Do you frequently feel on edge? Does panic or worry dominate your thoughts?
Do you find it difficult to shutoff the ruminating thoughts that something bad is about to happen? Do you awake too often to feelings of panic that everything is falling apart and you’re failing?
You might find it hard to get started in the morning because your first thoughts are plagued with fear and you feel frozen, incapable of even moving. Intrusive thoughts interrupt your focus throughout the day and makes it hard for you to actually do your best.
You feel overwhelmed by anxiety that seems to come out of nowhere when you least expect it.
Even when you attempt to calm yourself with yoga, meditation, or distracting yourself with Facebook, you just can’t seem to stop the influx of panic and worry.
Your body may be so tense from anxiety that it actually hurts. Headaches, shoulder pain, lower back pain, and stomach aches seem to be your norm because of the amount of anxiety you carry.
Just when you think you might have relaxed a little, your inner critic rears its ugly head to remind you that your anxiety never really goes away.
Your inner critic replays every single conversation you’ve had during the day telling you all the ways you failed and all the ways that people are now thinking less of you.
Even the tiniest of comments leaves you questioning everything about yourself, your worth, and your contribution. What other people seem to let go of so easily keeps you up at night running a play-by-play over and over without resolution or relief.
Forget about making a mistake, no matter how miniscule, because your inner critic will absolutely berate and destroy you for not having been perfect.
You feel like you’re never good enough, not smart enough, not talented enough, not motivated enough, not knowledgeable enough.
No matter how much you’ve accomplished, you still feel like an imposter and a fraud, fearful that others will finally figure out your secret that you just really have no idea what you’re doing.
You’ve tried so hard to shut down these feelings of anxiety, inadequacy, and fear, but it just never works.
Many Successful People Struggle with Anxiety
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, roughly 18% of adult Americans have been formally diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Anxiety is much more common than you think. There are uncounted numbers of suffers who aren’t being treated or diagnosed.
The truth is, many people suffer silently with anxiety and may not realize some of the symptoms:
- Shortness of breath
- Racing heart
- Feeling overwhelmed
- Excessive sweating
- Ruminating thoughts of worry
- Internal criticism
- Feelings of doom
- Panic
- And more…
You’re not alone in your struggle.
Anxiety can be caused by genetics or environment. You may come from a family of anxious people or you may have had traumatic experiences growing up that led you to feel on edge and uncomfortable much of the time.
You might be experiencing high levels of stress, which can make you anxious just from the sheer amount of it.
To some degree, anxiety is a normal part of being human. Anxiety helps you to predict problems and avoid threats. The design of anxiety is to keep you safe.
It’s this safety mechanism that can motivate you to meet a last-minute deadline or make sure that you don’t cross the street without looking both ways.
But anxiety can get out of hand.
It can cause you to become so preoccupied with what might go wrong or with what you’ve done wrong that you can’t focus.
Anxiety does not have to run your life; anxiety is very treatable. You can get control and learn effective ways to manage and calm it. With an experienced anxiety therapist, you can break free of anxiety and overwhelm to live confidently.
Counseling for Anxiety Can Help You Live Confidently!
Overcoming anxiety is possible. In truth, you are stronger, braver, and wiser than your anxiety allows you to see.
Anxiety treatment is very practical in helping people decrease their overall level of anxiety by using specific relaxation and mindfulness exercises as well as address the root cause of anxiety.
In therapy sessions, I offer strategies to recognize anxious thoughts and feelings and challenge your negative beliefs about yourself and the world. I use a mix of Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and relaxation and grounding skills to help you overcome the overwhelm of anxiety.
Through mindfulness-based counseling, you’ll learn to slow down and interrupt racing or looping thoughts. With targeted activities you’ll incorporate relaxation strategies to calm your body and mind to experience relief from anxiety. And with specific, evidence-based treatment techniques, you’ll discover ways to approach anxious and fearful experiences with confidence.
For almost 20 years I’ve been helping people find effective ways to calm anxiety and live confidently.
I deeply understand the impact of anxiety and how it can lead you to feel profoundly alone in your experience. You no longer have to do this alone; with help, you can experience relief from overwhelm and anxiety.
Questions about Anxiety Treatment
I’m worried that working on my anxiety, inner critic, or Imposter Syndrome might actually make it worse.
It’s completely understandable that you’re worried about your anxiety worsening, particularly since it tends to rear its ugly head whenever you try something new. And treating anxiety is something new. Fearing that your feelings will be overwhelming in session or as you begin to talk about your anxiety or internal critic is real. But the truth is, anticipatory anxiety—the anticipation of what might happen—has often kept you from the very things that might work out. The anticipation of the worst-case scenario is often much more uncomfortable than the actual experience. By focusing on ways to alleviate your anxiety and by getting help and support from a trained and experienced anxiety therapist you will have help to reduce and manage your anxiety. You won’t be doing this alone; I’ll be with you each step of the way.
How can talking about my anxiety actually make it better?
You may have heard the saying, “All talk and no action….” Well, that’s true for counseling, too. While counseling is often known as “talk therapy” there is actually more to it. You’ll get support for reducing your anxiety as well as feedback on anxiety and the thinking that contributes to it. You’ll learn coping strategies and skills. You’ll practice different ways to approach your anxious thoughts and feelings. You’ll try new ways of approaching similar situations so that you experience different outcomes. Because we’re doing more than talking, we’re taking action, you’ll be able to defeat the anxious thoughts and internal criticism that has kept you stuck.
Anxiety therapy won’t really work, will it?
Your fears that nothing will change can also serve to defeat you before you even try. This is another way that anxiety often shows up. While there is no cure for anxiety, there are ways to reduce it, manage it, and lessen its control over your life. Anxiety treatment can drastically transform people’s lives; I’ve seen firsthand the results. I encourage you to try three counseling sessions before determining it might not be helpful. If you are open, willing to work hard, and ready for relief, then counseling for anxiety can transform your life, too.
Can online counseling actually help me with my anxiety?
Absolutely! The same evidence-based therapeutic interventions are used for both online counseling and face-to-face counseling, but the biggest gain for most people is the ease of accessing counseling online. Many clients say they feel more comfortable participating in online counseling versus the therapy office because they are able to ground themselves in their familiar surroundings with their own comfort items. And because counseling online is provided to you from your location, it is easy for clients to do in vivo practice of new skills and behaviors in their actual environment and receive real-time feedback and support.