Anxiety Therapy in Asheville NC
Anxiety & stress don’t have to stand between you and the life you want!
Based in Asheville - Supporting adults with acute and chronic stress and anxiety across NC & TX
Anxiety can stop us in our tracks when it takes over
It can show up in lots of different ways.
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Maybe for you it’s chronic stress & overwhelm. . .
You’re overwhelmed with life, and all there is to do. You just feel nervous all the time, and you may not even know why. You’re short-tempered and impatient. Your mind races from one thing to the next. You dwell on the negatives and fear the worst. The stress and anxiety trickles down into your body: you’re restless, fidgety, and get that fluttery nervous stomach feeling a lot. You can’t get rid of this headache, and sleep is hard to come by.
Or maybe it’s panic. . .
You have these times when all of a sudden it feels like your world is spinning out of control. It feels like you are having a heart attack. The blood pounds in your ears, and your heart pounds in your chest which feels like there’s an elephant sitting on it. Breathing is really hard, and you can feel your throat closing. Your stomach is churning. You’re shaking and breaking out in a sweat. There’s this overwhelming sense of dread, and you just want to get out of there.
Or maybe it’s worry. . .
Your mind is stuck in a loop of anxious thoughts that you can’t shake off. Was that the right thing to say? Did I do the right thing? I really screwed that up. I’m going to miss my deadline. It’s got to be perfect. There’s no way that I’m going to finish my to-do list. Am I going to get fired? Does s/he really love me? What if.. What if… What if….
You’re constantly planning, preparing, or worrying in fear of all the things that could go wrong and the catastrophic consequences if it does. You’re having trouble focusing on anything else. Your tense and nervous. Your stomach is in knots, and it’s hard to catch your breath. You overanalyze and then doubt every decision. It’s midnight, and you can’t get to sleep.
Or maybe it’s fears & phobias. . .
Yikes! A spider lands on your arm. You have to give a speech next week. A strange guy looks at you a little too long. The thought of flying or being in other closed-in places is just too much. There’s no way you’re getting close to that ledge or climbing that ladder. You avoid crowded places, or maybe you don’t go into deep water.
You know your fear is bigger than it should be, but you can’t help it. The fear is overwhelming and something in you just says ‘hell no.’ When you are forced to face these things, you freak out, panic, feel paralyzed, or get-out-of-there as soon as possible.
Or maybe it’s being on edge after a JARRING experience. . .
Your anxiety started after a jarring life experience. Click here to learn more about how anxiety can be a response to painful experiences and trauma.
You know stress and anxiety are a part of everyone’s life, but for you it feels like it is in overdrive and you can’t seem to catch a break. It’s getting harder to get through the day and hold it all together. The effects of anxiety are now bleeding into your relationships, work, physical health, and overall wellbeing.
You’ve heard that taking deep breaths is supposed to help. So you try that and tell yourself to “just calm down – everything is fine,” but it isn’t working.
It’s hard to see a way out when anxiety has such a tight grip on you.
But life DOESN’T have to stay this way
Anxiety therapy can help you get from where you are today to where you’d like to be.
Imagine a life free from:
Unmanageable stress
Panic
Worry spirals
Excessive overthinking
Irrational fears that control you
Chronic physical symptoms of anxiety and stress
Well, that depends on a few things, but it’s important to know that our goal is not to get rid of all stress and anxiety. That would be:
(1) impossible &
(2) dangerous.
Anxiety and fear are hard-wired emotions that act as our body’s alarm system. They tell us that some kind of danger is present—whether that is a man with a gun, being late to a meeting, a first date, a job interview, being ‘not good enough’—and the physical reactions in our body that go along with fear and anxiety are designed to help us respond to the threat as part of our built-in “fight-flight-or-freeze” stress response.
This alarm system is necessary for our survival, but, like all systems, sometimes it malfunctions, sounding the alarm at times when it shouldn’t—when there is no real danger. That is what is happening when we feel anxious, afraid, worried or panicky at times when we really probably shouldn’t.
Genetics can feed into this, but, more often than not, experiences in our past have altered the way our alarm system functions and taught us to fear certain things. Those things got linked in our brain with danger and so our body sounds the alarm now in response to those things even though the danger is no longer present. Then, we start to avoid those things that trigger this stress response, and, while this helps us feel better in the short-term, it actually makes things worse in the long run.
How do I help you get there?
GOOD NEWS!
You CAN change the way your brain’s alarm system is working!
To get things back on track, together we will:
Drill down so we can better understand the root causes of your overactive anxiety and stress responses
Arm you with additional knowledge and skills, including tools to lower your anxiety and calm your body, to realign how you respond to stress and anxiety in your daily life.
