Anxiety Counseling
Let Go of Anxiety, Stress, and Fear and Reclaim Control of Your Relationships and Your Life
If you’re like a lot of the clients I help each day, you’d probably like nothing more than for your stress, anxieties, and fears to simply disappear.
You’ve probably tried just about everything you can think of to overcome the obsessive thoughts, irrational fears, or panic attacks you’ve been experiencing, or to simply stop worrying about all of the things that are outside of your control, so you can get back to living your life!
Yes, we all experience anxiety and fear some of the time…
In fact, anxiety and stress are perfectly normal – even helpful – feelings. They heighten our sense of awareness and help us stay focused, alert, and in control when we’re faced with strange or threatening situations.
And there’s definitely no shortage of things to be worried about – even fearful of – in the world, today.
But anxiety has the most creative imagination ever. And all too often the fears it conjures up can easily overtake our lives.
In fact, our fears are what anxiety is all about…
Yet most of the things we worry about, or find ourselves afraid of, are things that are outside of our control. In these cases, our stress and anxiety don’t help us stay in control. Instead, they take control of us.
And few things are worse than always feeling out of control or living life in a constant state of anxiety and fear.
But this is precisely how many of us live, and we’re often not even aware we’re doing so.
We try to minimize, ignore, stuff, and push away our anxieties, stress, and fears until they start to affect our relationships and our health and become so overwhelming that we’re left with no choice but to seek some form of professional help.
Fortunately, help is available… and you don’t need to commit to a lifetime of popping pills in order to regain control of your life!
Why Counseling and Psychotherapy?
Professional counseling and psychotherapy have proven to be incredibly effective time and time again at helping people just like you effectively cope with anxiety and stress.
But, more than this, counseling and psychotherapy can help you:
- Determine the underlying causes of your anxieties;
- Change the way you respond to anxiety-provoking thoughts;
- Learn to relax and let go of things over which you have no influence; and
- Regain a sense of control and move forward in your relationships and your life with confidence and optimism.
Moreover, my own personal experiences have led me to understand how many of our anxieties and fears have their roots in some form of trauma or are directly related to our sense of self.
Accordingly, I’ve done extensive research and undergone intensive trainings in various experiential, somatic, and body-centered therapeutic techniques that I’ve found to be particularly effective in helping people cope with and overcome anxiety and stress, including:
- Internal Family Systems (IFS) – Internal Family Systems can help you understand the different parts of your personality that make up the whole of your being. Since anxiety often stems from parts of ourselves that have been emotionally wounded in the past and are trying to protect us from having the same thing happen again, I’ve found IFS to be an incredibly powerful means of helping clients reintegrate those wounded aspects of their personalities with the whole so they can overcome the triggers of their anxieties and fears.
- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) – EMDR treatment seems to have a direct effect on the way that the brain processes information, helping people to reduce the intensity of upsetting thoughts and see disturbing material in less distressing ways. While EMDR therapy originally proved its effectiveness at helping people cope with and overcome traumatic experiences, it has also been found to be effective in the treatment of phobias, panic attacks, and other anxiety disorders, especially when previous traumatic experiences are contributing to current symptoms.
- Hakomi Therapy – The Hakomi Method is a body-centered approach to psychotherapy that uses various mindfulness practices to help clients explore their core material and the various aspects that make up our personalities. Since so much of our anxiety, stress, and fear is held and expressed through our physical beings, Hakomi therapy can be an ideal means for you to cope with anxiety and stress, learn to accept your anxieties and fears, and address their underlying causes, so you can regain control over anxiety and stress instead of letting them control you.
In other words, the different counseling and psychotherapy techniques I use with clients can help you better cope with anxiety and stress when they occur, as well as help you recognize and work through the underlying causes for your anxieties and fears, so you can create true healing and growth and live life to your fullest potential.
In fact, I’ve created Beyond Words Psychotherapy to help people like you do just this… because healing isn’t achieved through talking alone. We all need to learn to integrate the various aspects of ourselves (body, mind, and spirit).
Are You Ready to Reclaim Control and Start Moving Forward Again?
If left unaddressed, anxiety and stress not only affect our ability to create meaningful, joyous relationships and lives, they can lead to other emotional, physical, and behavioral health issues.
But you don’t have to live your life in fear or steel yourself against a lifetime of anxiety and stress…
You CAN learn to free yourself from the thoughts and fears that always seem ready and waiting to take over.
Of course, anxiety counseling and therapy aren’t “one-size-fits-all” cures.
Effective therapy requires your time, effort, and commitment… and you may feel worse before you start to feel better.
That being said, while the length of time therapy requires can vary, many of my clients begin to see significant improvements within just 8-10 sessions.
So if you’re ready to stop the ceaseless worrying, face and move past your fears, and reclaim control of your relationships and your life, then I encourage you to contact me today at 510-735-8868 or email me at scott@beyondwordspsychotherapy.com with any questions you have or to schedule an initial consultation. I look forward to speaking with you and helping you create a life that’s truly worth living!