Anxiety Therapy
in Seattle, WA.
in-person in Seattle & online throughout washington
You replay every failure, predict the worst outcome, and agonize over what everyone else thinks. Your anxiety just never lets up.
You’re desperate to calm your mind and your body.
You often wonder what it would be like to experience some peace and quiet—but your mind just never stops talking, and your body never settles down. Your internal voice is stuck in a never-ending loop, replaying awkward moments from this morning—or embarrassing interactions from last year (“I can’t believe I said that”). It’s dreading every Monday that will ever dawn and every email you’ll eventually have to send. It invents the most fantastical, worst-case scenarios with ease, jumping from one “what-if?” to the next with impressive speed. No topic is off-limits, no catastrophe too outlandish; your brain is a magnet for fears.
You have a nagging inner critic who demands perfection and doubts you at every turn.
No matter how well you do something, you tell yourself you should have done it better. No matter how many things you check off your to-do list, you berate yourself for all the things you didn’t get done. No matter how many nice interactions you have with others, you tell yourself that no one actually likes you. “You’ll never be good enough. You’re such a failure. Everyone else can keep it together—why can’t you?” Your inner critic tells you that performance, productivity, and the way others see you defines your worth. But in order to meet its demands, you have to ignore your own needs and burn all of your energy out.
your anxiety often leads you to avoid the things you’d really like to do.
You’d love to join that volleyball league you see every week by the lake, but what if everyone’s more advanced than you? You want to meet up with that friend of a friend who gave you their number, but what if you can’t think of anything to say? You’ve always wanted to play your music at an open mic, but what if you make a total fool of yourself? If you travel, you could get sick. If you stay up late with friends, you could mess up your sleep and ruin your whole week. If you quit the job you hate, you might never get hired again. There are mountains you want to climb, people you want to meet, and fun you want to have, but the potential dangers just seem too great.
Anxiety therapy can help you explore the fears that are getting in your way.
I work with motivated, creative, and reflective individuals who are ready to pay attention to their thoughts, emotions, and actions, and to try out new ways of approaching their experiences.
They desire to make discoveries about their inner world, improve their relationships, and take actions that match up with their true wants and needs.
On anxiety.
Anxiety tells your brain that you are in danger—that this is a matter of life and death. And when something is a matter of life and death, we naturally try to avoid it. Makes sense, right? The problem is that, in this day and age, our anxieties typically center on things like making a fool of ourselves in front of our friends, the unread emails in our work inbox, or even a phobia of bridges—things that are not a matter of life and death.
Each time we avoid something we are anxious about, we reinforce to our brain that the thing we are avoiding is dangerous, that it is life or death. Because, the reasoning goes, if it weren’t dangerous, we wouldn’t try to avoid it.
On anxiety & self-exploration.
One of our most impactful tools for working with anxiety is our values. When we engage in the ongoing work of exploring our inner world, getting clear on what we want and need for our life and our relationships, and becoming mindful of the ways in which our anxieties get in our way, we can begin to develop a felt sense that what we value is more important than what we fear.
This serves as an essential foundation for rolling up our sleeves and engaging in the difficult but rewarding work of looking our biggest fears straight in the eye and beginning to take charge of our own choices.
On working through fear.
If you are deathly afraid of walking across bridges, going out one day and walking across the entire bridge is unlikely to help you overcome your fear. What’s more likely is you’ll walk across the bridge in full fight-or-flight mode, so anxious that the experience simply confirms that walking across bridges is awful.
Instead, in anxiety therapy, we aim to work at the leading edge of your capacity. This means that you will challenge yourself in ways that are just outside your comfort zone by taking actions that are difficult but doable. The aim is to collect experiences in which you face your fears, and it actually goes okay—or even well. This is what helps you to build confidence, expand your leading edge, widen your comfort zone, and help your brain to learn that it's safe to walk across the bridge.
Areas of Focus
In anxiety therapy, we can explore…
→ Fears, worries, & anxious thoughts
→ Low self-confidence & negative self-talk
→ Perfectionism & the tendency to measure self-worth by performance
→ Stress, productivity, & burnout
→ People pleasing behaviors & difficulty prioritizing your own needs
→ Avoidance of activities you want to do but feel too anxious to try
What does anxiety therapy look like?
While therapy unfolds in a unique way for each person, this is the process I have in mind as I help clients approach their fears.
1
Understand & explore your emotions
We will spend time getting to know your particular experience of anxiety. What triggers it? What are the thoughts and worries involved? What does it feel like in your body? What experiences have you had that have contributed to your fears?
We will explore what you do when your anxiety takes over. How might the actions you take in these moments bring you toward the life you want? How might they move you away from it?
2
Get to know your inner world, wants, & needs
We will work together to create a therapeutic space where you can explore all of yourself, even the parts you fear are unworthy, bad, or not enough. This is a process of curiosity, discovery, and exploration that takes place over time.
I want to help you feel known, understood, delighted in, and supported as you get to know your own wants, needs, passions, and fears. This is the work of finding your voice, of becoming your own source of acceptance and strength, and of discovering your capacity.
3
Begin taking action towards the life you want
When you’re feeling ready, you can begin the ongoing process of challenging yourself in manageable but meaningful ways. You’re in charge here. Therapy is about helping you choose actions that take you toward the life you want—and supporting you as you take steps in that direction.
You choose the bridges that are worth walking across, and you decide the pace with which you walk across them. Step by step, you can begin walking toward the life you want for yourself.
Anxiety Therapy Goals
While there are no guarantees in therapy, and I cannot promise that you will reach these goals, here is an idea of what we can work toward together…
✓ Calming your anxious body & mind
✓ Letting go of perfectionism
✓ untangling your worth from your performance
✓ Changing your relationship to stress & productivity
✓ developing a sense of confidence in yourself
✓ Engaging in the activities you most want to do
Therapeutic Methods
My approach is grounded in…
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT)
Mindfulness & Self-Compassion
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Attachment-based modalities
I strive to create a nonjudgmental space where you can authentically express the full range of who you are. I am committed to welcoming, honoring, and exploring the various aspects of your identity and experiences that are important to you, approaching my work with an anti-oppression, Health at Every Size (HAES), neurodiversity, and LGBTQIA+ affirming lens.