Anxiety Therapy in NYC
Hi, my name is Kate, and I’m an anxiety therapist in NYC.
You may be feeling like the fear of future possibilities is leaving you frozen. You may be feeling like your thoughts keep spinning, and you don’t know how to stop them. You may be feeling like you’re walking through life with a pit in your stomach, tension in your shoulders or discomfort in other parts of your body that gets stronger when your anxiety increases. I understand, and I’m here to help.
I help people understand their anxiety, to help cope with and shift those feelings.
If you’re ready to start feeling better, schedule a complimentary consultation with me today.
My Approach to Anxiety Therapy in NYC
Anxiety can feel debilitating, and it’s natural to want to push it away. That said, sometimes pushing away our feelings can actually heighten our struggles. I like to approach feelings with curiosity. That, plus looking at how feelings live in our bodies can help us cope with and shift life with anxiety. With tools learned in anxiety therapy, many people are able to find significant reduction in anxiety.
Everyone has parts of themselves that are trying the best that they can. Anxiety may be trying to protect us, even if it ends up holding us back. How does approaching anxiety that way help? My job is to help you sort through the information to identify what you need.
Perhaps your anxiety is trying to protect you from past hurts happening again. If we can understand that, we can find different ways to address that. We can sort through the feelings to figure out your needs. We can approach your feelings with curiosity and compassion.
Beyond that, my work in anxiety therapy is to also look at how your body responds. For example, sometimes anxiety overwhelms the body. Sometimes it feels like a weight we are carrying. Sometimes it leaves us feeling like we want to jump out of our skin. Our nervous system may be so activated that it is hard or impossible to function.
In working with anxiety, I can teach tools that may shift how your nervous system responds both in the short term and the long term.
I often use wellness tools, as taught in the Trauma Resiliency Model (TRM), in which I have training. This approach looks at how your nervous system reacts to stressors, and works to build capacity to cope.
This means in a session, we might explore concrete tools like pushing against a wall, naming items you see in the room, or taking a sip of water as ways to shift your nervous system. We may also look at finding things in your life that help your nervous system feel more OK. That might include movement, or spending some time focusing on strengths and positive feelings (not at the exclusion of what is causing the pain; toxic positivity can also cause emotional harm).
As an anxiety therapist in New York, I know how deeply anxiety can impact your life. I know that it can feel overwhelming. I also know that working to find the right tools to help can help you lead a more fulfilling life.
Anxiety Therapy in NYC FAQs
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This might look different for different people. That said, there are often ways to increase tools for making anxiety more manageable. This might mean looking at how thoughts are impacting feelings and vice versa. This might mean getting curious, and looking at what feelings might be underlying the anxiety. This might mean incorporating techniques to shift your nervous system when feeling anxious.
And for some people, medication can be helpful alongside anxiety therapy.
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There are a few different therapies that can help with anxiety. For some people, looking at thoughts and challenging beliefs can be enough to help function. For others, that may only provide short term relief. The therapy I have found to be best for anxiety includes somatic (body focus) interventions, and approaching with nonjudgmental curiosity. This includes looking more deeply at what might be causing the anxiety, and finding ways to address the underlying feelings. This often can have longer term success in shifting anxiety.
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In moments when the anxiety is overwhelming your body, there are some somatic techniques that might be helpful. You may pick a color, and name everything in that room that is that color. You may count backwards from 20 (or if that’s too easy, count backwards by threes). You may take a walk, and spend time noticing how your arms and legs are moving. You may push against a wall.
All of these tools are part of the “help now” tools in the Trauma Resiliency Model (TRM). These tools are intended as an immediate way of trying to regulate your nervous system.
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Ideally, working individually with an anxiety therapist will help find the right tools for helping your anxiety. Some common approaches to helping with anxiety are challenging thoughts, observing the anxiety to understand if there are underlying feelings, and possibly finding concrete somatic tools to shift heightened anxiety. In some cases, medication in addition to therapy can be beneficial to address symptoms of anxiety.
Get help from a New York therapist for anxiety
I know that anxiety can be hard to live with. I know that it can leave you feeling overwhelmed or frozen. You may feel like it is hindering your life in ways that you don’t want. I also know that there are tools that we can use to help you with that anxiety.
If you're looking for a therapist in New York to address your anxiety, I’m happy to talk. I look forward to talking and seeing how I can support you. A complimentary 15 minute consultation can be a good place to start.