Regulate your physiology, retrain the anxious brain, and face your anxiety in the service of what matters.
Anxiety Therapy
In-person at my Arlington, VA office location and/or online for those residing in Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, and 40 other states.
Feeling like anxiety has taken control of your life?
Perhaps anxiety has been a part of your life for a long time, or maybe you’ve noticed it build over time, or increase after a life event.
Many factors can contribute to anxiety, including chronic stress, work situations, major life events, life milestones, family dynamics, certain medical conditions, past trauma or situations, and even genetics.
“Living safely is dangerous.”
— Irvin Yalom
Anxiety, and the many forms it takes, highjacks our brain’s natural desire to avoid pain and control outcomes. And, at times, it can feel unbearable. We can get caught in…
Worry loops
Obsessions and compulsions
Fixations on others’ evaluations of us
People-pleasing tendencies
Fears of specific things/activities
Panic attacks and other uncomfortable physical symptoms like stomach problems, headaches, and tightness in the chest may set in. As anxiety demands more and more of our energy, we see our sleep, health, relationships, and work suffer. Enter more anxiety and around we go.
We try and find solutions to keep the anxiety at bay, and, for a while, it seems to work. Often, it’s later down the line where we realize that the things we’re doing to try to keep ourselves safe are actually shrinking our lives and making it worse in the long run.
You may find that…
You’re saying no to opportunities more often because of the anxiety
Taking a long time to prepare for things and get things done, because if we don’t do it the right way something bad will happen
Significant others start expressing annoyance at our attempts to seek reassurance from them
We become less present in the moment and more distanced from experiences of joy, peace, and the things that matter to us.
That’s why living this safely can be dangerous. Our efforts to accommodate the anxiety get out of hand and we start missing out on life, our self-esteem suffers, and we start having difficulties trusting ourselves.
The good news is that anxiety struggles tend to be very responsive to cognitive-behavior-based treatments in the context of a trusting and warm therapeutic relationship. Together, we can work to regulate your physiology, retrain the anxious brain, and work through underlying issues fueling your anxiety.
WHAT WE’LL DO TOGETHER
Therapy for anxiety can help you to:
Understand underlying factors
Gain insight and work through underlying issues fueling your anxiety. Better notice triggers, compassionately and non-judgmentally understand their origins, and access to choice in how to respond to them.
Build effective coping skills
Cultivate an anxiety-relieving toolkit that you can use now and for the rest of your life. Learn ways to relax and more effectively talk back to your internal critic. Drop behaviors that are making your anxiety worse. Start facing your fears and feel confident again.
Start enjoying life more
Clarify your values and what’s truly important to you. Step out of anxiety and into patterns of behavior that move you closer to the person you want to be. Embrace a life where anxiety doesn’t run the show. Recognize that you do, and start seeing changes for the better.
Common questions about therapy for anxiety
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Generalized anxiety and worry
Health anxiety and hypochondriasis
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Social anxiety
Public speaking anxiety
Specific fears and phobias
Panic attacks
Skin picking and hair pulling
Fear of failure
Fear of death
Existential anxiety
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Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) focuses identifying and modifying maladaptive thoughts and behaviors that contribute to anxiety. You’ll learn relaxation techniques and problem-solving skills, engage in behavioral experiments to test anxious beliefs, and be better able to cope with anxiety and uncertainty in the long term.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps you to face your anxiety in the service of what matters. You’ll learn ways to disentangle yourself from anxious thoughts, be more present, accept what is and what is not within your personal control, and free up wasted energy that can be put toward creating the life you actually want.
Exposure Therapy and Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) involve approaching rather than avoiding anxiety-provoking situations to gain mastery over fears. You’ll engage in exposure exercises and let go of unhelpful rituals and/or safety behaviors that tend to make your anxiety worse. You may imagine yourself in a feared situation (“imaginal exposure”), watch material on videos, or encounter it in real life (“in-vivo exposure), or purposefully bring on physiological sensations associated with anxiety (“interoceptive exposure”) to learn that you can handle it. Exposures are conducted both in and outside of the office, depending on the nature of your anxiety. You’ll lean how to deal with repeated, unwanted, and intrusive thoughts, so that their frequency subsides and life becomes enjoyable again.