Use EMDR to process past experiences that are feeding into how your brain is interpreting and responding to current triggers of anxiety and stress
Stress and anxiety therapy can help you…
● Debug an overactive stress response system that is causing excessive or irrational anxiety, fears, panic, and worry
● Gain freedom from panic, worry, and fears that are controlling you
● Experience the feel of a calm body and calm mind
● Learn to handle stress and anxiety more effectively
● Improve your sleep and physical well-being
● Reconnect to family, friends, and activities that bring joy into your life
You don’t have to feel like this forever.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
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The short answer is yes. Anxiety disorders are a common [31% lifetime prevalence in adults: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/any-anxiety-disorder] yet treatable condition. Anxiety therapy is highly effective and is generally the best option (versus anxiety medication) because it is designed to treat the underlying problem and not just the way anxiety shows up as a symptom today.
Most people who struggle with anxiety are able to reduce or eliminate their symptoms after only a few months of psychotherapy, and many notice symptom improvement following just a few sessions.
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A good therapist will spend time getting to know your unique history, symptoms, and needs so that a treatment plan can be tailored to fit you.
Overall, anxiety therapy aims to retool a brain’s overreactive alarm system so it can more accurately alert you to real danger in the present and stop responding to things that are not dangerous today, even though they may have been accurate signs of danger at some point in your past. Another way to think about this is an updating of the ‘software’ in your brain regarding what is realistically ‘safe’ versus ‘not safe’ today based on current data. Below you will find typical components of anxiety therapy and how each can be helpful:
Drill down: To uncover the underlying causes of excessive anxiety, worry, panic, fear, or dread which can then aid in treatment planning and become targets for change or reprocessing
Psychoeducation: Understanding the nervous system, fight-fight-or-freeze response, function of emotions, and that there are ways to calm or activate the nervous system helps a person recognize and understand what is happening when their nervous system is going into “defense mode” and provides hope for recovery
Building awareness: Becoming more aware of triggers, facets of one’s stress response, avoidance, and coping options within a given context opens the door to use of skills in-that-moment to reduce one’s reactivity and increase ability to handle stress more effectively
Skill building: Practicing healthier and more effective ways to respond to stressful or triggering experiences allows a person to respond rather than react to a stressor and to build confidence in one’s ability to handle what life throws at us
Replace unhelpful thoughts & behaviors: Certain ways of thinking and behaving exacerbate our anxiety. Change these habits, and you change your response to stress, resulting in less anxiety.
Reduce avoidance behaviors: Avoidance doesn’t solve the problem and actually maintains and even strengthens anxiety in the long-term. So, reversing this habit short-circuits this process and helps retrain the brain’s alarm system regarding what is actually safe versus not safe today, allowing the system to respond to potential threats more accurately in the future.
EMDR: EMDR is used to reprocess past experiences that are feeding into how your brain is interpreting and responding to current triggers of anxiety and stress. Once reprocessed, these past experiences lose their power and no longer drive current anxiety.
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Anxiety is an emotion that we are born with that acts as our body’s alarm system. So, anxiety itself is not a bad thing. In fact, its purpose is to help keep us alive by alerting us to potential danger and initiating our bodies’ protective defenses such as fleeing or fighting.
However, anxiety can become a debilitating problem, and it’s important to differentiate between healthy anxiety and unhealthy anxiety. To do so, ask yourself the following questions about your symptoms of anxiety (e.g., overthinking, panic, worry, insomnia, trouble concentrating, avoidance behaviors, procrastination, physical agitation, restlessness, nervousness, inappropriate anger):
•Is my anxiety preventing me from doing things I want to do in life?
•Are my symptoms interfering with my ability to work and enjoy my life?
•Is my anxiety interfering with my relationships?
•Does my anxiety feel unmanageable?
•Am I overusing medications, alcohol, or drugs to help manage stress and anxiety?
•Is my anxiety causing persistent sleep problems?
•Is my anxiety triggering thoughts of suicide or wanting to die?
•Is my response to stressful situations or triggers out of proportion to the situation or “bigger” than that of most people?
•Am I struggling with chronic headaches, digestive issues, fatigue, or chronic pain not associated with a clear medical diagnosis?
•Am I anxious a lot of the time, and have I been struggling with it for a while now (e.g., 4+ months)?
If you answered ‘yes’ to one or more these questions, it’s probably time to seek help.
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Although originally created to address trauma-related conditions, EMDR therapy has since been used to help with all forms of anxiety, including generalized anxiety, panic, social anxiety, fears and phobias, performance anxiety, chronic overwhelm, and trauma-related anxiety. EMDR can be particularly beneficial in addressing anxiety as it allows us to access parts of yourself that traditional talk therapy may not be able to reach.
Using EMDR, clients are guided in reprocessing current triggers of anxiety as well as specific prior memories that are feeding into how the brain is interpreting current situations as threatening. As these charged memories and triggers lose their ‘gut-punch’ via reprocessing, more adaptive, positive beliefs come online and anxiety levels naturally decrease.
Learn more about EMDR here.