Anxiety Therapy in Seattle

There’s wide misconception that you must be ‘mentally ill’ to go to therapy which is false. Most people could benefit from a safe, confidential space that promotes insight, healing, and lasting change. If anything, you’re dealing with is negatively impacting your daily life, then it’s time for therapy. Therapy is an investment, but if you take the time to find the right provider for yourself and you come ready to be open, you’ll most likely build positive changes quickly.

There are steps you can take today to help yourself feel better. Today, you can evaluate your sleep, movement, and social habits. You can start working on getting in touch with your breath and increasing mindfulness. Adding movement, especially some that can get out mental energy can be helpful. Identify stress reduction and relaxation techniques that work for you. All these things you may have tried with no success. That’s okay. The next step is to reach out to a professional. Some highly effective therapy treatments for anxiety include Solution Focused Therapy, Narrative Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Family Therapy.

I work with a wide variety of anxiety disorders. Whether you deal with social anxiety, generalized anxiety, a phobia, or panic, we can work to find solutions that work for you. Anxiety can manifest itself differently for each person, especially depending on the life stage and developmental milestone. I often work with folks dealing with health anxiety, perinatal anxiety, or procedural anxiety.

Panic attacks come on quickly unlike the consistent hum of anxiety. A panic attack can feel like you’re having a heart attack. You may feel a change in temperature, dizziness, shaking, nausea, and trouble breathing. You may think you’re dying if you’re not used to the sensation. Some people feel detached from reality, or you may feel like you’re losing control. You most likely will feel anxious and irrational. During a panic attack your system thinks it’s under threat. It takes time for your mind and body to calm down after a panic attack.

OCD consists of obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions can occur as recurrent and persistent thoughts, urges, or images that are disturbing and unwanted. You may try to ignore or suppress or neutralize such obsessions by engaging in a compensatory behavior. Compulsions are repetitive behaviors or mental acts in response to an obsession or rules that you’ve laid out in your mind. This is to avoid anxiety and distress. In reality, most compulsions only lead to more distress, and you find yourself in a loop that’s extremely hard to break. You may or may not have clarity around these behaviors but know you’re anxious and stressed.

When you experience a phobia, you experience intense fear or anxiety about a specific situation or object. You engage in avoidance towards this situation or object of if you’re forced to face it, you experience extreme distress. The true threat of this situation or object is disproportionate to other people within your context. This fear or anxiety lasts for more than six months and negatively impacts your daily life.

Social anxiety is marked by fear and distress related to social situations. You may feel exposed, observed, and judged by others. You worry that you’ll be humiliated, embarrassed or seen negatively in some way. You avoid most social situations or ‘white-knuckle’ it through. You go over past situations in your mind and question if you said something stupid.

There’s a strong relationship between anxiety and trauma. It’s common that I see clients experiencing significant anxiety but don’t see themselves as having experienced trauma. It’s only when we unpack experiences that people discover an event as traumatic. Having anxiety alone can be traumatic and it’s helpful to tackle all mental health challenges from a trauma-informed lens. How our minds and bodies respond to trauma often lead to challenging side effects that can be addressed in therapy.