Anxiety Therapy
You've Been Strong for Everyone Else. Let's Get You Back to You.
Anxiety therapy is for women like you, the ones who are exhausted from always being the one who has it together, tired of that constant voice in your head that never gives you a break. If you've been conditioned to put everyone else first while your own anxiety symptoms spiral out of control, I see you. And I'm here to help.
Anxiety therapy in my Lynnwood, WA practice isn't about telling you to "just breathe" or asking "how does that make you feel?" It's about understanding why you developed these patterns in the first place and creating real, lasting change, not just surface-level coping strategies that keep you stuck in the same exhausting cycle.
Understanding Anxiety Disorders: You're Not Broken
Anxiety disorders affect millions of women, but they show up differently for each person. Maybe you have generalized anxiety disorder with that constant worry that never shuts off. Or social anxiety disorder that makes every interaction feel like you're being judged. Some women experience panic disorder with sudden, overwhelming episodes, while others deal with separation anxiety or obsessive compulsive disorder.
The physical symptoms of anxiety disorders are real and exhausting. Your heart pounds for no reason. You experience muscle tension that makes your shoulders feel like rocks. You might feel dizzy, get sweaty palms, or have trouble catching your breath. These aren't "just in your head" – they're your nervous system stuck in overdrive.
The mental health symptoms are equally challenging. Anxious feelings create constant mental chatter, catastrophic thinking, and the inability to sit still with your thoughts. You might avoid situations that trigger anxiety, say yes when you want to say no, or throw yourself into work to avoid dealing with overwhelming emotions.
If this sounds familiar, you're not broken. Your anxiety developed for a reason – probably to protect you or help you survive difficult experiences. But now it's time to learn new ways to manage anxiety and reclaim your life.
My Approach to Treating Anxiety Disorders
As your mental health provider, I don't just treat symptoms – I work with you to understand the root causes of your anxiety disorders and create lasting change. My approach combines evidence-based psychological treatments with genuine understanding of what it's like to be a woman in this world.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
ACT is one of the most effective treatments for anxiety disorders because it focuses on accepting difficult emotions rather than fighting them. Instead of trying to eliminate anxiety symptoms, we'll work on reducing their power over your life.
In our sessions, we'll identify what truly matters to you – not what you think should matter, but your actual values. Then we'll figure out how to move toward those values even when severe anxiety shows up. This anxiety treatment helps you live authentically while managing mental health challenges.
You'll learn that you can feel anxious AND still have difficult conversations, set boundaries, or pursue meaningful goals. The anxiety might tag along, but it doesn't get to control your choices anymore.
Brainspotting for Deep Healing
When anxiety disorders are connected to trauma or past experiences, traditional talk therapy sometimes isn't enough. That's where Brainspotting comes in – a powerful technique that accesses parts of your brain where emotional experiences get stuck.
During Brainspotting sessions, we use specific eye positions to help your nervous system process and release what's been holding you back. Many clients experience significant relief from anxiety symptoms and physical tension during these sessions. It's particularly effective for women dealing with posttraumatic stress disorder or anxiety connected to past trauma.
Accelerated Resolution Therapy
ART is one of the most effective treatments for trauma, which is a common root cause of chronic anxiety.
During ART sessions, you are guided to visualize anxiety-provoking memories while simultaneously focusing on specific eye movements. This process helps the brain to reconsolidate these memories in a less distressing way, reducing emotional intensity and the physiological responses linked to anxiety. As a result, clients often experience rapid relief from anxiety symptoms, sometimes after just one to five sessions.
Additionally, ART emphasizes the replacement of negative mental images with positive, peaceful ones, which can build emotional resilience and improve overall mental well-being. This approach makes ART a highly effective and time-efficient option for individuals struggling with generalized anxiety, panic attacks, PTSD-related anxiety, and other anxiety disorders.
Person-Centered Therapy: You Are the Expert
I believe you already have wisdom about what you need – you've just been taught to ignore it. My role isn't to fix you or tell you what to do. It's to create a space where you can reconnect with your own inner knowing and learn to trust yourself again.
This approach to treating anxiety disorders recognizes that you're the expert on your own experience. We'll explore your patterns with curiosity, not judgment, and work together to find healthier ways to meet your needs.
