Anxiety Therapy
Is Anxiety Making You Feel Like You’re Losing Yourself?
Are you struggling so much in your personal life with anxiety that everything feels chaotic?
Have you “checked out” of your marriage or romantic relationship even though you want to be present? Perhaps your partner handles most of the everyday tasks because you can’t find the motivation and energy to start your to-do list. You feel bad for your lack of responsibility, but you have difficulty explaining what you’re going through.
Or maybe your professional life is being affected. Do you find yourself having trouble focusing in school or at work, where concentration seems next to impossible, and the lack of it only makes your anxiety grow stronger?
If this sounds familiar, it might be time to start thinking about therapy.
Severe Anxiety Can Feel Like It’s Controlling You
Everyone experiences some form of anxiety during their lifetime. It becomes a problem when the anxiety starts to continuously affect your day-to-day functioning and activities.
When you wake up, perhaps you’re already dreading the worst for your day. The stress is almost immediate as soon as you open your eyes. You don’t want to start the day, but know you must. So, your solution is to put your feelings aside, go through the motions, and simply power through the day.
The problem with that plan is that you often find yourself overthinking everything and anticipating the worst-case scenario. You’re always on guard, fearing that any misstep will lead to more chaos. This fear exacerbates your physical symptoms of anxiety and your thoughts about yourself, potentially leading to perfectionism or giving up. When things don’t go quite as you planned, you feel a loss of control, start shutting down, and experience burnout.
If you’re at this point, you may want to consider therapy for anxiety. As a therapist who specializes in treating anxiety, I’m confident that I can help you reduce over-thinking, learn strategies for managing your stress, gain control again, and live a more relaxed, confident, and empowered life.
Modern-Day Pressures Make Anxiety Very Prevalent
Trying to maintain perfectionism in real life and online can often make you believe you are not doing enough and need to do more.
Additionally, over time, you may become over exhausted, depressed and stop caring for yourself (self-care, hygiene, social life, professional life, etc.). Ultimately, your physical health also takes a toll. Those around you start noticing that you are different, asking if everything is okay.
Putting on a front or masking what is actually going on with you is only hiding your anxiety. When we try and hide our anxiety, we tend to do things like isolate ourselves from our loved ones, spend a lot of money on things we don’t need, sleep and eat less or more than usual, immerse ourselves in social media or TV and fantasy, exercise excessively or stop exercising at all, and so much more. Avoiding the deeper level issues going on in your life may also cause you to become irritable and irrationally angry, lashing out at others, only exasperating the distance from your support system.
You don’t have to change your sense of self or mask your pain to be happy.
As an experienced anxiety therapist, I can help you get your life back.
Anxiety Therapy Can Help You Feel Comfortable Within Yourself
For therapy to be effective, it needs to take every area of your life into account. That’s why my approach is all-encompassing. When starting treatment with me at Pearl Psychological, we’ll begin by exploring your history with anxiety and any past experiences that may have contributed to it. We’ll look at how we can help you reduce your triggers, improve your communication, establish new coping practices, build new boundaries, and regulate your emotions effectively. This way, therapy can benefit your mental, emotional, physical, and social well-being.
In ongoing sessions, we will go a little deeper and examine some of the core beliefs that are fueling your struggles with anxiety. We’ll look at any unhelpful thought patterns (such as “the worst-case scenario will happen”), as well as your core beliefs (such as “I’m not good enough”) and focus on challenging and eliminating them. We’ll then shift our focus to developing rational thoughts and positive behaviours, allowing you to change the way you respond to life’s stressors.
Anxiety Treatments And Methods Used In Anxiety Therapy
Treating anxiety is a collaborative process and requires work from you and your therapist. Some of the methods I utilize to help with anxiety are:
- Behavioural Activation: This is the starting point for treating anxiety. Behavioural activation involves creating routines and schedules that help you keep your life consistent and on track. You will start to acknowledge your accomplishments and successes and will learn to become proactive instead of reactive.
- Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT): CBT is about identifying your triggers, thoughts, and beliefs so that you can understand why you react to things the way you do and how your thoughts affect your emotions and behaviours.
- Mindfulness: Techniques for anxiety can take different forms. For example, visualizing all of your “anxiety stuff” going in a container. What color is it? What shape is it? What does the lid look like? Can you imagine putting your anxiety into the container? That is called visualization. You can also use other grounding methods to calm yourself by focusing on your five senses (touch, taste, sight, sound, and smell) or doing breathing exercises. So much in this area of practice can be learned to improve your anxiety.
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR): Bilateral stimulation helps your brain connect with your body and reprocesses the thoughts and memories to help you understand what’s going on.. EMDR is often used to calm anxiety flare-ups by focusing your attention to the underlying issue.
No matter what approach works best for you, it’s important to know that anxiety is manageable. I can help you expand your awareness of your symptoms and teach you the tools to help you emotionally regulate. Through this process of deeper understanding and stress reduction, your mind and body can feel more relaxed, peaceful, and at ease.
You May Be Interested In Anxiety Therapy, But Have More Questions…
Most people are concerned about the cost of therapy. I recommend using any personal or work benefits you may have, and then looking into secondary options such as a health spending account, or other means. If those may not be an option, I can discuss your financial concerns with you in the first session and potentially offer a sliding scale option. If this still does not work, I can help you find other therapists or agencies that offer low-cost or minimal-fee therapy.
This is a common concern for people who have attended therapy in the past. When someone attends therapy, many factors come into play, such as timing in life, age, readiness and willingness for change, and the client/therapist relationship (rapport).
Because my approach is comprehensive and looks at the deeper issues driving your anxiety, I believe that you will find it more effective than most approaches to the healing process. What’s more, I offer a free, 10-minute phone consultation so that we can make sure we’re a good fit and have the potential for a great rapport for each other ahead of time.
A busy schedule is a part of life, and this can be challenging to navigate when adding another thing to it. Making a time commitment to your mental health can be the first step in accepting help. With a busy schedule myself, I work with my clients to offer flexible hours and I also offer online sessions, if it’s more convenient for you.
Are You Ready To Find The Real You?
If you want to regain control of your life and be comfortable with yourself, I encourage you to make the call to start the process. Call me, Vanessa Iceton at (780) 719-2807 for a free 10-minute consultation. You can also send an email or access my contact page.
