Therapy for Anxiety
Well of Wisdom Therapy specializes in helping women and working professionals navigate the effects of anxiety through online therapy for clients throughout Massachusetts.
Anxiety is really good at convincing you that stress and worry are all there is to life – that this is how it’s been and how it will always be. It doesn’t believe that your life can get any better. It wants to convince you that your life is meant to be tension, dread, and discomfort. But I know differently. There is a whole life waiting for you, if you can be curious about how therapy can help.
Have you ever wondered to yourself, “I think something’s wrong with me.” Maybe these experiences sound familiar:
Tension inside your body including the chest, through, neck area, and elsewhere
Expecting the worst things are going to happen, including thinking about this all day long, leading you to feel like you have no peace of mind
Having trouble breathing, feeling light headed, trouble balancing, and even feeling like you may pass out or just completely zoning out of your life, like you’re there but not there
Having trouble sleeping due to thinking about all your worries, decreasing your ability to rest
On the outside, you might feel like no one even notices that even you are amazed at how much you commit yourself to.
They might be impressed at how you seem to get so much done and be so productive. They’re amazed at your organization skills and how prompt you are, meeting every deadline, even early sometimes. And part of you feels really good about this - producing and performing at high levels.
But on the inside, there is a more complete story.
That being on top of everything doesn’t come easy to you at all. It may be familiar to you, because you’re so used to over functioning and producing when you’ve had to. But its not comfortable. You may look calm throughout it, but you’re not calm at all. You anxiety is bubbling inside you all the time like a volcano, ready to erupt.
You meet the deadlines and obligations because you might think to yourself - “Whose going to do it if I don’t. No one does it right like I do so I might as well just do it. If I don’t do it I will fall behind and things will pile up so high that I won’t be able to get out from under it.” These are the kinds of thoughts you may experience about just about everything. From big projects at work to the smallest tasks at home. What people don’t see is that you act this way because you’re so afraid of things getting out of control. So functioning at this high level, and bottling up your anxiety, is how you’ve done it. It might look easy since you’re so good at it. But underneath it all is often exhaustion. Everyday feels like a bunch of hurdles you have to get through. Before you’re done with one thing you’re already thinking about the next. You’re pushing and pummeling through every day. Your days and body are filled with tension and a sense of urgency, on top of the fear of things not working out well, something going wrong, and your life falling apart. So no, you look calm and put together, but inside its far from it.
Anxiety is no fun. Sometimes you wonder if you are just not cut out for the world and all its demands because you get so overwhelmed.
You want to stay on top of your commitments, and a lot of them - like work, friendships, and fun activities - even though stressful, do bring you lots of joy. Or maybe you feel like you’re good at getting everything done but the joy of your days has faded.
That’s the thing with anxiety - at its mildest it can put a damper on the things, events, and people you usually enjoy and at its worst it makes you feel crippled and incapable. And possibly worst of all, people might look at you from the outside and not even know how much battling anxiety takes out of you. This is where we meet anxiety’s best friend - depression.
I’m here to tell you that there is a whole lot of room between totally okay and overwhelmed. You just need some actionable skills that you can put into place to help you out. Therapy can help.
I take a holistic perspective to your anxiety. You will need many different skills to help change your relationship with anxiety. But its totally doable. I might begin with helping you separate from your anxiety so that you can begin to feel like there is a You apart from it. This is helpful in that it makes you feel like its not completely taking you over. Then we might weave in some body practices that help you be more in your body, environment, and present moment. We can then get to know this anxiety and all its fears a little bit better. A lot of our work will center being able to recognize, label, describe, and be with this emotion.