Anxiety Counseling

You're Doing Fine. Except When You're Not.

You show up. You handle things. You're capable, self-aware, and by most measures pretty good at life. And underneath all of that — quietly, persistently — something is humming that won't turn off.

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Maybe it's the 2am spiral. The overanalysis of a text you sent three days ago. The low-grade dread that follows you into rooms you should feel fine in. The exhaustion of managing how you come across while also trying to actually function. The sense that you're always one step behind yourself — performing okayness while something underneath is working overtime.

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That's not weakness. That's anxiety doing what anxiety does — and it makes complete sense once you understand what it's actually protecting you from.

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What Anxiety Actually Is

Most people come in thinking anxiety is the problem. It's usually not.

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Anxiety is a response. A pattern your nervous system developed — often a long time ago — to manage something that felt threatening or unsafe. It kept you alert, prepared, one step ahead. And for a while, maybe it worked.

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The problem is that patterns don't update themselves automatically. What once protected you can become the thing that exhausts you. The internal cycle runs whether or not the original threat is still present — and over time it starts to feel like just who you are rather than something that happened to you.

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It isn't who you are. It's a pattern. And patterns can shift.

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How We Work With It

I draw on two approaches that work particularly well together for anxiety — Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

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With EFT we look at the internal cycle driving your anxiety — the emotions beneath the surface, the protective responses that get triggered, the ways your nervous system learned to brace against uncertainty or disconnection. Not to analyze it from a distance, but to actually feel into it. To understand it from the inside. Because when a pattern finally makes sense — when you can see where it came from and what it's been trying to do — it starts to lose its grip.

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With ACT we build a different relationship with your anxiety rather than trying to eliminate it. We get curious about it. We learn to observe it without being consumed by it. And from that steadier ground we turn toward something more generative — your values, your sense of self, the kind of life that actually feels like yours.

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This is where agency comes back. Not by fighting the anxiety or white-knuckling your way through it — but by finding small, meaningful shifts in the pattern. Choices that feel true to who you are. Movements toward what matters, even when the anxiety is still present.

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That's what psychological flexibility feels like from the inside. And it changes things.

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This Might Be You If...

• You've been described as anxious or a worrier for as long as you can remember

• You overthink decisions, conversations, and things you said three days ago

• You're high-functioning on the outside and exhausted on the inside

• You feel like you're always bracing for something — even when things are fine

• Anxiety shows up in your body — tension, shallow breathing, a stomach that won't settle

• You know intellectually that you're okay but can't quite feel it

• You've tried managing it and it works — until it doesn't

• You want to understand it, not just cope with it

 

You Don't Have to White-Knuckle Your Way Through

A lot of anxiety content out there is about management — breathing techniques, grounding exercises, ways to get through the moment. Those things have their place. But management isn't the same as change.

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What I'm interested in with you is change. Not eliminating the anxiety — that's not the goal and honestly not the point. But shifting your relationship with it. Building enough self-knowledge and psychological flexibility that anxiety stops running the show.

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That's slower work than a coping strategy. It's also more lasting.

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Why Private Pay Makes Sense Here

Anxiety work done well is unhurried. It doesn't fit neatly into an authorized number of sessions or a treatment protocol designed for efficiency. It requires room to explore, to slow down, to follow what actually needs attention rather than what fits a billing code.

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My practice is private pay for new clients. That means no diagnosis required to begin, no insurance company defining the pace or the scope, and full clinical freedom to do the work that actually serves you.

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50 minute sessions are $175. Learn more about how that works.

 

You're in the Right Place

If you've got questions, my Good Questions page can help.

If you're tired of managing anxiety and ready to actually understand it — I'd love to connect.