Types of Anxiety
It’s normal to feel anxiety. In fact, anxiety is one of the most common maladies of our time. From the vaguest feelings of unease to full-on catastrophizing, anxiety is a form of suffering that can take many forms, such as:
- Worries cycling repeatedly through your mind.
- Feeling anguish unless you’ve performed compulsive rituals like counting stairs or re-checking if a door is locked.
- Physical manifestations in our bodies of the “fight-or-flight response,” such as a racing heart or churning stomach.
- Feelings of panic or doom, especially while away from home.
- Intense and prolonged fear of a particular social situation.
Because anxiety manifests so broadly, I take the time to understand what type of anxiety you’re experiencing. We become familiar with your particular fear response: what triggers your fears, how long it lasts, and what makes it better or worse. From there, we build the concrete skills you need.
Stress Management Skills
Most of us habitually attempt to avoid what we fear. It’s human nature to want to protect ourselves from stress, so we skip the scary public speaking engagement or put off a difficult conversation with our boss. In therapy, we learn how this very avoidance escalates and expands our fears. I can help you develop the skills you need to face your fears, gently and gradually.
Self-soothing is a powerful skill that I cultivate in clients. This is about learning to soothe yourself effectively between sessions. I teach breathing and other techniques to quiet the fight-or-flight response. I facilitate your self-awareness so that you can respond sooner and more effectively to stress and fear.
It takes enormous skill to become aware of anxious thoughts without automatically assuming that they’re true. For example, “I’m a disaster at public speaking!” is a thought. I teach you how to catch your stressful thoughts, take a step back, and assess how much of your fear is reality-based.
Finally, some clients like to explore the roots of their anxiety, and find this diminishes their overall stress. Building these skills is like exercising a muscle. With practice over time, you’ll be amazed at what you can face.