Understanding Anxiety: It's Not Just In Your Head

Anxiety is more than just worry; it is the feeling of your body's alarm system going off-- sometimes being stuck in the "ON" position. When your nervous system senses a threat (real or perceived), it triggers the fight, flight, or freeze response. For people with chronic anxiety, this system often gets hyper-sensitive, keeping you constantly alert, tense, and mentally exhausted.

We view anxiety not as a character flaw, but as a communication from your nervous system signaling that you need more support, safety, and regulation.

The Many Faces of Anxiety

Chronic Worry and Overthinking

• The Experience: This is the constant mental loop of "what if" scenarios, often leading to difficulty focusing, indecision, and a feeling of impending doom. This includes General Anxiety and performance anxiety.

• The Impact: Exhaustion from continuous mental noise, physical tension (headaches, jaw clenching), and avoiding activities for fear of failure or judgment.

Body-Based Anxiety and Panic

• The Experience: When anxiety manifests primarily through physical symptoms like sudden panic attacks, a racing heart, shallow breathing, chest tightness, or a constant "pit" in the stomach. This often includes health-related anxiety.

• The Impact: Fear of the physical symptoms themselves, which leads to avoidance of normal situations and a feeling of being disconnected or trapped by your own body.

High-Functioning Anxiety and Burnout

• The Experience: This type is fueled by perfectionism, people-pleasing, and difficulty setting boundaries. You may appear highly successful and composed on the outside, but you're constantly running on adrenaline and fear of failure.

• The Impact: Chronic fatigue, sudden burnout, emotional emptiness, and the loss of joy as your energy is entirely consumed by maintaining an external image of control.

Our Work Together

Regardless of how your anxiety manifests, our work focuses on moving your body and mind out of that automatic alarm state. We help you develop skills to regulate your nervous system and reshape anxious thought patterns so you can shift into a state of calm, clarity, and stability.

Therapy is built on the belief that chronic anxiety is rooted in a dysregulated nervous system and patterns of thought. My goal is to help you shift your system out of that constant "alarm" state by blending approaches that work for your whole self. This ensures you receive:

• Holistic Regulation: Methods that address the physical and emotional exhaustion of persistent worry.

• Targeted Processing: Specialized tools to reduce the intensity of panic and worry.

• Sustained Skill Building: Practical tools to challenge anxious thoughts and create lasting calm.

Therapy for Anxiety using EMDR Approaches

Body-Based Skills: Mastering Your Nervous System Regulation

Since anxiety is felt directly in the body (tightness, racing heart, panic), body based skills focuses on teaching you how to safely manage and release physical stress. This work helps you safely track physical sensations to increase your capacity for grounding and calm.

• When you experience: Chronic tension, restlessness, or physical symptoms like stomach knots or shortness of breath.

  • Body based skills help by: Teaching you tools to notice when your "fight or flight" response is activated and giving you concrete ways to slow your system down and bring yourself back to safety in the present moment.

• When you experience: Difficulty grounding or feeling disconnected during moments of stress.

  • Body based skills help by: Gently guiding you back into connection with your body's resources, increasing your ability to tolerate feelings without being overwhelmed, and promoting a stronger sense of stability.

EMDR: Reducing the Intensity of Worry and Panic

While most recognized for trauma, EMDR is highly effective in reducing the intensity and emotional charge of chronic anxiety, phobias, and panic attacks. The process utilizes EMDR to target and process the intense fear networks in the brain.

• When you experience: Frequent panic attacks or intense fear related to specific situations (e.g., driving, flying, public speaking).

  • EMDR helps by: Desensitizing the brain's response to the fear trigger, reducing the physical and emotional intensity of the anxiety response before it escalates into panic.

• When you experience: Persistent, overwhelming "what if" scenarios and intrusive worry that hijacks your thoughts.

  • EMDR helps by: Creating distance from the emotional urgency of the worry, allowing you to install a sense of calm and competence in areas where you previously felt hopeless or out of control.

Integrated Skill Building (Holistic Talk Therapy)

The foundation of the work involves integrated talk therapy, where you learn practical, cognitive, and relational skills to manage your life with less anxiety.

• Focus on: Reshaping Anxious Thoughts. You learn to identify and challenge the automatic negative thoughts and commit to living by your values even when anxiety is present.

• Focus on: Boundary Setting and Self-Worth. You explore how perfectionism, people-pleasing, or cultural pressures contribute to stress, and build stronger boundaries to protect your energy.