Anxiety Therapy

Are You Struggling With Excessive Worry, Stress, Or Anxiety?

Do you find yourself regularly overwhelmed by anxious thoughts or feelings? Have you experienced any of the following challenges:

· Persistent, free-floating anxiety?

· Insomnia due to intrusive, anxious thoughts?

· Intrusive distressing memories of mistakes or traumatic experiences?

· Debilitating panic attacks?

· Agoraphobia or anxiety in social situations?

Maybe your anxiety has impacted your home, work, school, or social life to the point where completing tasks or even just existing comfortably in those spaces has become difficult for you. Perhaps you have found yourself pulling away from family, friends, your partner, or some of your longtime hobbies or passions. As a result, maybe you’re thinking that it’s time to talk to a mental health professional about your anxiety.

Anxiety Can Negatively Impact Nearly Every Aspect Of Your Life

You may be experiencing physical symptoms as a result of your anxiety, such as nausea, headaches, or issues with your diet or sleep schedule. Perhaps you have difficulty waking up in the morning due to low energy and exhaustion, or you have trouble falling asleep at night because of endless rumination. You might even find yourself experiencing uncontrollable panic attacks, irrational fears or phobias, or crippling paranoia.

Thankfully, anxiety is highly treatable and with the right form of therapy, and you can create a fulfilling, connected life where anxiety is no longer in the driver’s seat. At Engage Psychotherapy, our focus is on empowering you to manage anxiety more effectively in day-to-day life through a series of evidence-based therapeutic approaches.

Everyone Deals With Some Form Of Anxiety At Some Point

Anxiety is an inevitable part of being human. From time to time, all of us experience situations that stress us out—and that’s okay. Anxiety is a survival instinct that’s hardwired into our nervous systems, and it’s designed to keep us safe. It can often be a healthy and protective psychological response, helping us prepare for an important task.

However, in some situations, anxiety can become a constant presence and begin to control our decision-making and start to interfere with our joy and happiness. This is the case for millions of people today. In fact, according to the CDC, 12.5 percent of adults report “regular feelings of worry, nervousness, or anxiety” (see here).

Anxiety Is An Understandable Response To An Uncertain World

In today’s busy, stressful world, many external factors are contributing to our anxiety all the time. We are exposed to endless confusion due to the overwhelming or contradictory information that we receive on social media or the news. And we are still experiencing many of the aftereffects of the pandemic and its impact on how we socialize and interact. So it’s no wonder so many of us go through life feeling anxious or uncertain.

However, this makes it more vital to seek out support rather than let anxiety persist. Counseling can help you break the negative cycle that anxiety has exerted over you and work toward a more authentic and vibrant life.

Anxiety Therapy Can Help You Reclaim Your Peace

When you’re stuck in a cycle of anxiety, it can be easy to lose hope about the future. Many of us turn to easy distractions or coping mechanisms that cause other problems or end up increasing our anxiety, or isolation, and do nothing to resolve the issue in the long term and can even make things worse in the short term.

Counseling gives you a chance to develop coping skills that don’t reinforce your anxiety. It can help you create a safe space where you can authentically share things about yourself with someone you trust. You might be surprised how cathartic it is to process your anxiety out loud. Beginning to understand where your anxiety is coming from can help you begin to finally feel a sense of control over it and hope for finding a path toward relief. We seek to create a therapeutic relationship where you can feel deeply heard, seen, and understood by your anxiety counselor.

As we begin the therapeutic process, we will strive to gain insight into your short- and long-term goals for counseling, and then figure out how we can best attain them together. We want to understand where the problems you are experiencing actually stem from, and then use that knowledge to resolve these problems.

An Eclectic Approach To Anxiety Therapy

Your therapist will incorporate a wide variety of evidence-based approaches to treat your anxiety, including:

· Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) – An evidence-based form of psychotherapy, CBT works to identify and change the negative thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors related to your anxiety.

· Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) – Similar to CBT, DBT deals with those particularly intense or difficult symptoms pertaining to your anxiety, such as panic attacks or symptoms of OCD.

· Somatic Therapy (ST) – Including a variety of somatic practices, this form of therapy can help address the impacts of anxiety on the body and nervous system.

· Exposure Response Prevention (ERP) – A form of psychotherapy that helps with phobias and OCD, ERP gradually exposes you to the anxiety-provoking sources of your fears within a safe environment in order to deactivate the phobias or compulsions that are interfering with you living your life.

Although the goal of therapy is always to provide short-term relief and long-term healing, we know that achieving perfection is impossible. So rather than try to eliminate anxiety, we encourage you to focus on developing skills that allow you to reduce your stress levels. This way, you can thrive in spite of your anxiety and live in a way that’s true to your authentic self.

You May Still Have Some Questions About Anxiety Therapy…

I’m worried about the cost of anxiety therapy.

We are registered to bill with most insurance companies and accept assignments using your out-of-network benefits, so you can usually just pay your cost-sharing amount. In any case, we also urge you to consider the lifelong benefits that can be gained from seeking professional support. Therapy can set you up for long-term happiness, ensuring that you don’t have to keep spending money trying to manage anxiety in the future.

I’m concerned about the time commitment involved.

Anxiety is actually very treatable, and you might be surprised by how quickly you can experience noticeable improvement in the short term. And if you’re considering therapy, then you’re already motivated to work on the issue, which gives you a head start. By working in tandem with a skilled anxiety therapist, you will be able to make even greater progress.

I’ve had a bad experience with therapy in the past.

We are interested in understanding where therapy has not proven effective for you in the past in order to avoid repeating that experience. We also want to talk about your experience in therapy together as we progress, ensuring that we are making continued adjustments throughout treatment.