Anxiety can show up in many ways:Anxiety is uncomfortable and unpleasant. It’s a reaction to stress that we can’t solve. When it goes on too long it holds the power to disrupt sleep, diet and exercise, as well as confidence, communication and motivation.
The good news is that when our anxieties can be channeled into life enhancing behavior and action, we disperse it and it decreases. We can feel better, and relax. The question is what stops anxiety from being channeled the way we want?
Anxiety can feel like mental static—agitating, unclear, and hard to ignore. In that state, thinking becomes foggy and decision-making more difficult. You might start avoiding things that aren’t actually dangerous—social events, career changes, or even joyful experiences.
The trouble is, anxiety often convinces us to avoid life, even when what we’re avoiding could be beneficial. That cycle can become a trap. Therapy helps interrupt that loop by making space to explore your reactions and reconnect with clarity and choice.
Anxiety is one of the most common mental health concerns, affecting millions of people each year. You are not weak or broken for struggling with anxiety. You are human—and you don’t have to go through it alone.
While medication can offer immediate relief for some, therapy focuses on helping you develop internal tools and insights that stay with you for life. Together, we can explore your unique experience and build strategies that work for you.
Not all anxiety is bad. “Good” anxiety helps us prepare for important moments: giving a talk, preparing for a big move, or navigating major life changes. It can be energizing and motivating.
But “bad” anxiety does the opposite. It clouds your thinking, undermines your confidence, and can make even small tasks feel overwhelming. It might lead you to avoid what matters most, or try to self-manage in ways that aren’t sustainable. Therapy can help you:
Often, chronic anxiety is tied to deeper, long-standing beliefs—like feeling unsafe, not good enough, or unable to trust yourself. These patterns may have developed years ago and gone unquestioned ever since.
In therapy, we can begin to explore these deeper roots—not to stay stuck in the past, but to loosen anxiety’s grip on your present. By understanding how anxiety works in your life, you can start making different choices and living more freely.
Anxiety doesn’t have to rule your life. With compassion, support, and curiosity, we can begin to shift how it shows up—and how you respond to it.
Please Note: The material following is a fictitious creation to show how underlying ideas contribute to current problems that can be re-worked.
A bright woman who was achieving some success in her career, recognized she was unable to sustain a romantic relationship, and this lead her to seek therapy. One contributing factor from her growing up years was how adored she felt by her father. She and her father were very close and rarely apart. Her mother had been quite depressed and withdrawn from her father so he turned to his daughter for the vital engagement he missed in his marriage. When the girl turned twelve her father divorced her mother. This devastated the young girl and she became very anxious. While this intelligent woman knew quite clearly that she wasn’t outwardly responsible for her parents divorce, on a deeper level, she harbored a feeling that she had somehow taken her father away from her mother. Even though this guilt inducing fantasy was not in her rational awareness, it still exerted a powerful influence over her romantic life. Just when she felt that a man was in love with her, she would become anxious and pushed the man away and tried to ruin their connection. In the treatment these issues were able to develop sufficiently, to allow her to work through them so she was free to find and hold onto, a lasting romantic relationship.