Anxiety treatment

Are you over feeling overwhelmed?

Are you tired of overthinking and overanalyzing every move you make?

Is your anxiety getting in the way of you achieving your goals in life?

Do i have anxiety?

Well, the short answer is: YES! We all have anxiety! Anxiety is a normal part of human existence. Evolutionarily, anxiety has served to keep us safe from danger. While it may still serve to keep us safe in moments of danger, anxiety also plays an everyday role of motivating us to do what needs to be done. For example, if you have a big presentation coming up at school or work, a small amount of anxiety may give you the motivation you need to prepare so that you can perform well. We can label this type of anxiety helpful anxiety, because it’s an appropriate amount of anxiety and it helps to motivate you to act effectively.

Anxiety becomes unhealthy or unhelpful when it’s excessive, overwhelming, or unreasonable given the context of the situation. For instance, prior to an important presentation, a person with an anxiety disorder may become so anxious that they can’t think straight or concentrate. Can you relate? This type of anxiety may cause you to wait until the last minute to prepare, preventing you from performing at your peak potential. It might even cause you to become so paralyzed with fear that you don’t prepare at all! In this case, your anxiety is no longer helping you - it’s hurting you.

common signs and symptoms of an anxiety disorder:

• restlessness

• irritability

• worry that is difficult to control

• sleep issues

• weakness/fatigue

• nausea

• digestive issues

• avoidance

• difficulty concentrating

• more

will therapy cure my anxiety?

Not quite. We can’t “cure” anxiety, but as a result of therapy, you will feel more in control of your anxiety. Remember how we discussed helpful v. unhelpful anxiety? We don’t want to get rid of helpful anxiety because it’s helpful! However, we can address unhelpful anxiety and help you manage it more appropriately.

what type of anxiety treatment do you offer at in your private practice?

1. First we will work to increase your awareness of your anxiety, what triggers it, and how it affects you emotionally and behaviorally. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to anxiety treatment, so we have to figure out what anxiety looks like for you before we can figure out what to do about it.

2. Once we gain a good understanding of how anxiety shows up in your life, we will explore skills and strategies to help you learn to manage it more effectively. Different coping mechanisms work for different types of anxiety, and we’ll work together to figure out what works for your specific needs. As I’ve said before, every person will follow their own unique path to recovery.

3. Over time, we’ll learn more and more about your unhelpful anxiety and ideally find ways to prevent it from coming up in the first place. Anxiety treatment not only includes interventions for coping with active anxiety, it also includes identifying maintenance strategies to keep your anxiety at bay over time so you’re not reaching that place of complete overwhelm as often. This can include addressing issues from your past (that may seem irrelevant to your anxiety) to determine what caused your anxiety to get out of control in the first place.