Anxiety Therapy
Is Chronic Stress And Worry Keeping You From Living Fully?
- Do you suffer from anxiety, prolonged distress or panic attacks?
- Has it been difficult for you to manage various life changes and responsibilities, including those involving your career, parenting and relationships?
- Are you afraid of going after what you want or having new experiences?
Many of us have been conditioned to people-please and avoid conflict at all costs. Instead of speaking our minds, we may be more inclined to defer to others or avoid setting necessary boundaries. Not only does this mindset keep us from achieving our goals—it keeps us from fully understanding what our needs are in the first place.
What Is Your Experience Of Anxiety?
Anxiety manifests in a variety of ways. Worrying excessively or fearing unfamiliar social situations are common symptoms, but there are other experiences of anxiety that can be hard to identify at the surface level.
Perhaps you’re often irritable or on edge, pouncing at every opportunity to see potential drawbacks in any given situation. Or maybe you’re quick to judge yourself, constantly fearing rejection by those around you. This mindset naturally affects your relationships, including those with partners, coworkers and friends, as you lack the confidence to truly speak your mind.
There are also physical symptoms that can signal anxiety. If you struggle to fall asleep or stay asleep due to a racing mind, you likely feel zapped of your energy by the day’s end. Furthermore, if you experience pain in your chest, trouble breathing or a sense of impending doom, it’s possible that panic attacks have developed from your anxiety.
The drive toward maintaining harmony in your life may be putting unnecessary stress on you to place everyone’s needs before your own. But treatment using talk therapy and body-based approaches can help change your brain’s response to fear and uncertainty. In counseling, you can learn to worry less and stop feeling held back by your anxiety.
Anxiety Is A Common Issue, Affecting Individuals From All Walks Of Life
Anxiety is a normal human experience that accompanies virtually every challenging or threatening situation. All of us are likely to become somewhat distressed when faced with a new experience or difficult obstacle. However, if anxiety persists even as circumstances improve, or if worry becomes excessive to the point that it’s impacting daily life and decision-making, it may be time to consider treatment.
Where Does Anxiety Come From?
There are many theories about where anxiety disorders originate, but it’s safe to assume that some combination of genetic, neurobiological/chemical and environmental factors are at play. For instance, if we experienced unprocessed trauma, encountered prolonged stress or developed avoidant coping behaviors as a child, we’re more likely to struggle with symptoms of anxiety in our day-to-day lives.
Furthermore, we are living in unprecedented times of extreme political polarization, threats to women’s reproductive health and autonomy, climate change and a proliferation of racist, homophobic and misogynistic conspiracy theories. Grappling with this new and uncertain reality can have dire consequences on our mental health, especially for those of us from marginalized communities, including women and people of color.
Anxiety is difficult to understand because it is so effective in clouding our perception. The underlying causes—often related to trauma and early childhood—distort the thinking process and cause us to over-generalize and catastrophize. Instead of seeing situations clearly for what they are, anxiety leads us to believe that we are alone, inadequate and unprepared.
Yet, therapeutic treatment allows you to better understand the assumptions you make about yourself and the world around you. In the process of reflecting on and identifying your triggers, you will be able to develop skills for managing the effects that stress and anxiety have on your life.
Therapy Gives You Tools And Perspectives To Manage Anxiety
As a therapist specializing in anxiety, my aim is to help you achieve short- and long-term goals for reducing symptoms. Whether you are looking to eliminate panic attacks, face a specific fear or just generally feel less worried and stressed, my treatment approach targets anxiety at the core so you can find lasting relief.
What To Expect
Once we have completed the intake process and determined some of your goals for therapy, we will work on establishing where and when your anxiety developed. Maybe you have always felt anxious or perhaps a painful recent experience triggered your symptoms. Working together, we will identify your fears and worries so that a targeted, customized therapeutic approach can be taken.
In anxiety treatment, I typically use a combination of psychoanalytic and psychodynamic therapy, as well as body-based methods. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a revolutionary technique that literally rewires the brain so you can develop a new relationship to your thoughts, fears and worries. And elements of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) are used in EMDR to help challenge the negative beliefs driving your anxiety. I am also likely to incorporate calming techniques like meditation and breathing exercises to help you feel safer and more self-assured when fear arises.
Anxiety can be exhausting and overwhelming to live with, but it’s possible to feel better—you don’t always have to be at the mercy of your brain assuming the worst and your body automatically going into high alert. Therapy offers you the tools and perspectives you need to restore a sense of peace when anxiety derails you.
Still Unsure If Anxiety Treatment Can Help You?
Talking about my triggers will only make me feel worse.
It’s my experience that the opposite is true. Discussing your anxiety with an empathetic, warm and nonjudgmental therapist can help you feel safer and more in control of your triggers. Not only are you likely to gain a deeper understanding of what makes you feel anxious and stressed through effective counseling—you’ll develop self-compassion and coping strategies that will reduce the frequency and intensity of your anxiety symptoms.
Ultimately, therapy is a gateway toward feeling more empowered to tackle your stressors and anxiety-related challenges.
How long does anxiety treatment take?
I typically work with clients for a minimum of one year. This is done to ensure their ability to gain a deep understanding of underlying issues and to give them ample time to make lasting, meaningful changes in their lives. Every once in a while, there are clients for whom there is only one event that is the sole source of their anxiety (though this is relatively rare). For these clients, a few months of treatment might be sufficient to resolve symptoms of anxiety.
Is online therapy for anxiety just as effective as in-person counseling?
I too had this concern prior to transitioning my practice online at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, I am pleased to report that my clients have had the same positive outcomes through telehealth as they’ve had with face-to-face therapy.
Furthermore, online therapy has made weekly counseling much more flexible and accessible for my clients. Meeting remotely removes the hassle of a commute and is thus much easier to schedule. Clients also tend to become more quickly comfortable when receiving counseling from the safety of their home or office, which can be especially beneficial for those struggling with social anxiety.
Tackle Anxiety Symptoms So You Can Live More Fully
Chronic symptoms of anxiety and panic attacks can feel overwhelming, but therapy offers lasting, meaningful relief. To book a free consultation or find out more about my approach to anxiety treatment, contact me.