Caring and effective general anxiety treatment to help you thrive
If you feel like worry and anxiety control your life, you may benefit from counseling. I use a personalized approach with proven strategies so that you can understand why anxiety happens and what you can do about it. Let's work together to create a brighter, calmer future for you.
How to know if you’d benefit from general anxiety counseling
While there are general guidelines for diagnosing anxiety, everyone has a different experience of how anxiety influences and impacts their lives. You might feel like:
Anxiety is making your decisions for you (or having you not make decisions)
You avoid certain activities, situations, or scenarios because of anxiety or worry
Anxiety has you always thinking about and preparing for the worst, rather than also imagining what could go well
Anxiety makes you feel nauseous, gives you headaches, or makes you tired
Anxiety convinces you of things like you have to be perfect, everyone is watching, etc.
Anxiety tells you frequent self-criticism and makes you feel bad about yourself
Anxiety takes over all your thoughts and turns them into worries, “what ifs,” and “thought spirals”
Anxiety gives you an impending sense of doom or catastrophe
Therapy process
We’ll typically meet once a week (or once every other week) for 55-60 minutes to work on understanding anxiety and how it impacts us, how it plays tricks on us, and how to get out from under its influence.
In therapy, we’re often learning new ways of being and thinking - this can take some time, and we can work on this as long as you need.
How is general anxiety typically treated?
In treating anxiety, I draw from multiple therapy modalities to find the most effective approach for each client. I use a mix of Narrative therapy, Acceptance & Commitment Therapy, and behavior work, among others.
Narrative therapy helps us reshape our relationship with anxiety - we’re often in contentious relationships with anxiety as it’s an unwelcome and intrusive party to our thoughts and activities. By treating anxiety as separate from our core identity, and deconstructing our negative, internalized stories and beliefs, we can relate to anxiety as less central and more manageable in our daily lives.
With Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT), we practice acceptance of anxiety’s presence in our lives and take away its power to dictate our behavior. We learn to observe anxious thoughts without getting tangled in them, and we commit to actions aligned with personal values rather than with anxiety.
In behavior work (often including Exposure & Response Prevention), we take action on the things we fear. For example, if we are anxious about what others think of us, we gradually work toward engaging in activities where we are exposed to interactions with others and we don’t have control over their judgments. With these behavior work, we engage in new learning experiences that teach us that we don’t need to hold on to anxiety to be safe. Instead, we can be confident that we are safe with ourselves and can handle what comes our way.
Goals and outcomes
Goals and preferred outcomes look different for every client, and are heavily influenced by personal interests, values, and aspirations. Perhaps you want to face social anxiety, or perhaps you want to overcome a fear of flying. We’ll tailor therapy to you, but here are some examples of what you can expect.
Increase acceptance of what you cannot change
Commit to behaviors and actions that reflect your personal values and interests
Increase skills in identifying + implementing strategies for decision-making, managing anxiety, separation anxiety from self, and managing stress
Learn tools to make confident decisions
Develop (or renew) a sense of self and identity, with a better understanding of who you are and what you want out of life
Increase calming and relaxation skills to decrease tension during moments of anxiety.
Understand the influence of the anxiety and what makes you vulnerable to it
Identify and develop new ways of responding to and interacting with the anxiety
Develop a sense of self and identity separate from the anxiety so that your day is centered around what you would like, rather than the anxiety
Next steps to start counseling
To get started, schedule a free consultation so that we can talk about what you’d like to work on and what you’re looking for.
I can share more background on my approach and therapy style, and we can chat about logistics and scheduling.