A sunlit forest with tall trees and fallen leaves on the ground, viewed through a slightly blurred lens.

Anxiety

Home / Specialties / Anxiety

Therapy for Anxiety

Do you spend more time overthinking your life than living it?

A little bit of anxiety is natural and healthy. It keeps us safe and reminds us to make intentional choices and be mindful that actions have consequences. But higher levels of anxiety can have significant negative impacts on our quality of life, whether it’s from chronic, low-impact stressors that drag on over time, a single or series of high-impact stressors in a short span, or both.

A woman with curly hair, wearing a red bandana, closes her eyes and presses her palms together in front of her face, appearing to pray or meditate.

Anxiety can be so frustrating.

Do you ever feel frustrated with your feelings of anxiety because you think that the things causing you to feel anxious "shouldn't" make you feel that way? Or worse yet, you can't figure out why you feel anxious, and yet you still do?

You're not alone.

Young man sitting on hardwood floor with his back against white cabinets, near closed white shutters, looking contemplative.

Do you give yourself a hard time for feeling anxious?

Do you tell yourself that you don't have "a reason" to be anxious, and try to talk yourself out of your anxious feelings or justify why you "shouldn't" have those feelings? Those strategies tend to be unhelpful at best and at worst, lead to an escalation of not only worry but also shame, embarrassment, guilt, and even depression. Accepting the experience of Anxiety isn't "giving in" or "babying" oneself. Therapy for Anxiety will help you learn compassionate, practical, tactical skills and strategies for working through Anxiety and living the life you want, the way you want it.

A woman with curly hair sitting at a table with her hands clasped together and head bowed, appearing to be in prayer or deep thought.
A group of six people sitting at a table with laptops and books, engaging in discussion in a modern office or co-working space.

Anxiety can "look" like "just a rough patch."

Sleep disturbance, decreased motivation, irritability, "a short fuse" or angry outbursts, physical unease, reduced enjoyment of activities and social interaction, isolation, and intense rumination or overthinking are a few of many symptoms produced by anxiety.

A woman is sitting at a wooden table with a laptop, an open notebook, a pen, a glass of water, and a cup and saucer. She appears stressed or frustrated, holding her forehead with one hand and her eyeglasses in the other.
The image shows a dark teal-colored rectangle with no distinguishable objects or details.
Man with glasses sitting at a desk, covering his face with his hands, in an office setting.

Anxiety has many symptoms.

Symptoms of Anxiety vary from individual to individual and may also be different at different times in our lives. Some people experience particular kinds of Anxiety related to stimuli.

Generalized Anxiety can show up quickly or slowly ramp up over time and may not seem correlated to any life event or stressor and can start in childhood or onset later in life.

Symptoms of Generalized Anxiety may include the following: Restlessness or feeling "on edge," Becoming easily fatigued, Difficulty concentrating or one's mind suddenly going "blank," Irritability, Physical tension, Sleep disturbance, Appetite disturbance, Stomach upset, Intrusive thoughts about anxiety-provoking subjects or fears, and Self-isolation.

Social Anxiety is another common form of Anxiety. It tends to result in significant fear about social situations in which the person might be the focus (or believe that they are) of attention, observation, scrutiny, or judgment from others.

Common Social Anxiety Symptoms include the following: Fear of having conversations or meeting new people or being observed (eating, drinking, doing a task or activity), Performance (such as giving a speech or presentation), Persistent fear of being in social situations leading to avoidance of social them, and Significant distress over the consequences of avoiding them.

Conflict Anxiety is when you fear and avoid having hard conversations or bringing up a difficult topic because you believe it will inevitably result in someone being angry or disappointed with you. People with anxiety about conflict frequently have catastrophic beliefs and severe anxiety about what "might happen" during conflict and also often overestimate how much the subject might "upset" the other person or "cause a fight.”

The effectiveness of therapy for anxiety is well researched.

The American Psychological Association (APA) reports that research generally indicates that for persistent Anxiety, psychotherapy is often more effective than medications and that adding them does not significantly increase outcomes from therapy alone.

