Anxiety

Stress, worry, fear, racing thoughts, fidgeting, fast heart rate, hard to catch your breath, staying busy…sound familiar?

Each of these might fall under what’s known in the therapy world as anxiety. Anxiety can be uncomfortable, intolerable, scary, and cause you to feel out of control.

And, when we can try to understand things from our anxiety’s perspective, chances are, your symptoms make sense based on what you’re going through and the world you live in.

Are there things going on in your life that feel like too much? Are you at your capacity with work projects, relationship issues, caring for your family/friends, keeping up with school, constantly learning of new traumas in the news, etc.? Maybe some past trauma has been showing up?

What if anxiety was a part of you trying to get your attention - to alert you that something doesn’t feel right, or that it worries about your safety or if you’ll be okay? (Have you seen the “Fear” or “Anxiety” characters in the Disney/Pixar movies, Inside Out & Inside Out 2?) Both of these are excellent depictions of what anxiety can truly feel like, how intense it can become (see the Inside Out 2 scene where Anxiety spirals into panic), and, underneath it all, its positive intention in what it’s trying to do.

What if we could approach it from a curious place, rather than a ‘fighting against’ place?

What can I expect in therapy for my anxiety?

Often, it can be helpful in therapy to gain tools to help manage anxiety, such as mindfulness techniques, calming resources, grounding tools, or ways to temporarily distract yourself. These can all be effective in the moment, and I certainly provide those in our work together to build a stable starting place.

In addition to those tools, it can be even more helpful to get to the root of why your anxiety is happening, and to understand how to truly help it feel safer to relax. To do this, we greet anxiety as if it’s someone new you’re trying to get to know - with a lot of curiosity.

Through IFS, we can view anxiety symptoms as parts of us that are just trying to protect us, and we can find more access to compassion, wonder, and understanding of the ways they’re trying to keep us safe. Through EMDR, we can go back and reprocess any memories or incidents that forced part of you to take on an anxious role, so it can feel more at ease and unburdened. I often combine these modalities with somatic work to find a way of healing that works best for you.

In our work together, I can help you build awareness of your inner experience of anxiety, identify tools to help manage anxiety symptoms, and ultimately, help you build a more compassionate relationship to your anxiety, releasing it of the burdens it carries, so that it doesn’t have to work so hard.

This is entirely possible for you. Notice how it feels to wonder about that.

“We often find that the harder we try to get rid of emotions and thoughts, the stronger they become.”

- Dr. Richard Schwartz, No Bad Parts

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