Therapy for Anxiety

Anxiety is a natural response to stressors in our lives.  It's our mind and body's reaction to something that feels threatening, worrisome, or scary.  This isn't a bad thing.  Anxiety can be helpful in certain situations.  From a biological and evolutionary function, anxiety can ensure your safety and survival.  For example, imagine you are walking alone at night in an empty parking garage.  Suddenly you hear a loud noise behind you.  What do you notice?  Maybe your breathing becomes quicker, your heart rate speeds up, and you become more aware of the things around you.  This is your fight-or-flight response getting activated.  In this example, anxiety is trying to protect you, to keep you safe.  Or consider anxiety from a performance enhancement standpoint.  This type of anxiety can motivate you, help you prepare, and increase your focus.  For example, imagine you have an important work presentation where you are leading the meeting.  Anxiety in this context can keep you more sharp, alert, and responsive.  These are two instances when anxiety is working in a healthy and helpful way.

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But what if anxiety becomes more frequent?  Or begins interfering with your relationships, quality of life, and functioning? What if your anxiety starts to take over areas of your life?  This can look like chronic overthinking, doubting yourself, racing thoughts, constant worry, excessive nervousness, increased heart rate, sleep problems, somatic symptoms, muscle tension, and upset stomach.  Anxiety presents itself in different ways and to varying degrees, including generalized anxiety, social anxiety, panic attacks, specific phobias, obsessive thoughts, P-TSD,

and trauma.

 

As a trauma-informed therapist, I use evidence based tools through an integrative approach to help you address what has brought you into therapy.  My goal is to create a nurturing, comfortable, and safe space where you can openly share and process your personal journey.  Together we can learn what type of anxiety you are experiencing, uncover the triggers, thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that might be contributing to it, discover how things like attachment, relationships, life experiences, and personality may all play a role in your experience with anxiety, and lastly, build ways to process, cope and manage your anxiety in healthy ways.  

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