Anxiety

Anxiety can show up in subtle ways or it can feel like it just smacked you right in the gut. Either way, it’s important to recognize how anxious symptoms impact your life and what may be triggering them. Anxiety is fairly common in our everyday language, and most people have experienced it in some capacity, yet there’s still a stigma that anxiety isn’t real or those who experience it are “too sensitive.” Considering the state of our world, the collective traumas we’ve experienced (uh, thanks pandemic), and our individual baggage, it’s hard to understand why anxiety isn’t taken seriously. My goal is not only to normalize anxiety but offer tools for regulating your nervous system and increase your awareness of triggers.

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Clients who work with me typically experience somatic symptoms (increased heart rate, stomach butterflies, tight chest, etc) and need help regulating their bodies when these symptoms become overwhelming. Clients who work with me also tend to experience cognitive anxiety that often leads to catastrophizing scenarios and feeling a sense of impending doom. For example, every time I drive I always – yes, always – have a fear of crashing, and depending on my ability to cope that day, I may go as far as to imagine my untimely death. You can imagine how tricky that makes driving on a daily basis, but because I’ve learned tools to regulate my body and brain around such fears, I can commute without having a panic attack in traffic.

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Most regulation tools can be useful no matter what flavor of anxiety you experience. What you can expect in our work together is an exploration of where anxiety stems from and how to manage it once you understand your triggers. Sometimes these triggers are obvious because they directly link to a traumatic event, but sometimes they’re subtle and have been formed over time. Let’s put our detective hats on and seek out this information so you can start building a toolbox to manage your symptoms.