A Mental Health Service in Colorado

Compassionate Anxiety Treatment

• Providing anxiety treatment to residents of the Boulder community and beyond, with over a decade of experience.  

• Offering therapy for all types of anxiety: health anxiety, OCD, social anxiety, and stress counseling.  

• A local therapist specializing in helping their neighbors overcome the often debilitating effects of anxiety.

Do you often find yourself feeling on edge? To the point that you can’t relax or concentrate? That’s anxiety: the sensation that the ground is going to slip out from underneath your feet even in the most mundane and ordinary of experiences. It might happen while commuting to work or even standing in line at the bank to deposit a check. Instead of being present in the moment your mind wanders to the worst possible situation and it stays there, orbiting negative thinking like it’s trapped by a black hole. Anxiety feels like a curse. It doesn’t end with the mind either. Your face breaks out in acne, your hands won’t stop sweating, your heart bangs against the door of your chest asking to get out, all while your mind races to the worst places its able to imagine.

Anxiety, at its worst, cripples your ability to live feeling fulfilled day-to-day. Routines become nothing more than opportunities for a flood of negative thoughts. Just going to the grocery store can feel like climbing a mountain, while meeting with friends becomes a self-conscious game of watching what you say because you’re constantly second-guessing yourself, afraid to utter the wrong words. You can barely act. The only seemingly rational response is to slink against a corner in the kitchen and stay put. But even that doesn’t stop the flood of unhealthy thoughts.  

Almost all people everywhere, throughout all time, have been attacked by anxiety at some point in their lives. An American Psychiatric Association (APA) poll estimates that 18% of Americans have anxiety. People’s worries stem from the usual suspects: money, health, and safety, sources of worry for most people. It’s important to note that oftentimes our response to worry is helpful. Worry is part of our animal-selves. It raises our awareness about a situation that has to be dealt with to ensure our overall well-being. 

But oftentimes—whether it’s due to our environment or our nervous system—people don’t have the equipment necessary to properly handle their anxiety. It’s not their fault. It may be because they’ve experienced a past trauma that’s eroded the natural channels for understanding anxiety, whether as children or adults. Or a person may regularly encounter high-stress situations. They don’t have to be life-and-death situations either. Daily slogs through Los Angeles traffic, working as an assistant at an Adult Care Center, or be struggling to pay the bills (often the biggest stress of all) are all high-stress experiences. Over time, that stress can become intolerable and lead to chronic anxiety. 

All of your energy is sapped when you live with anxiety. But you’re not alone nor do you have to live as a prisoner to your anxiety. Solutions have been developed and honed over the past century. You can learn to channel your anxiety in a healthy way so that those feelings of dread and cyclical negative thoughts are in your control. It starts by working with a trained compassionate therapist who teaches you techniques and insights that will show you how to take your life back from anxiety to live free from unnecessary worry. 

Anxiety therapy’s goal is to give you the space, techniques, and support to face you anxieties and live with them, rather than feeling like you’re being ruled by them. The goal is to foster the positive changes you want in your life. The kind that will last you long after the last session ends.

Thanks to years of experience working with anxiety-sufferers I’ve learned how to help clients calmly investigate the sources of their anxiety. Discovering the roots of nagging worries is the first step in understanding what makes the mind’s weeds grow. Then we dig further. Together we’ll find out what triggers are firing that create those anxious-riddled moments and in what form your anxiety emerges.

Every person experiences anxiety in a way that’s distinct to them. After all we all lead our own lives, and carry a past with us that can’t be traded with anyone else. Once we understand your history we’ll work together to design a specialized treatment plan that answers your unique needs. I always take into account my clients individuated place in their lives, including how they learn and their temperament. In my experience, it’s the only way to develop an effective treatment that works.

The first step in confronting your anxiety is the openness to explore the thoughts, memories, triggers, and symptoms which manifest themselves as anxiety. It can be difficult. Confronting negative thinking is confronting what hurts you the most. But it’s an unavoidable part of the process to help you take back control.

And I am with you every step of the way, guiding you and helping you to implement the techniques, practices, and behaviors to transform negative patterns of thinking into a positive force. The right strategy makes all the difference. With it you will cultivate a healthy, fulfilled self which is no longer controlled by anxieties and fears but is free to pursue life to its fullest. I am always my client’s biggest champion. It’s my goal to help you learn that anxiety is not a curse. The right toolbox and techniques will give you control and water the positive changes that will endure for a lifetime.

Isn’t anxiety treatment time-consuming and expensive?

Let’s answer a question with a question. How often does your anxiety interfere with the life you want to lead? Have you ever been asked to give a speech at a wedding and been crippled by fear? Or, have you gone to a get-together and been unable to socialize because you overanalyzed your own thoughts instead of joining the conversation? Or, maybe it’s as seemingly everyday as worrying that you’ve left the stovetop on after leaving your house? Is heightened anxiety putting a wedge between you and life? This is the important question. If your answer is “yes,” then I encourage you to not be dissuaded by time or cost.

I have been honing my practice and technique for years, with many dozens of clients, and have developed methodologies and techniques that will help alleviate your particular anxiety, no matter how distinct it may be, as quickly as developing an effective treatment makes possible. Keep in mind that what we do together in therapy is not like an antibiotic for a sinus infection. Anxiety isn’t a cold that comes and goes with the seasons. It often reaches into every part of your life and leaves a detrimental effect. My goal is to help you foster a healthier life for the rest of your life.

A doctor told me to take medication. Shouldn’t I take medication instead?

There’s a difference between treating the symptoms and treating the cause. While medication may mitigate your anxiety it’s a surface level solution. Medication on its own doesn’t solve the root of your anxiety. Medication is best used to complement therapeutic techniques with the understanding that medication is not a long-term commitment.

Anxiety is not just the result of a chemical imbalance in the brain. Anxious thoughts and feelings arrive as expressions of the totality of who someone is, you or anyone else. They emerge from how you perceive who you were, how you perceive yourself now, and who you perceive yourself to be in the future. Clearing away the weeds of anxiety means understanding who you are as a complete person, exploring the causes and effects of your anxiety to create tools that effectively tackle anxious thinking and behaviors.

How is talking about my anxiety going to help me deal with my specific anxiety?

Specific anxieties require specific treatments. But most therapy isn’t just talking—that’s a cliché for the movies. My approach to therapy is exploration and development: discovering, together, effective practices that suit your particular anxieties. Because my goal is to help you develop practical methods to meet your stressors head on and to stop the cycle of negative thinking that leaves you feeling anxious. Whether it be stage-fright at the mere thought of public speaking, nervousness when confronted with a multiple choice exams, or anxieties about meeting new people, my years of experience and approach to therapy is honed to help you, the individual person.

I invite you to call me at (720) 370-3272 for a phone consultation to discuss your specific needs and any questions you have about anxiety disorders, therapy and my practice.

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