Therapy for Anxiety
Anxiety is the most commonly diagnosed mental health condition in the country.
While some amount of anxiety is necessary for our survival and even helpful in certain situations, those of us with anxiety disorders experience an excessive amount of anxiety that is more harmful than it is helpful.
One way I like to conceptualize anxiety disorders is that our body’s alarm system has become overly sensitive to threats of different kinds, setting off many false alarms or exaggerating threats. Our work together will involve desensitizing the alarm system through exposure, learning new coping skills, and understanding the underlying core fears driving symptoms.
There are several different types of anxiety disorders. I particularly enjoy working with:
Generalized Anxiety
A pervasive experience of anxiety that is always humming in the background. You may feel agitation, nervousness, dread, like you are constantly “on edge,” or even irritable.
You may have no idea what you are actually feeling anxious about, or you have become so used to it as your default mental state that you don’t even realize you are feeling anxious.
My approach
We will start out our work together by getting to know your anxiety—understanding the thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, and behaviors that make up your experience.
We will identify catastrophizing thought patterns and cycles of avoidance that fuel and perpetuate anxiety and learn tools to challenge your core fears and experiment with new behaviors.
The more that you practice looking at your anxiety through a lens of curiosity in the context of a safe environment, the more you will desensitize your body’s alarm system and regain your sense of agency.
Health Anxiety
A preoccupation with physical sensations and excessive worry about coming down with a bad illness, which results in either avoidance of the doctor or constantly feeling like you need to schedule an appointment with your doctor to get reassurance that everything is okay.
The problem with the cycle of reassurance-seeking is that it becomes self-reinforcing over time, so even though you may feel initial relief when you get the reassurance you are looking for, the relief doesn’t last and the anxiety will return when the next trigger sparks worry or doubt.
My approach
We will make a plan for how to better work with health issues and medical situations that will inevitably come up over your lifetime—setting intentional boundaries for yourself such as how much time you will spend Googling a medical issue, what sources you will or will not look at, and when you actually want to see a doctor.
We will also work on building and strengthening a secure internal relationship with yourself through healthy coping skills, self-soothing, and regulating emotions.
