Anxiety Therapy
“Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. ConFidence is the greatest friend.” — Lao Tzu
Chronic anxiety can wreak havoc on many aspects of life, negatively impacting our personal relationships, hindering our workplace performance, limiting access to creativity, joy, and emotional wellness. It can even impact our physical health, causing serious health conditions over time, like chronic pain, tension headaches, anxiety-induced hypertension, breathing difficulties, and much more. Many people do not seek anxiety treatment, thinking it will dissipate naturally over time. Professional anxiety therapy can help.
Are you experiencing any of the following anxiety symptoms?
Feeling nervous, tense, or restless
Having a sense of impending danger, panic, or doom
Avoiding certain people or scenarios that trigger anxiety or stress
Fixating or obsessing over the stressor
Rapid or shallow breathing/tightness in chest
Trouble sleeping
Sweating and/or trembling
Panic Attacks
Feeling weak or tired
Chronic discomfort or pain in the body
Stomach or gastrointestinal problems
Many people struggle with anxiety symptoms
“Fear thrives in a place of inaction. Overcome your anxiety by taking one small step forward.” – Sarah Boyd
With all the daily stress and anxiety triggers we experience day to day, many people struggle with anxiety disorder symptoms. You are not alone. Chronic anxiety can feel extreme because it impacts our functioning on so many levels; it impacts our personal relationships, our workplace performance, our mental health symptoms, and how we perceive the world and ourselves. It can increase anxiety-induced depression within us because the nature of it can lead to social isolation. It doesn't have to be something you endure alone and it doesn't have to be something you feel endless anxiety and shame around. By seeking professional anxiety treatment through evidence-based anxiety therapy, you can start to let go of the shame and isolation around it and come to a deeper place of anxiety management and self-understanding. It is actually through anxiety counseling and mindful awareness of your anxiety that you start to find true anxiety relief from it.
Anxiety therapy can help you get back to your true self
Lost yourself amidst chronic anxiety symptoms? Curious where your emotional wellbeing, mental health, and mindful presence went? Professional anxiety therapy offers the chance to untangle the web of anxiety disorders and emotional overwhelm covering your true, whole self at the core. In anxiety counseling, we will start by recognizing what anxiety triggers and stress factors are currently present in your environment that could be cause for the anxiety symptoms. From a place of therapeutic acceptance and anxiety management, we can acknowledge these anxiety-inducing situations, places, or scenarios for what they are and validate your feelings of emotional distress around them. From here, noticing how anxiety manifests in the body upon reflecting on these stress triggers, alongside other anxiety-related thoughts, feelings, and reactions that arise, is key to beginning to uncover what is needed to allow the anxiety to move through. Often times a desire to set healthy boundaries, share a deeper emotional truth, or coming to another conclusion within ourselves around the anxiety trigger helps to relieve some of the anxiety symptoms. Doing so with a licensed anxiety therapist further enhances and supports this healing process.
My approach to professional anxiety treatment is rooted in therapeutic validation with compassion and care addressing your anxiety disorder symptoms. Evidence-based anxiety therapy safely explores your anxiety symptoms with attention and openness, allowing for deeper awareness of your relationship with anxiety triggers to reveal itself. From there, we often find therapeutic insights come to the surface around new anxiety management techniques. The process of uncovering the layers of chronic anxiety to come to a place of emotional wellbeing with yourself around how you relate to stress triggers is all done at a respected pace, with consistent anxiety counseling throughout to support emotional regulation and stress relief, and cultivating anxiety coping skills and mental grounding throughout. The therapeutic process that unfolds in anxiety therapy sessions allows for greater stress management awareness around how to better cope with anxiety attacks as they arise outside of session and developing anxiety resilience moving forward in your life.
I often use clinical anxiety treatments like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). These alongside mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR) which offers clients proven anxiety coping strategies to further their sense of control over the unwanted anxiety symptoms that arise, provides opportunity to handle their anxiety disorders for the long term. We can look back into trauma therapy that may be root cause for some of the anxiety manifestation as well. Often I hold holistic anxiety treatment within a transpersonal/psychospiritual framework for deeper emotional healing, bringing in meditation techniques and other therapeutic exercises for fuller anxiety recovery.
Questions that often arise with anxiety and anxiety therapy:
“Why focus more on the anxiety? That seems to only make it worse.”
Yes, over-focusing or fixating on the anxiety can worsen the anxiety symptoms, especially when done alone. With the help of a therapist who specializes in anxiety, you can start to focus on the anxiety through a more objective lens, often lessening some of the anxiety symptoms that can cause overwhelm. It is in states of overwhelm that we are often guided to obsess or completely avoid what is cause for the anxiety.
“Is what I’m feeling actually anxiety?”
Anxiety can manifest in many ways. The description of anxiety symptoms listed at the top of this page are good indicators that you are experiencing anxiety, but sometimes it is just a deep knowing that something feels off. Anxiety symptoms appear different in each person. If you are unsure, going to a therapist and getting professional advice can be supportive to understanding if what you are experiencing is indeed anxiety or perhaps something else.
“If I focus on other things, my anxiety doesn’t bother me. Why should I go to anxiety therapy?”
Healthy distraction or intentional avoidance of anxiety can be useful to some extent, especially in the short term. But it is often the case that avoidance in the long term can cause detrimental effects on both yourself and those around you. Unconscious avoidance of feeling anxiety symptoms can take shape in the form of numbing through addiction or dependence on substances, projection through angry or aggressive outbursts, or through shaming and criticizing others. In severe cases, other forms of self-harm can occur through risky behavior, eating disorders, and other bodily harm to avoid feeling the uncomfortable emotions that anxiety often stirs up. Anxiety therapy can offer healthy coping strategies so that focusing on the anxiety doesn’t become so overwhelming.
Interested in joining a group to heal your anxiety? Find out more here.