Anxiety Counseling
Is Anxiety Taking Over Your Life?
Is your head often filled with racing or intrusive thoughts? Do you blame and criticize yourself when things go wrong? Have you or those around you ever wonder why you’re so stressed?
While your anxiety may often arise out of stressful situations, it might at times also hit without warning. Perhaps the tension you feel as a result shows up physically, causing muscle pain, headaches, or fatigue. In addition, your professional or personal performance might be slipping—despite how hard you try. These setbacks can be overwhelming and take a toll on your overall motivation.
Does your anxiety affect your behaviors? Perhaps you exert meticulous control over certain areas of your life (such as your job) while overlooking others (like sleep or nutrition). You may become preoccupied with worries around certain aspects of your life, such as the safety, health, and financial well-being of yourself or those you care about. If you exert a lot of energy on these types of behaviors, you may be too exhausted to put much effort into your personal relationships.
Do you ever wish you could just hit a switch and turn off your anxiety? Anxiety isn’t typically resolved overnight; however, with the right tools, insights, and support, you can learn to better manage and reduce your anxiety, leaving you free to pursue the things in life that bring you joy.
If You Have Anxiety, You’re Not Alone
Every year, anxiety affects 18 percent of U.S. adults, making anxiety disorders the most common mental health concern.1 In fact, a full third of people will experience anxiety at some point in their lives.2 Anxiety’s prevalence today is due to a variety of factors, including the pressures of social media, exposure to disheartening political news, and changing economic factors. However, even without these difficult experiences, anxiety can still develop as our responsibilities increase, our energy decreases, and we try to cope with new demands being placed on us.
For some people, anxiety builds up slowly. For others, it can come about quite quickly following a move, relationship change, loss, illness, career change, or other transition. Regardless of what is causing your stress, it is possible to find relief so you may continue working toward your goals. By exploring the sources and triggers of your stress with a skilled anxiety therapist, you can reduce and better manage your symptoms, freeing you to follow a happier and more fulfilling life.
Discover A Calmer, More Authentic “You” With Anxiety Counseling
Many people with anxiety try to cover it up when they are around friends and family. Often, we may be discouraged from sharing how we feel and encouraged to “just get over” any anxious feelings.
While you might be in the habit of keeping your emotions and your struggles to yourself, this can become overwhelming and lonely over time. That’s why it’s so important to find someone who can listen to your issues from an open, unbiased, and nonjudgmental perspective. Anxiety counseling allows you to talk through difficult life situations with a compassionate therapist.
Openly sharing your thoughts with a nonjudgmental third party can feel freeing, allowing you a space to process difficult emotions. The sense of release therapy provides may allow you to move through your concerns more quickly and more completely than going it alone.
At Snowline Counseling, we work to create a safe and accepting environment where you can be yourself. Often, the pressure of how others perceive us may constrain our ability to genuinely express ourselves, but your anxiety therapist will encourage you to explore your needs in an authentic way within a relationship free of judgment.
As part of your sessions, we’ll examine the thoughts and situations that commonly trigger your stress. Based on your unique challenges and goals, we will work with you to find solutions to everyday problems. In some cases, false beliefs about yourself or others may be holding you back. To help you find relief, we will use a range of interventions, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), a therapeutic technique effective for controlling anxiety. At Snowline Counseling, we always want to ensure that our approach fits with your needs and will work with you to find successful strategies.
Therapy can help you get to the root of your anxiety, but lasting change doesn’t happen instantaneously. In the meantime, we’ll show you how to calm down quickly during stressful situations. The practical coping strategies and emotional regulation techniques we share will help you manage your everyday symptoms.
Anxiety doesn’t have to be your default state of being, even if it feels like your anxiety symptoms have been around forever. As your anxiety symptoms recede and you learn to better manage them when they do arise, you may discover a new sense of balance in your life. If you’re like many of our past clients, you may have assumed that anxiety is unavoidable. Once your stress levels and symptoms start to fade away, you may be pleasantly surprised by how good you feel and how much you can accomplish.
As you consider anxiety counseling, you may think. . .
Will people think I’m crazy if I see a therapist?
Social stigma would have us believe that anyone who goes to therapy is suffering from a severe mental illness, but that simply isn’t true. Just as there is nothing wrong with going in to see your doctor for a physical, there is nothing wrong with seeing a therapist for a mental health check-up.
I’m not sure my stress is severe enough to warrant anxiety counseling.
Most people wait until their anxiety is truly debilitating before coming in for therapy. But wouldn’t you rather solve this problem now than wait until your relationships, professional goals, or health begin to deteriorate? It is also worth noting that many people who think they have anxiety may also be suffering from depression, trauma, or related conditions. Even if you are just feeling more stressed than usual, anxiety counseling can help give you skills to prevent burnout, address relationship concerns, and practice self-care. Together, we can work through any and all issues you may be struggling with so you can begin feeling better.
I can’t afford to slow down. What if anxiety therapy makes me less productive?
The idea that anxiety equals productivity is common. You may be able to keep up a rapid pace for a while, but you may eventually realize it is unsustainable. Errors may start to appear in your work, you may get sick more often, or you may begin to develop chronic illnesses. Therapy allows you to avoid these complications and ensure you are investing your energy in the right places. Many people are pleased to discover that they are actually more productive once they are no longer held back by their anxiety and worry.
You Deserve To Be Happy
Anxiety may be a part of your daily life right now, but it doesn’t have to be that way forever. You’ve already taken the first step toward a better life by learning more about your options. Take the next one by contacting us for a free, 15-minute phone consultation.
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