꩜ Anxiety
Anxiety is the issue that brings most people to therapy. There are different forms of anxiety, but they all share one thing in common. They can suck our spirits dry!
The most common forms of anxiety I see with my clients are:
Social Anxiety
Generalized Anxiety
Situation-specific Anxiety (see Trauma page)
Different Types of Anxiety
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Social anxiety, also called social phobia, is that horrible feeling you get around other people because you aren’t comfortable with how they may judge you.
Your brain was trained to believe some things are dangerous when they really aren’t. The goal here is to rewire your programming to allow you to feel safe when it logically makes sense.
When you feel safe, you aren’t anxious and on guard. Instead, you smile, laugh and love your life!
Therapy for social anxiety will include learning how to:
Reduce the physical and mental feelings of anxiety in the moment.
Lower your baseline anxiety.
Get back into your logical brain to determine if you are safe.
Be comfortable enough with setting boundaries that you actually set boundaries.
Make peace with yourself and the universe
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People experiencing generalized anxiety sometimes can’t say what made them anxious because they are so used to being anxious.
The formal diagnosis is Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and it’s a spirit killer. You can only white-knuckle through life so long before it wears you down. We all have our limits to tolerate distress, and untreated GAD will keep you from living the life you would enjoy.
The really good news is that GAD is incredibly treatable!
We treat it much like social anxiety, just with a broader focus on where and when to be comfortable. You will learn to relax your nervous system in the moment and change your baseline anxiety. Once you feel confident that you can calm your body and mind, you are free to do things without horrible anxiety!