The image features a thick slice of bread with what appears to be peanut butter or caramel spread on top.
A young man with a beard and curly hair smiling outdoors.

What’s it like to get therapy for anxiety?

Therapy for anxiety can be a tremendous relief. Whether your anxiety is generalized, specific, or social, therapy can help you with practical insight and skills for coping with anxious thinking, rumination, "spiraling," catastrophizing, and avoidance patterns that make the anticipation of the trigger even worse.

In therapy for anxiety, you and the therapist will engage in dialogue, skills-building, skills-practice, and if helpful, some experiential work for relaxation, calming, and other helpful practices. You’ll also review how the skills your learning are helpful to you and collaboratively identify what’s most helpful, and where things can get even better.

People Also Ask

  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Solutions-Focused Therapy (SFT), and Mindfulness are four of the therapy approaches that have demonstrated effectiveness in resolving symptoms of anxiety. I utilize all four of these frameworks in therapy for anxiety, depending on the situation, symptoms, and unique individual context.

  • A good therapist for anxiety is one who is trained in evidenced-based (that means the therapy has demonstrated effectiveness in independent clinical studies) approaches.

    Equally important is that you like the therapist you're working with and feel that they're invested in you reaching your therapy goals. While many people find the idea of therapy a little unsettling and feel nervous about what to expect the first couple of sessions, you should definitely have a sense that the therapist is listening carefully to you, is able to understand what you're trying to share and actively seeks that understanding, and is working to help you move in the direction you want to go.

    Therapy is goal-directed and that goal is dictated by you, not the therapist. You should experience that goal-directedness in your sessions.

  • To help you heal from anxiety, there are multiple areas therapy will address including insight about the surface-level and also depth aspects of your anxiety; pattern recognition about how your anxiety is activated and the components your unique anxiety cycle; early self-intervention skills; coping skills;

  • Absolutely. Online therapy has been demonstrated to be just as effective as in-person therapy for the treatment of anxiety. For more information on this research, visit the study databases at the National Institutes of Health research database at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov or the American Psychological Association at https://www.apa.org and search "online therapy" to see extensive studies on this topic.

  • Anxiety symptoms vary from individual to individual. Overthinking, "spiraling" on "what if" scenarios, fatigue, difficulty making decisions, irritability, a short temper, wanting to sleep a lot, difficulty sleeping, avoidance, changes in appetite, feeling edgy or restless, anger, stomach upset, headache, intrusive thoughts, and fear of participating in formerly enjoyable activities are a few of the many possible symptoms of anxiety.

  • Anxiety is a normal, natural response by the human body's nervous system to perceived danger or threat in the environment.

    "Perceived" is the key word . . . because humans are able to imagine stressful or threatening events, it doesn't require the events to actually be happening in order for us to experience anxiety. Think about people in a move theater watching a thriller. On some level we know the people on the screen aren't actually being chased by drooling aliens, but the nervous system doesn't know that, so why we can still get adrenaline "thrills" from things that aren't real.

    Sometimes, after a serious of actual stressors, the nervous system has a hard time resetting from the fight-or-flight mode that is our natural safety response to those kinds of events.

    For many people, worrying about the anxiety becomes its own stressor, especially when they can’t identify other "reasons" for feeling anxious.

  • Medication can be a helpful tool in some cases, but is by no means necessary for the successful relief of anxiety symptoms. The American Psychological Association (APA) reports that research generally indicates that for persistent Anxiety, psychotherapy is often more effective than medications and that adding them does not significantly increase outcomes from therapy alone.

  • As great as that might sound when you're losing sleep over something that might happen tomorrow, we don't actually want to "get rid of" anxiety. A little bit of anxiety is normal, natural and healthy.

    We definitely do want our anxiety to be manageable when it occurs so that we can continue to have a high quality of life and satisfying relationships. Therapy for anxiety will help you recognize the signs and symptoms of anxiety in a non-judgemental framework, and learn practical/tactical coping skills so that you can get yourself off the "dreadmill" and maybe even leave it behind for good.