Intuitive Eating Therapy
For many women, anxiety disorders and food struggles go hand in hand. Maybe you restrict when stressed or binge eat when overwhelmed. Diet culture teaches us to distrust our bodies, but when you're constantly fighting with yourself, it feeds anxiety symptoms.
Intuitive eating therapy helps heal your relationship with food and your body. When you stop waging war with yourself, anxiety disorders often naturally decrease. We'll work on trusting your body's signals while addressing the emotional patterns underneath disordered eating.
Reiki
Reiki is a holistic healing practice that can be beneficial in managing anxiety. It involves the gentle laying on of hands to channel energy and promote relaxation and balance within the body. For individuals experiencing anxiety, reiki can bring about an energetic release which can support reducing anxiety symptoms.
Reiki helps by reducing stress levels, balancing energy, enhancing emotional clarity and supports sleep.
Including Reiki in sessions is a way to offer a more holistic approach to anxiety treatment so that we are going beyond thoughts and feelings and tending to the body’s energy, identifying where it’s stuck, releasing it and creating space for your body to heal in the way that it knows how to do.
Specialized Anxiety Treatment Options
Therapy Intensives
Sometimes weekly sessions feel too slow when you're struggling with mental health conditions. My therapy intensives offer longer sessions where we can dive deep without the start-and-stop nature of traditional therapy.
Intensives are particularly powerful for anxiety disorders because we can work through patterns and triggers in extended sessions. We might use multiple approaches – talking, Brainspotting, and practical skill-building – all in one comprehensive session
Group Therapy for Women
One of the most healing aspects of group therapy is realizing you're not alone in struggling with mental health issues. My women's groups create a safe support group environment where you can be real about your experiences without performing or pretending.
You'll connect with other women who understand the pressure to be perfect, the exhaustion of people-pleasing, and the challenge of putting yourself first. Group therapy also provides opportunities to practice new skills like setting boundaries or expressing needs in a supportive environment.
I also offer specialized groups for binge eating disorder, recognizing the strong connection between anxiety disorders and food struggles.
12-Week Health Program
Depending on your specific experience of anxiety, incorporating the 12-week health program may provide additional benefit and support for you. There are many things in the program that have direct impacts on anxiety such as substance use, foods, exercise, water intake, and sleep.
By combining a body and mind approach, your anxiety relief can be doubled because we are better able to tend to multiple areas that cause or exacerbate anxiety.
What Makes My Anxiety Therapy Different
Unlike traditional behavior therapy approaches that focus only on symptoms, I understand the specific pressures women face. I know what it's like to be taught to be "good," to put everyone else's needs first, and to ignore your own instincts until you don't even know what they are anymore. Using my masters in nutrition and clinical work with physical heath, I also incorporate the body and nervous system into our work to help treat the whole person and not just the anxiety.
When you work with me, I'm fully engaged every minute of our session. I don't just sit back and nod – I'm actively working with you to understand your patterns and create change. This work is my calling, and I take treating mental health conditions as seriously as I take any other important role in my life.
I offer both in-person sessions in Lynnwood and online therapy options to accommodate your needs. Online anxiety treatment can be just as effective as in-person sessions and offers flexibility for busy schedules or for women dealing with social anxiety disorder or separation anxiety.
Your Journey: What to Expect
Getting Started
We'll begin with a free consultation where you can share what's going on and ask questions about treating anxiety disorders. No pressure, no sales pitch – just an opportunity to see if we're a good fit.
If we decide to work together, I'll get you set up with my client portal and schedule a longer intake session. This is where we'll really understand your story, explore what you've tried before, and set goals for your mental health journey.
Ongoing Support
I provide consistent appointment times (like every Monday at 10am) and schedule three months at a time so you don't have to worry about booking individual sessions. Sometimes I'll suggest practices between sessions, but only if they feel helpful for your anxiety treatment.
I'm not available 24/7 for crisis support – part of healing from anxiety disorders is learning that you can handle difficult moments and trust your own resilience.
Progress and Growth
Healing isn't linear. Some sessions you'll feel breakthrough moments in your mental health, while others might feel challenging. We'll regularly check in about your progress and adjust our treatment plan as needed.
