Anxiety

Do you experience excessive worry, intrusive thoughts or panic attacks? Anxiety is a normal part of life and we all experience it, however, therapy can be helpful if anxiety starts to affect your ability to live a full life. Most anxiety comes from thoughts surrounding the unknown.

Types of anxiety: Generalized, social, obsessive-compulsive, panic and phobias

My treatment approach uses CBT, Exposure and focuses on building coping skills with mindfulness, grounding and breathing exercises.

Examples of what we might do in therapy:

  • Exposure: Facing the anxiety head on can be an extremely powerful tool. You can start small by doing something out of your comfort zone. Start with something that gives you the least amount of anxiety, but is still a fear. An example related to social anxiety might be making eye contact with someone or saying hello. Start small and repeat often. The hope is that you will take away the power of the fear by facing it.

  • Mindfulness/Grounding Exercise: 5-4-3-2-1

  • Breathing Technique: Box Breathing/Deep Breathing/ Most breathing techniques can be extremely helpful in the moment

  • Safe Place Visualization:

    Sit somewhere comfortable with your feet on the ground. Close your eyes and start by taking deep breaths and noticing any tension in your body, and imagining you’re breathing into those areas and breathing out the tension.

    Once you feel a little more grounded, imagine you see a door. You open the door and walk through it into your Safe Place—(it can be a place from your past or present, it can be an imaginary place. I imagine I am in a favorite painting of mine). Once you are there, you will be going through all of your 5 senses in detail.

    Notice how you feel and take your time with each sense. What do you see? Be specific, what color, what size, etc. What do you hear? Is it loud, soft, in the distance, etc? What can you touch? (Is it smooth, cold, etc). What can you smell and what can you taste? (Pine trees, Ocean air, etc). Once your safe place feels fully developed, spend a few minutes there taking it all in. Then you can slowly come back to the present and open your eyes.