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Help for Anxiety and Depression
Have you been feeling that anxiety is taking over your life?
Maybe you’re having a hard time steering your mind away from your worries.
Or maybe you’re finding yourself living in a place of hypervigilance - having trouble sleeping and feeling tense and keyed up all of the time.
You might be finding yourself reacting quickly to situations and people, increasing conflicts with others and leaving you feeling frustrated or regretful.
If this sounds familiar, know that you are not alone.
While anxiety is a normal human experience, for many people anxiety can become problematic. Anxiety can make work, home life, and relationships more difficult while reducing feelings of joy, ease, and satisfaction.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, approximately 19% of the adult population is diagnosable with anxiety and for adult women this rises to 23%. In teens ages 13-18, 31% experience an anxiety disorder.
In addition, depression is often like the other side of the coin. When anxiety overwhelms, exhausts, and limits us, it makes sense that anxiety can progress into episodes of depression.
We are all born with innate fight, flight, and freeze responses to ensure our survival.
These responses are automatic, so we do not choose whether our initial reaction is to fight (yell or argue), freeze (emotionally or even physically shut down), or flee (run away or withdraw from the situation).
We also have a built-in negativity bias that works to keep us alert to potential dangers. Often the one piece of bad news can outweigh the ten good things we’ve heard that day.
In today’s world of near constant influx of information, our survival instincts do not always function the way they were intended to. They begin to work against us rather than for us.
If you are a person who has had past experiences that left you feeling unsafe and insecure or if you have always felt a bit more sensitive than the people around you, it is easy to find yourself feeling triggered and overwhelmed.
The good news is that there is help and hope.
The first step is working to better understand ourselves and our reactions from a place of compassion. The next step is developing strategies to decrease the symptoms and physical sensations of anxiety.
When we feel more in control, we can begin to choose our responses to stressors rather than react. This can include challenging negative thoughts, finding ways to step back to observe situations from a more expansive perspective, and accessing our own internal wisdom and ability to problem solve.
Sounds great but how do we do this?
While anxiety may feel like it is all in our heads, often the key to alleviating it is to reconnect with our physical bodies and work with our nervous system.
Working together we will identify the most helpful interventions for you whether that is using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Exposure and Response Prevention, Internal Family Systems, Brainspotting, Mindfulness or somatic practices - or a mix of all of the above.
For more information or to schedule an appointment, please call or email
860-407-6506
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