Anxiety-therapy

Anxiety is a challenging emotion that can be highly disruptive to our lives. Not only can it make daily life difficult, but it can also get in the way of your long-term goals. How does anxiety show up in your life? It may be physical symptoms such as increased heart rate or discomfort in our stomach. It could also show up as repetitive thought loops or even panic attacks.  

To help reduce and manage anxiety, we start with skills to get you through the day. These skills might be techniques to get through moments of high anxiety by challenging and getting distance from negative thoughts and feelings, or revisiting self-care activities.

These skills might come from mindfulness, Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT), or Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT). Mindfulness is about paying attention in the moment to what is happening around you. The goal is to redirect your mind away from the anxiety. Thinking and writing approaches like CPT help you get distance from the anxiety. ACT involves both mindfulness and thinking-related skills.

Once your symptoms are better controlled, we’ll look at the roots of your anxiety and develop a plan for long-term management. This process often involves increasing self-care activities, like exercise or journaling. It may also involve attending to your relationships and/or increasing your support system. It may involve planning for upcoming events and stressors. As part of this process, we might use ACT to focus on what values are most important to you and then develop values-informed goals.