Online Anxiety Therapy in Texas
Are you experiencing symptoms of anxiety?
People in your life complain you can never relax. You are constantly thinking about the worst-case scenario. When things are going well, you often wonder, “this won’t last” and it most definitely is too good to be true.
You feel jumpy and tense all the time. Your jaw might be constantly tight. Your shoulders tense. At the end of the day, your body is sore like you ran a marathon but you didn’t.
You are always on guard, scanning the room, and can feel extra jumpy in large crowd situations.
Worrying is what you do best.
Forget the grocery store. You hate that place! All the lights, noise, and people get on your last nerve.
It’s hard to concentrate and it takes a while for you to complete simple tasks. You catch yourself having a flight of ideas but never following through. Often, you feel overwhelmed when you try something new.
When you get upset, your emotions tend to take over and it takes you a while to calm down. You are so exhausted of feeling on edge all the time and feel done with getting worked up over the little things. You don’t want to deal with feeling overrun by your emotions anymore.
When you try to relax, your mind won’t let you. There is always something to do, somewhere to be, and a task to be crossed off of your to-do list. Your partner often complains that you can never relax and you are constantly doing something.
You often compare being unproductive to being lazy. Taking a nap. Enjoying a good book or a show isn’t really your style. Who has time for that?! Even on vacation lounging for a day is cool but then it is back to activity after activity.
You desperately want to feel in control. You want to be able to relax without downing a box of wine, smoking a joint, eating a box of Oreos, or re-organizing your pantry.
What is anxiety exactly?
The official definition per the NIH, is “the persistent feeling of anxiety or dread, which can interfere with daily life.”
Check out this link here for more information on anxiety.
Anxiety can be mental and physical.
Meaning when you are anxious, you tend to have racing thoughts or go to worst case scenarios. You may have a hard time controlling your thoughts and they may be going in a constant loop making you more and more anxious. Then comes the physical stuff, the racing heart, shortness of breath, knot in your chest, feeling like someone is sitting on your chest and you can’t breath.
For people who have experienced trauma, anxiety is related to your nervous system being out of whack. You nervous system is made up of the brain, spinal cord and nerves. It controls many aspects of what you think, how you feel and what your body does. It allows you to do things such as walk, speak, swallow, breathe and learn. It also controls how the body reacts in stressful situations.
When you grow up in an unsafe environment or experience trauma continuously as a child (remember it can look like so many things-refer to this trauma page), your nervous system initiates a flight or fight response.
This feels like anxiety. When you are in fight or flight enough times or long enough, it can turn into a perpetual state of hypervigilance, or you being super tuned into everything around you. In this state, you are not able to be calm.
As you grow up into adulthood, you get stuck in this state of flight or fight even though you are far removed from your traumatic childhood.
This is what anxiety is. It is your body’s way of protecting itself but not understanding there no longer is a threat present. And in this state, you are much more likely to misread people’s behaviors as threatening when they might not be.
For example, your boss slightly raises their tone of voice because they are feeling flustered with all the morning traffic, your nervous system senses threat and initiates the fight or flight response. You either get snappy with them or you start having racing thoughts of getting fired.
This is how anxiety works relating to your nervous system and trauma.
Online anxiety treatment and how it works. Well here is the thing. A little anxiety is good. It helps us stay safe, motivated, and excited. How many times have you felt excited and nervous about something? First date anyone?
Anxiety becomes a problem when you feel it a little too much and it prevents you from doing the things you want to do. For example, you can’t go on that first date because you are having a panic attack.
In therapy, you will learn about the mechanisms of anxiety. Once you understand what is happening, you can focus on how to manage your anxiety in a healthy way.
The first step is learning how to regulate your mind and body. I help you feel safe in your body.
Next, we move into the self-compassion part. You learn how to be kind to yourself.
Finally, we focus on how to replace those annoying anxiety-producing thoughts of “I won’t ever be able to do this”, to “maybe I will, maybe I won’t, but I won’t know for sure until I try”.
How Can Online Anxiety Therapy Help?
To learn more about how anxiety can have an impact on you, explore this site about anxiety disorders.
Having fun at social events and truly enjoying yourself instead of avoiding them and looking for any excuse to flake. Letting go of what people think of you or being fearful of saying or doing the wrong thing and being yourself - with a take it or leave it attitude.
Enjoy the little moments in your life without being hijacked by fear. Be present with your friends at brunch, wake up feeling excited for the day ahead rather than dreading it, and realize that you passed the day without feeling your heart racing in your chest.
Feel content with your life, not like you’re rushing through it. You don’t measure time on how productive you were. Instead of racing thoughts or going to worst case scenarios or feeling like your brain never shuts off, you feel calm and at peace.
Know a thought is just a thought and be able to call it out on its BS. When those racing or worst-case scenario thoughts come you know what to do to handle them. They don’t get under your skin, you don’t feel controlled by them, you know exactly what to do to release the death grip they have on you.
Befriend your body. Meaning you and your body are friends not enemies who never communicate. You know when something is off just by how your body feels. You don’t ignore it but you pay attention to it because you know the body doesn’t lie and has so much wisdom to share with you.
I help clients with anxiety:
Questions before getting started?
Get in touch.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a rule book for life? Maybe a Choose Your Own Adventure, but with the right answers. Perhaps someday. Until that day, I can help. With online anxiety therapy in Texas, you will be well on your way to managing your anxiety. All of my services are conveniently offered for online therapy in Texas.
I can’t wait to meet you!