Anxiety
Stress and anxiety are normal human experiences, but what happens when it feels like you are living at the mercy of your anxiety?
Common symptoms of anxiety include, but are not limited to:
Unrelenting worry
Rushing thoughts
Shortness of breath
Difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep
Physical tension (shoulders and jaw are common offenders)
Sweating
Heart palpitations
Difficulty concentrating or maintaining focus
Anxiety may manifest in common ways, but no two people are the same and as such an individual’s experience of anxiety will vary person to person.
Overwhelmed by “What If’s”
Often anxiety can manifest as feeling overwhelmed by playing through all the possibilities in your mind. The relentless loop of replaying every possible scenario and everything that could happen or go wrong plagues you throughout the day, and may also keep you up during the night.
Fixating and Obsessing
Similar to its cousin Catastrophizing, Rumination can take hold of your mind when a stressor is looming. It may feel like you just can’t stop yourself from thinking about a certain situation, task, or interaction; whether it is something that has already happened or something that will (or will possibly) happen in the future.
The wave will crest.
Every feeling has a beginning, middle, and end.
The stress response kept our ancestors alive by communicating danger and threat. We continue to experience that same stress response as it keeps providing us with data about our experience. Together we can examine the function of the stress response in your life and become more familiar with your specific experience of anxiety— discovering common triggers, physical sensations, body sensations, and emotions. By cultivating a deeper awareness and understanding of your experience we can collaboratively craft coping mechanisms.
I utilize a variety of interventions and tools including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), psychodynamics, mindfulness, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). I apply a combination approach, encouraging curiosity around the anxiety, its role in your life, and how you view it; while also exploring behavioral alternatives and coping strategies, as needed.