Anxiety Therapy
Is anxiety interfering with your ability to function?
Have you been feeling overwhelmed and on high alert?
Do you find yourself catastrophizing, not feeling good enough, or fearing the judgment of others?
Are feelings of dread impacting your sleep, productivity, and relationships?
Maybe you feel anxious the moment you wake up each day. The first thing you do is check your phone, review your notifications looking for problems, and rush through your morning routine so that you can get to work. Once there, you spend the day stressing over upcoming meetings and panicking over deadlines and assignments. After you get home, you worry about what tomorrow will bring until the cycle repeats itself in the morning. Maybe this is becoming a problem and you are thinking of seeing a therapist who specializes in treating anxiety.
Anxiety can affect your health, relationships, and other areas of your life.
Chronic anxiety is characterized by a persistent feeling of fear. It arises from perceiving threats too often and too severely, as if the worst-case scenario is always on the verge of happening. Over time, chronic anxiety can negatively impact your sleep, eating habits, and overall physical health. It can also make you irritable and temperamental, leading to difficulties in your relationships with family, friends, and work colleagues.
If you want to get control of your anxiety symptoms and stop letting them get in the way of your functioning, I encourage you to pursue therapy with me. My evidence-based approach to counseling can help you learn to manage anxiety effectively and leverage it as a source of motivation rather than a source of dread.
If this sounds like a good fit, all you have to do is fill out this form to get started.
Anxiety is a normal function that can spiral out of control.
Although we tend to think of anxiety as the enemy, the truth is that it is one of our greatest assets. Anxiety is a built-in survival mechanism that is designed to keep us safe and alert us to potential threats. It helps us identify problems and provides us with focus and energy to seek and secure solutions. As such, anxiety gives us the motivation we need to show up and perform for presentations, job interviews, competitions, and other activities where we need to be at our best.
But many people experience anxiety to such an extent that it is more of a liability than a resource. When our experience of fear and worry becomes too great, it instead becomes debilitating and interferes with our productivity and sabotages progress towards our goals. At this point, that anxiety is often a sign of a mental health disorder that calls for treatment and support.
Dysfunctional anxiety is common in a plugged-in world.
With high-speed internet, smartphones, tablets, computers, and global data networks, we are more connected and accessible than ever. We are reachable at almost any point by text, email, calls, and notifications. Work, responsibilities, demands, questions, feedback—all of these communications and more can find us and we are willing or even eager to receive them. As such, it can be an incredible challenge to find any time to detach, unplug, and decompress when faced with the constant specter of contact.
We are also privy to the intimate lives of others and have our own lives exposed to the world. Our relationships, achievements, shortcomings, jobs, careers, families—nearly every aspect is shared, revealed, or even foisted on ourselves and others.
Naturally, this can give rise to a culture of envy and unhealthy comparisons. Many products and services are sold by cultivating fear, doubt, and feelings of inadequacy. The world of marketing often preys on our insecurities, telling us we are not accomplished, popular, or successful enough.
A consequence of living in a plugged-in world is that it can distort our perception of reality, capitalizing on our fears to such an extent that it disrupts our natural, productive experience of anxiety. Therapy can provide an opportunity to restore a healthy relationship with it and bring a more natural balance to your sense of worry.
Therapy can help you manage anxiety and function well.
Problematic anxiety often arises from evaluating events and actions in distorted ways—“if a job is not done perfectly, it is a disaster” or “if there are going to be layoffs at my company, that means I will end up on the street.”
Therapy can help you step back and ask yourself how realistic these thoughts are. I can help you recognize cognitive distortions such as catastrophizing, mind-reading, and all-or-nothing thinking. This way, you will be able to look at the big picture and determine what you really stand to lose. You will learn to assess whether your fear responses are appropriate relative to perceived threats.
To that end, our first step in anxiety counseling is usually psychoeducation. When you understand anxiety, it becomes much easier to control it. I can teach you how to identify your fears, pinpoint the behaviors that reinforce your stress, and learn to stop seeing anxiety as the enemy, enabling you to harness anxiety’s adaptive qualities to your advantage in life.
A tailored approach to anxiety treatment.
I draw from an eclectic cluster of treatment methods to help clients both reduce and tolerate anxiety. Depending on what works best for you, I may utilize:
Mindfulness Practices to help you manage anxiety and learn to be present in the moment instead of ruminating on the past or worrying about the future.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to address the thoughts and feelings that are fueling your anxiety and improve your day-to-day functioning as a result.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to help you accept what is out of your control and focus on living in a way that aligns with your values.
Psychodynamic Therapy to make connections between painful past experiences and your struggles with anxiety today.
Solution-Focused Therapy to make a practical action plan for dealing with anxiety in the present and pursuing your goals for the future.
In the end, it is important to remember that anxiety is common for a reason. It can protect you, motivate you, and energize you. That is why my approach to therapy is not about eliminating anxiety, but learning to manage it more effectively. This way, you can use it as an adaptive function and stop it from sabotaging your potential.
You may have some questions about anxiety therapy…
I have always been anxious—what if it’s just who I am?
Habits and patterns of thoughts can easily become entrenched over a long period of time, so it might seem like anxiety is a natural part of who you are. But even if you are a little anxious by nature, the question is: does anxiety negatively impact your functioning? If so, we can work on sorting out the habits and patterns getting in the way of your true potential.
Won’t talking about anxiety in therapy just make me feel worse?
One of my first priorities is building a sense of security and trust between you and me. We do not have to rush into anything that you are not ready to explore. There is no pressure to “perform” in therapy or force some kind of progress as we get started—I encourage you to be yourself, work at your own pace, and understand that the progress will come naturally.
How do I really know that you can help me?
While I cannot guarantee an outcome, what I can say is that curious exploration defines my approach. Knowledge is power. We can get to know your anxiety—to understand where it comes from, how it impacts you, and what you can do to manage it better going forward. As long as you walk away from therapy with more knowledge about yourself than you had before, we can confidently say that you are one step closer to achieving your goals.
From anxious and overwhelmed to confident and performing
If you want to overcome the fears that are holding you back in life and build up your confidence and performance abilities, I believe I can help. To learn more about my approach to anxiety counseling, all you have to do is fill out a contact form. We look forward to hearing from you.
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Anxiety Therapy
in Wausau
300 N 3rd Street
Ste. 302
Wausau, WI 54401
Virtual services are also available across Wisconsin.