Anxiety Treatment

Do past mistakes keep you from working toward future goals?

Is it common for you to dwell on negative thoughts, feelings, and compulsions?

And are you having trouble focusing on what’s in front of you or feeling capable of accomplishing life’s many demands? 

You may be feeling an unnecessary sense of urgency in your relationships, work, or home life. Perhaps you have developed fears that are preventing you from living life to its fullest. Or maybe, in times of acute distress, you feel an overwhelming sense of panic and hypervigilance. 

Anxiety manifests in many different ways. You may be struggling with physical symptoms—including those associated with panic attacks—like heart palpitations, excessive sweating, or muscle tension. Or it could be that emotional and cognitive symptoms of anxiety—such as uncontrollable and catastrophic thinking—have left you feeling lethargic and depleted. 

It’s likely that such symptoms have crept into every aspect of your life. You may find it hard to engage with others or meet new people as you struggle with social anxiety. Perhaps you constantly overthink your interactions or compare yourself to those around you, or perhaps you can’t help but feel insecure in new situations.  

Maybe you’re grappling with obsessive-compulsive tendencies. If this is the case, you may find yourself constantly battling unwanted thoughts and engaging in repetitive behaviors, such as cleaning, checking, and counting rituals. When these rituals go unperformed, your anxiety likely escalates dramatically. Such fearful thinking and ruminations may have had an impact on your work and daily life, as you have lost the ability to concentrate and stay focused. 

Living with anxiety, it’s impossible to find peace and respite, no matter what you do to relax. All you want is to feel confident in your abilities and the decisions you make. You’re tired of second-guessing yourself at every turn. With therapeutic treatment, however, you can learn to let go of self-limiting beliefs and find relief from the anxiety that’s been holding you back. 

The Small Whisper Of Self-Doubt Often Grows Into The Loud Voice Of Self-Criticism

“You’re doing that wrong!” “Why did you make such a fool out of yourself?” “You didn’t get enough done today!” “Why can’t you be more like so-and-so?” Do those criticisms sound familiar? When we struggle with anxiety, we also engage in a constant battle with our inner critic. 

All of us possess a voice in our head that narrates our actions, behaviors, failures, and accomplishments—we create a narrative of events, and no narrative can be purely objective or free of opinion. So, as anxiety begins to affect us, the voice in our head that was once neutral or positive becomes more and more negative, damaging our self-esteem over time. Sometimes that voice is born out of an overly critical parent or some other experience we had that caused us to feel inadequate. 

And when life gets stressful, this voice is merely exacerbated. In a world impacted by global crises, political division, and the constant stream of comparison culture brought on by social media, it can be easy to let that negative voice take over and dwell on all of our insecurities. 

More often than not, that voice becomes such a powerful part of the chorus that we don’t even remember a time in which we didn’t constantly hear it. It’s tempting to tune everything out by using substances or constant screen time to numb the true emotions we’re feeling. But sooner or later, that critical voice gains volume and anxiety catches up to us once again. 

Moreover, anxiety manifests in many ways. Generalized anxiety disorder, for instance, describes chronic worry and tension that is often unprovoked by a specific situation. And panic disorder refers to the physical manifestation of anxiety in the body, which typically includes symptoms that mimic a heart attack.  

Yet those are not the only disorders that are associated with anxiety. Phobias, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) all fall under the umbrella of anxiety, and each one of these conditions present physical, emotional, and cognitive symptoms that can make life very uncomfortable. 

In therapy, you can have an opportunity to take a step back and see how much damage that an inner voice driven by anxiety has done. And by learning to target negative self-beliefs and build a toolbox of effective coping skills, you can improve your quality of life.

Treatment Can Target Self-Limiting Beliefs And Help You Overcome Anxiety

When anxiety takes over, it can become increasingly difficult to sort out your innermost thoughts and feelings. However, a therapist can help you feel seen and heard in your experience so that you can begin to make meaningful progress on the path to healing. 

Beginning with an introductory intake session, treatment will center around understanding your symptoms, building an effective therapeutic relationship, and locating the root cause of your anxiety. We will start by getting to know each other and developing goals for counseling so that you can begin to manage your anxiety in a sustainable and enduring way. In spending ample time understanding what helps to relieve your anxiety and what contributes to your distress, we can work together to build a customized toolbox that you can apply in every aspect of your life. 

Like trauma, anxiety gets stored and stuck in the body. That’s why I use Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) to target distorted thinking patterns and clear the neural pathways of certain stuck points and ruminations. As an evidence-based approach, EMDR is very effective therapy that can help you locate the source of your distress, reprocess it, and develop new associations with your trauma or discomfort so that anxiety can be effectively managed and reduced. 

Using EMDR, you can expect to have an increased understanding of yourself, and it is my hope that the counseling process helps you to feel better understood and empowered in overcoming anxiety. I am confident that with the right treatment, you can increase your communication skills, establish meaningful boundaries in your life, and enjoy a greater sense of purpose. And in fact, my clients have reported that therapy has allowed them to develop a newfound perspective on life—one that helps them to effectively cope and manage daily challenges. 

That voice in your head has been trying to deter you for too long, and it’s time to shift away from a skewed perspective of yourself and the world around you. With anxiety treatment, a new sense of peace and healing is possible. 

Maybe you’re ready to see a therapist about your anxiety, but you have some questions…

Therapy is for people with “real” problems—I can just talk to my friends and my family about my anxiety. 

While you’ve managed to get this far in life without anxiety treatment, it’s likely you don’t realize that you’re stuck in a never-ending pattern of distorted thinking and negative self-talk. Friends and family members are great soundboards, but they don’t always give the best advice, nor do they have the training and experience to offer tools for meaningful change. Attending therapy can provide you with valuable insight and skill-building so that you can enjoy an all-around better quality of life. 

I am concerned about the cost of anxiety treatment. 

I understand that therapy is an additional expense on top of all of the other things you are juggling right now. However, you can’t put a price on your mental health and well-being. If you are concerned about the cost of treatment, I encourage you to think about how anxiety has robbed you of so much valuable time and energy. It’s likely that therapy can help you to better manage your resources, ultimately saving you time and money in the long run. 

I already struggle with enough anxiety—I can’t imagine talking to a therapist I have never met about my problems. 

I recognize how uncomfortable it can be to talk to a stranger about your innermost thoughts and feelings, and many of my clients have some degree of anxiety about treatment itself. However, I take great care to ease all of my clients into the therapeutic process, and they usually feel comfortable within the first session. We will never move at a pace that is too quick for you, and I will adjust my approach as needed so that you can get the most out of anxiety treatment. 

You Can Harness The Self-Confidence Needed To Reduce Anxiety

If you are tired of being berated by your inner critic, dwelling on mistakes, and never feeling relaxed, therapy can help you learn how to manage your anxiety and increase your self-esteem. For more information about what I can do to help or to schedule a free, 20-minute consultation, please contact me.

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If you have any questions about anxiety treatment or would like to book a free, 20-minute consultation, please send me a message using the form below.