Anxiety

It’s really the worst.

Anxiety can take many shapes and forms depending upon who we are and what experiences we’ve had. You or your child might experience some or any of the following:

• finding it hard to concentrate
• getting stuck “in your head”
• not sleeping, or waking in the night with bad dreams
• not eating properly
• quickly getting angry or irritable, and being out of control during outbursts
• constantly worrying or having negative thoughts
• feeling tense and fidgety, or using the toilet often
• always crying; feeling teary
• feeling clingy
• stomach aches
• sweating, trembling, dizziness, or a racing heartbeat
• needing to complete specific rituals to feel better
• and more.

There are so many factors that increase anxiety and can include things like moving, death of a loved one (even a pet!), getting ill, dealing with COVID, getting in an accident, being bullied, feeling intense stress from school or work, surviving traumatic a experience, spiritual/religious abuse, neglect, and more.

Whatever you or your childs experience, there is a way to find relief and to get back to feeling more like yourself.

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How I can help

Instead of categorizing you or your struggles into a box, my approach to therapy is grounded in supporting you as your unique self! We spend time learning about what makes you feel good, what hobbies you love, what interests you have, and we find a path in therapy that connects authentically.

The most important part of therapy is that you or your child feel connected and supported in our relationship, so this is always at the forefront of care in my practice.

With tweens, we can use the modalities of play and the expressive arts to identify needs, work towards goals, and build skills. This often looks like us playing with toys, creating art, making music, or wearing capes in our therapy sessions but interwoven in that process are techniques from CBT, EMDR, mindfulness and other evidence based approaches. Play therapy is the leading approach recommended for children ages 3-12 to support therapeutic change as children process emotionally through play.

With teens, I lean on “geek therapy” ideas such as anime, dungeons and dragons, Roblox, and whatever else your teen may be interested in to enhance the therapy process. Utilizing these preferences and strengths of teens allows us to process difficult topics with some “aesthetic distance”; thus providing teens with confidence and the esteem to verbalize their difficulties and develop coping skills. Again we may interweave these popular media themes with EMDR, CBT, DBT, mindfulness, and other evidenced based practices.

With adults, we can utilize whatever modality you’d like to explore in this work. Our sessions can incorporate EMDR, verbal processing, reflection, mindfulness, CBT techniques, and creative expression. If you’ve tried traditional counseling and found it wasn’t a fit for you, then creative arts and expressive therapy could be a great fit for you as well.

No matter how we work together, your subjective experience of life is one of the core elements for me to understand through the therapeutic process. Being understood and validated is incredibly important and at the forefront of our journey together. Through our strong therapeutic relationship and by utilizing your preferences, we can then move into more difficult terrain by identifying you or your loved ones strengths, struggles, and goals.

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Supportive Research