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Learn how to manage anxiety and boost self-esteem with personalized therapy.
Are you a millennial or Gen Z person who feels stuck on the sidelines waiting for life to get started? Does fear and nagging self-doubt keep you from enjoying your achievements? Have you been labeled as “overly sensitive” by others or worry that the lens through which you perceive the world makes everything feel too intense?
Even though you present yourself as having it all together, you may feel like a mess on the inside. Each day is punctuated by constant worry over every facet of your life, from finances and relationships to outward appearance and staying on schedule. In addition to sensory overload frequently causing emotional exhaustion, your anxiety could show up physically as panic, rapid heartbeat, tingling in your hands or feet, and shortness of breath.
Perhaps you lie in bed at night recounting everything you said or did that may cause others to judge you negatively. With so many thoughts racing through your brain, you may have a hard time ever feeling calm, relaxed, or joyful. Even when things are going well, your mind might be laser-focused on what could go wrong.
You may be preoccupied with the idea of messing up your existing relationships by saying or doing the wrong thing. Instead, you may tend to people-please to avoid any conflict, even if that means ignoring your own needs or desires. Or maybe you are so afraid of getting hurt that you avoid getting close to anyone or purposely limit your interactions with others so you can pass yourself off as “perfect.”
If you’re tired of everything feeling too intense, anxiety therapy can help. With an integrative counseling approach that fuses mind and body, not only can you decrease anxiety, but you can also gain a deeper understanding of yourself and your place in the world.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), “An estimated 31.1 percent of U.S. adults experience distressing levels of anxiety at some point in their life.” [1] Further, statistics published by the American Psychological Association (APA) have shown that “the long-term stress sustained since the Covid-19 pandemic began has had a significant impact on well-being, evidenced by an increase in chronic illnesses.” [2]
The collective trauma we have experienced in recent years—global conflict, racial injustice, irreparable political divides, inflation, and climate-related disasters—has contributed to a sense of unease that makes anxiety more common. When we layer our day-to-day issues on top of this backdrop, our anxiety can spiral out of control.
Although technology has advanced at a rapid pace in recent decades, the human brain hasn’t kept up. Our brains evolved eons ago when our primary concern was survival. We needed to remain vigilant about saber-tooth tigers, not the negative comments we received on social media.
However, our nervous systems still interpret the millions of triggers and cues we encounter in our environment as dangerous as that saber-tooth tiger. What’s more, our ability to maintain meaningful connections with others—a requirement for staying calm, grounded, and emotionally regulated—has diminished since the advent of new technology. It is, therefore, no surprise that social media and phone use have been shown to increase anxiety. [3]
Living in today’s world can be challenging, especially if you are a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) who “has more empathy and can be overstimulated more easily.” [4] Fortunately, anxiety therapy tailored for the highly sensitive person can be highly beneficial. With a better understanding of your emotional makeup, you can learn how to move through the world with more self-awareness and confidence.
One of the problems of being an HSP is that you’re constantly told that your experience of the world is too intense, which implies that it’s “wrong” in some way. Although you may have been conditioned to question yourself constantly, I am here to validate your experience and help you learn how to better navigate your heightened perceptual awareness.
With a well-honed filter that accurately identifies how emotions affect you both mentally and physically, you can better distinguish crippling anxiety from plain old fear. Having this capacity for discernment allows you to either react in a way that is warranted or change course and restore calm and control. This allows you to build up tolerance to handle potentially stressful situations, such as dating, getting feedback at work, completing assignments, enrolling in college, managing social media, or quieting your inner critic.
A pillar of anxiety therapy is the relationship that you and I will develop throughout sessions. Our positive interactions will rewire your neurobiology which allows you to not only observe the relationship you have with your emotions but also to have more agency over your long-term recovery. It’s harder to check in with your body and regulate your nervous system whenever you are under stress. Therefore, we will track your responses both inwardly and outwardly, observing what happens each time you experience intense anxiety.
By slowing down the process, we begin to recognize how you interpret environmental cues, what assumptions you make, and what stories you may tell yourself. We will notice what happens in your body when you are anxious, such as an urge to run, harm yourself, or freeze. Putting names to these emotions can help you avoid disconnecting from what happens to your body, thereby regulating your nervous system.
I utilize both a top-down and bottom-up healing style by incorporating Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) alongside Internal Family Systems (IFS) and the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM). These modalities for treating anxiety combine tangible skills training—such as distress tolerance and goal setting—with effective strategies for integrating body awareness with your mind’s ability to make meaning of somatic information.
In particular, with IFS we look at parts of Self and notice which ones may be ineffective or unskilled at helping us. By acknowledging the Unconditioned Self—the part untouched by trauma or an unhealthy environment—you give it a louder voice above the inner chatter, allowing emotional wounds to heal. Additionally, we will incorporate mindfulness skills, guided meditation, breathwork, and journaling into anxiety therapy to ensure you receive an embodied experience.
What you learn in therapy will not eradicate anxiety entirely, but that is never the goal we set out to achieve. Rather, the skills you acquire in anxiety counseling will help you discern whether your emotional reaction is in line with what the situation calls for and learn how to release these emotions if they are unwarranted so you can restore a sense of calm to your life.
As a therapist, my goal is to equip you with the self-awareness, skills, and tools to overcome anxiety on your own. Rather than attending therapy indefinitely, our goal will be for you to eventually graduate from anxiety counseling. While I can’t predict how soon it will take before that happens, I will ensure that you start feeling relief from anxiety sooner rather than later
As a counselor who has helped many clients overcome severe anxiety, I combine many years of experience and training with an intuitive sense of the kind of treatment each client needs. Because every person is unique, I never take a cookie-cutter approach. Although I have extensive experience helping people recover from a variety of anxiety disorders—including panic attacks, social anxiety, and people-pleasing—your treatment plan won’t be determined until our therapy sessions get underway.
Like most things, what you get out of therapy will depend on what you put into it. With a commitment to the process and a willingness to apply what you learn in sessions to your life, you will make progress and see results more quickly. However, if you find that my intuitive approach isn’t helpful, I will gladly refer you to someone I think can help you.
I would love to help you discover a calmer, happier way to move through the world. To find out more about online perfectionism therapy with me, please call or text (615) 785-5562 or visit my contact page.
[1] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/any-anxiety-disorder
[2] https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2023/collective-trauma-recovery
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5904786/
[4] https://hsperson.com/
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