Anxiety Therapy

Anxiety Is A Physical And Mental Battle

You might find yourself stuck in an inescapable loop of mind-body anguish.

The physical symptoms provoke the mental symptoms and vice versa, promoting and antagonizing each other until you feel exhausted and paralyzed, frightened but inert. 

Some days it feels like you’re breathing through a coffee stirrer straw—never getting enough air, fearing you will pass out. Butterflies turn into tightness and nausea in your stomach, creating the feeling that your heart is going to beat right out of your chest. And the more discomfort you feel, the more panicked and worried your thoughts become. For the first time, you may be considering an anxiety therapist. 

Anxiety Usually Comes From One Of Three Places, Including: 

Fight, flight, or freeze response—when you’re in actual danger, your panic response kicks in and you get a surge of adrenaline. You either stay and fight the source of your anxiety, flee from it altogether, or freeze in your tracks and are unable to take any action. 

Being on the brink of the unknown—when you’re about to walk into an unknown situation, like your first day at a new school or a new job, it makes sense to be anxious. You’re on high alert and your brain doesn’t yet have any information it can use to make predictions and assess the situation. It’s scary because you’re going in blind.

Thoughts you scare yourself with—the brain is a future-predictor, taking data and creating expectations out of it to help you navigate the world. The problem is that your brain has an innate tendency to predict the worst outcomes, triggering your fight, flight, or freeze response and making anxiety worse. 

Here at IntrinPsych Woman, our therapists can help you figure out which of these three types of anxiety is at play. We want to help you get to the bottom of your stressors, build your confidence, and enjoy your life instead of fearing that everything could go wrong. 

Anxiety Is The Result Of A World That Tells Us To Go, Go, And Go—Without Actually Releasing Any Energy 

The pace at which we live is harrowing—running from one activity to the next, managing busy schedules full of work, school, social outings, and family time. Yet paradoxically, we live more sedentary lives than we ever have. Most of us sit at computers all day and barely get up.

This creates a mismatch between our mental and physical lives. Although we have so much to get done, most of the activities we do are mental in nature. This prevents us from releasing physical energy and feeling like we’ve actually done something. We’re all holding so much energy inside that no matter how much we accomplish, we feel anxious and unsatisfied, like we haven’t accomplished anything.

Therapy with IntrinPsych Woman is a chance to catch a break from this negative cycle and make space for self-care. You don’t have to keep spinning your wheels trying to get control of your anxiety. With our help and support, you can learn to live in the present instead of ruminating on the past or getting hung up on the future. 

Therapy Helps You Retrain Your Brain So That The Anxiety Isn’t In Control  

When you’re feeling anxious, it’s hard to evaluate your situation clearly or rationally. It feels like the world is ending even when things aren’t that bad. The value of therapy is that it enables you to see your situation from a bird’s eye view, creating distance between you and your anxiety. You can form a more objective, realistic perspective on what’s going on and turn down the volume on your irrational thoughts. You’ll learn to recognize your anxiety instead of engaging in it. 

What To Expect In Anxiety Counseling Sessions

Together, we’ll help you manage and reduce your anxiety symptoms while working on identifying and eliminating your triggers. We’ll look at where your anxiety began, what promoted its growth, and how it impacts you on a day-to-day basis. 

What’s more, we want to help you identify the patterns of your anxiety so that you understand how you get worked into a state of fear. Once you know how your anxiety starts, you can come up with a plan to change your response to it. In this way, anxiety treatment can help you avoid panic attacks and minimize the triggers that make your stress worse. 

Tailoring Your Anxiety Treatment Plan

Our therapists draw a wide range of approaches to help clients reduce anxiety. We use Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) to manage distressing situations and emotions, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to challenge negative thoughts and beliefs, and relational techniques to practice navigating social anxiety in real-life situations with others. 

Additionally, our practice has a yoga specialist who uses breathwork and movement to treat anxiety. Yoga can help you be more mindful of your anxious responses and get some distance from them, allowing you to observe what’s happening without feeling stressed. 

In the end, it’s important to remember that anxiety is your brain trying to make things safe—but it often goes too far and anticipates danger even when it’s not there. We can work together to retrain your brain and body to react differently so that you are in the driver’s seat of your life instead of anxiety. 

You May Have Some Concerns About Anxiety Therapy…

If I don’t worry, everything will fall apart!

We know that is a tempting belief. And certainly there are some things that you are responsible for and need to attend to—but whether or not those things get done is not dependent on anxiety. Many people confuse anxiety and drive, but they’re not the same thing. It is possible to be driven, motivated, and hardworking without being anxious all the time.

I feel like my fears keep me safe.

We tend to avoid the things that scare us (think about the last time you procrastinated—you avoided doing something because it made you anxious). But unfortunately, avoiding our fears only makes them worse, since it prevents us from working through them. Therapy can help you make decisions based on what you want instead of what you fear. This way, you can stop relying on anxiety to keep you safe and learn to step out of your comfort zone with confidence and peace of mind.

I’m pretty sure there’s something physically wrong with me, but my doctor says it’s all in my head.

Anxiety can be profoundly physical. Many people who are having panic attacks actually end up in the ER because they think they are having a heart attack. That’s part of what is so confusing about anxiety—it’s such an embodied experience. There are certainly some medical conditions that can cause anxiety and you should make an appointment with your physician to make sure you’re physically healthy. But when your doctor can’t find anything wrong, that is where we come in and help.

Embrace The Calm

You don’t have to feel controlled by fear, panic, and negative predictions anymore. To begin your journey of healing and empowerment and step into a brighter tomorrow, call us at (917) 750-1330 to schedule a free, 20-minute phone consultation.

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