You may have arrived here because…
- You have been feeling more anxious and feel unable to talk about it to your friends and/or family; making you feel misunderstood and isolated.
- You may be fearful that the anxiety is going to continue to grow and it is already hard enough to cope with now.
- When you try to reach out to people around you, you may hear “just breathe”, “calm down”, or even worse “you don’t have anything to be anxious about” which not only increases the feelings of anxiety, but adds shame.
- You may want to talk about your anxiety but are worried people won’t understand and will judge you.
- You may feel afraid that this is your new “normal” struggling with anxiety. When you have never felt this way before and it is something that other people deal with, but not you.
However, you have come here, I am honored that you are here now. Read on to see if my anxiety counseling services may help you.
You may cope with your anxiety by putting up a false front with your work, family, and friends.
You may pretend that nothing is going on internally so no one will ask questions and the anxiety cannot impact your relationships.
You may become more and more withdrawn from your normal social activities; too afraid to feel and face the anxiety that has come up in the past and could come up again.
You may have at the beginning of feeling anxiety to let more people in, only to be let down from off comments, harmful responses, and a lack of empathy.
If you feel this way, you want a space where you are safe to explore all your anxieties, worries, and fears. You want to feel validated in your anxiety and work to move forward.
And most important, you want someone to walk with you through this process and follow wherever this journey takes you. Someone trained and experienced to help ground you and be a solid presence.
Your anxiety may lead to a different path you did not expect.
I see anxiety as a healthy and important part of development. As we grow and walk-through life our anxieties increase, our worldviews shift, and we become more sensitive to the things around us. I see anxiety as the expression of an evolving person challenging new ways to find meaning in the world.
I want to co-create a space with you to explore your anxieties safely and nonjudgmentally, and help you navigate these emotions and how it impacts your day-to-day life.
As we work with anxiety it shifts the way we engage with the world. During intense anxiety you can feel lost and not like yourself. In therapy we work to reconnect and ground your lived experienced, together finding a firm footing.
My experiences with Anxiety
Before I was a therapist, I was an accountant. Then one day I had a major panic attack that took me to the ER and then the next day I entered my own therapy for anxiety. This anxiety was profound and rocked me to my very core. It turned my entire world upside down. I felt lost and without direction. I started asking big questions like “who am I” and “what does this all mean” in hope of finding some reprieve from the anxiety.
In time and through regular therapy I began to feel more grounded and understood my anxiety experience. I started to throw myself into the books of Rollo May, Irvin Yalom, Viktor Frankl, and Søren Kierkegaard who are profound Existential writers who worked with anxiety. Their work resonated with me and challenged the way I looked at anxiety forever.
The human condition, the condition we all share, involves, and will always involve to some extent a degree of anxiety. It is what makes us human. It reminds us of feeling vulnerable, finite, and above all else able to change. Anxiety calls for us to choose an action, to engage with our lives in the here-and-now, and become more. It is not easy to deal with at times, anxiety can be shattering, and difficult; but there is meaning in this journey. You too can learn and from this journey and engage your life with a new found level of realness you never thought possible. There is an incredible mindfulness of all emotions not just anxiety after you have done this work.
My clinical training as a therapist, my personal experiences, and work I have done with clients in the past allows me to work deeply with anxiety with a firm therapeutic foundation. I want to help you feel grounded even when the world feels so disorienting. It is through this work with anxiety that your engagement with the world shifts and forever changes.
