Therapy for anxiety in Boston

If you’re struggling with anxiety, you’re not alone.

About one in five Americans is currently experiencing significant anxiety, and it is one of the most common reasons people come to see me.

You might be feeling:

• Irritable and on edge

• Tight muscles, upset stomach, or frequent headaches 

• Unable to make decisions

• Scattered, unable to concentrate 

• Constantly worried

• Afraid you won’t measure up

• Unable to get to sleep, or stay asleep

• Perpetually exhausted

Although we’d all rather not experience symptoms like these, the truth is anxiety is not such a bad thing! In fact, a bit of anxiety is crucial to successful living. It helps us know what matters to us and it spurs us to action.

Let’s say you have a big deadline. As it approaches, anxiety kicks in, helping you organize your physical and mental resources to get the job done on time. If all goes well, you finish your work, enjoy a sense of accomplishment, then relax and replenish your energy.

Anxiety is meant to have a beginning, middle, and (most important!) an end.

The “stress cycle” is a normal part of every mammal’s life: perceive a threat, survive it, notice you’re safe, and return to a calm state. If lions, tigers, and bears can do it, surely humans should have this down pat, right?

Well, not so much. Our busy modern lives and big human brains can set off our well-meaning internal alarm system more than we’d like. When our brain registers danger—whether a tiger is chasing us or we’re about to go on a first date—our internal alarm goes off and our body responds by flooding our system with stress hormones. Wow is that helpful for giving us the energy we need to flee a tiger! But not so much if we’re trying to connect with a new person. Or give a presentation. Or fall asleep at night.

Instead of giving us a boost of energy and focus to best a challenging situation, a stress response that goes on too long starts to deplete us and interfere with our functioning. It can negatively affect our mood, sleep, digestion and libido. Chronic stress and anxiety can even cause or worsen health problems such as asthma, heart disease, chronic fatigue, and diabetes. 

Luckily, change is possible. Working together, we can help you slow down, identify what’s keeping you stuck in anxiety, and transform your relationship with it.

Lowering your anxiety can not only relieve mental and physical symptoms, but also enrich your life by allowing you to experience more connection with other people.

If you imagine what really thriving in your life would feel like, deep and meaningful connection with other people is probably part of the picture. We’re social creatures, wired to connect, and we suffer when we can’t. Yet people who are feeling anxious often have a hard time forming and maintaining close relationships.

It makes sense that anxiety would get in the way of our relationships.

It’s hard to tune into the good things on offer from another person when your system is stuck in threat-detection mode! Anxiety can make us feel frozen in social situations and give the mistaken impression we’re shy, aloof, or disinterested, when really we’re just nervous or scared. The good news is, whatever has you feeling anxious, I can help you find relief.

You deserve to feel safe with and close to others, to experience a sense of belonging and acceptance, and I can help you get there.

So how do we do that? As it turns out, paradoxically enough, we have to be willing to welcome your anxiety and get to know why it’s showing up in order for it to soften and give you more space.

Deep, lasting change happens when we offer curiosity and compassion toward the parts of you holding fears and anxieties.

It may be that the present situation stirs up fears learned in past situations, and a part of you is trying to protect you from something similar happening, even though it doesn’t need to. Or perhaps an inner alarm is going off because your values are not in alignment with your actions. Whatever your untold story, we can help it surface, giving you access to its wisdom and reconnecting you to your natural state of calm, creativity, and connectedness. 

First, we’ll tune into what’s happening in your mind and body. If you’d like, we’ll strengthen your repertoire of strategies for helping you get some relief from the overwhelming thoughts and feelings to make it easier to get through the day.

That’s when the real work begins. Together, we’ll explore your inner world. We’ll spend time getting to know the parts of you involved in your anxiety, befriending them, and helping them release any burdens from the past so you can continue to build the future you want and deserve. 

That’s how transformation happens.

When you’ve changed your relationship with the parts of you that can cause the anxiety, you don’t have to work so hard anymore to get rid of anxiety or control it. You don’t have to be afraid of it, and you don’t have to live with it in the driver’s seat anymore. Instead, you can experience your wise, calm, courageous self at the wheel. Get in touch so we can get started helping you experience more freedom, ease, and connection in your life.