learn to think your way out of stress
Week 4: Control your actions: boost self-confidence
Week 5: Control panic
Week 6: Control sleep problems and control your future.