“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”

~Jon Kabat-Zinn

Why is this happening to me?

Do you feel fearful or irritable much of the time, even if you’re not sure why? Are you questioning yourself, your thoughts, your abilities far too often? Maybe your is mind predicting disaster around every corner. What new worst-case scenarios will your imagination create for you today? You might feel on edge, like you could jump out of your skin at any given moment. If some of this sounds like you, anxiety may be taking over your life.

It can be a powerful force that affects a person in physical, mental, and emotional ways.

The following are symptoms of anxiety or trauma:

• Nervousness, restlessness, tension

• Feelings of impending danger, panic, or dread

• Rapid breathing or hyperventilation

• Increased or heavy sweating

• Trembling or muscle twitching

• Weakness or lethargy

• Feelings of unsteadiness

• Difficulty focusing or excessive worry

• Insomnia

• Obsessions about certain thoughts or ideas or fixations on unwanted thoughts

• Reliving traumatic memories 

Whether you’re plagued by dark thoughts and uncomfortable feelings or experiencing any of the physical sensations caused by anxiety, you probably already discovered that trying to simply relax or use popular stress-busting techniques (like enjoying bubble baths, getting massages, or taking other basic self-care steps) doesn’t do much to help. When everything seems like a potential threat, it might be exhausting to face the day. Do you remember what life was like before everything was stressful?

What can I do about it?

Medication often is effective at relieving the symptoms of anxiety, but research shows therapy is the best option for treating problems from an overly anxious or traumatized mind on a long-term basis.

You can learn to calm a panic attack. But, more importantly, you can achieve and maintain a more balanced emotional and mental state, one where you know anxiety will not be attacking you. Therapy can help you do more than just uncover the underlying causes of your worries and fears and start to relax.

The challenges of life can feel overwhelming under any circumstance, but, as most of my clients know, for anxious people daily ordinary struggles can become far more difficult. I have personal and professional experience of what it’s like to live with constant worry and fear (anxiety) and how efforts to control it or eliminate it often only make it worse. I also have personal and professional experience of how it feels to befriend anxiety, instead of fighting it, and to turn it into something small.

Working with me means learning that anxiety will never disappear entirely, and everyone feels it to a degree. But you can change its influence over your life. I can help you develop a new relationship with your anxiety and see it in a different way, so that it has less of an impact on you. In other words, together we can work to reduce the levels of anxiety you live with to significantly improve your quality of life. You deserve to get help to enjoy more of the life you’ve worked to create.

Change is coming…

Imagine life without a constant struggle for perfection and control, where you are free of a never-ending battle with your emotions. Imagine looking forward to and enjoying your days, without being consumed by worry. You want to believe in yourself and know you have the support to handle whatever comes your way. You want a more satisfying life, with less worry and fear. I can help you build that. By learning to better treat your anxiety, you’re likely to also notice an improvement in other areas of your life where you may have been struggling.

 I practice Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). The goal of ACT is to help you create a rich, meaningful life more in line with your values and to teach you skills that will allow you to handle painful thoughts and feelings in a way that ensures they have much less influence over you. A mental state of awareness, openness and focus, mindfulness can reduce the impact of painful thoughts and feelings. In a state of mindfulness, you can better handle even the most difficult urges, memories, thoughts, and sensations. This allows you to break destructive patterns of behavior, let go of self-defeating beliefs, rise beyond your fears and change your attitude in life-enhancing ways.

I also offer Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR),  which has been proven effective in the treatment of trauma.

In our initial intake session, I’ll talk to you to get a sense of what you need and where I can best support you. I’m excited to help clients get to the other side of debilitating anxiety and the effects of trauma to move in the direction of living a valued life. Call or email for a free 15-minute consultation to find out more.