Maybe we'll start with individual therapy and add group sessions later. Perhaps we'll focus initially on generalized anxiety disorder and then explore your relationship with food. I'm flexible because healing is flexible.
Living Beyond Anxiety Disorders
My goal isn't just to help you manage anxiety – it's to help you heal from mental health conditions that have been limiting your life. This means:
Trusting Yourself Again: Rebuilding connection to your inner wisdom and learning to trust what you know about yourself, even when anxiety symptoms arise.
Setting Real Boundaries: Understanding why you say yes when you want to say no and addressing the underlying patterns that keep you overcommitted and overwhelmed.
Finding Your Voice: Learning that your thoughts, feelings, and needs matter, and that it's okay to take up space in the world without triggering anxiety.
Authentic Relationships: Moving away from people-pleasing and performance toward connections where you can be genuinely yourself.
Body Connection: Learning to feel safe in your own skin again and trusting your body's wisdom about what you need.
Taking the First Step
If you're tired of anxiety symptoms controlling your life, if you're ready to stop people-pleasing and start living authentically, or if you just want to feel at peace in your own body, change is possible.
You don't have to have everything figured out before starting anxiety therapy. You don't need perfect words to describe your mental health struggles. You just need to be willing to try something different.
I've seen women who thought they were too anxious, too damaged, or too stuck to ever feel different create profound changes in their lives. Healing from anxiety disorders is possible, and you deserve to feel at home in your own life.
You deserve relationships where you can be yourself. You deserve to trust your instincts and take up space. You deserve peace and freedom from the mental health conditions that have been weighing you down.
Ready to start your journey toward freedom from anxiety? Contact me today for your free consultation and let's explore how anxiety therapy can help you reclaim your life.
Located in:
Lynnwood, WA
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
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Anxiety is a state of excessive and persistent worry and fear that is disproportionate to your everyday life and everyday situations. People with anxiety tend to find it hard to control or stop the anxiety and notice that it affects their daily lives.
The anxiety and worry are accompanied by at least three of the following: restlessness or feeling on edge, being easily fatigued, difficulty concentrating or mind going blank, irritability, muscle tension, and disrupted sleep.
In my experience, treating women with anxiety is often connected to other challenges like people pleasing, difficulty speaking up and sharing your needs or opinions, and feeling you are in control of many things that you are not. These challenges combined can make people feel both worn out and on edge.
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Anxiety has 5 common symptoms:
Excessive worrying
Racing heart
Trouble concentrating
Muscle tension (most commonly in the shoulders and jaw)
Sleep disruptions (either trouble falling asleep or staying asleep).
Stress is different from anxiety because stress is the body’s natural response to physical and emotional demands or challenges. Stress is not an emotion, but rather a biological response to real or perceived threat. Long term stress can turn into an anxiety disorder if left untreated.
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The 3-3-3 rule is a common and easy to use grounding technique. Anxiety is living in the future, not the present. So the 3-3-3 rule helps bring you back into the present moment by using your senses.
Name 3 things you can see
Identify 3 things you can hear
Move 3 parts of your body
There is another tool that I like to use with clients that comes from ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) that is called “Dropping Anchor.” To do this, you just need to remember the mnemonic word of ACE.
A: Acknowledge that your mind has wandered
C: Connect with your body. This can be a deep breath, but can be more beneficial to do a moving action such as pressing your back into the chair or tapping the floor with alternating feet
E: Engage back into the environment. This may be the task you were doing or connecting with the person you are talking to.
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Yes it absolutely can and there are a couple reasons for this. One relates to different biology and hormones. Hormone shifts can cause fluctuations in mood and anxiety as well as tolerance for challenges. With the women I work with, I most often see that the difference is caused by societal pressures. Women are expected to balance a lot between family, work, friends, health, taking care of themselves, housework, etc. What I often hear women say is that they are overwhelmed all the time. Being overwhelmed sometimes is normal, but when it becomes your common emotional state, you may be looking at an anxiety disorder.
I also see a lot of women struggling with anxiety because of issues tied to perfectionism, “good girl syndrome” and putting others first constantly.
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The feelings of anxiety are slightly different for everyone, but generally there is a blend of some of the symptoms below:
Physical: increased heart rate or more rapid breathing, sweating or feeling restless, easily startled, fatigue, digestive issues, headache or muscle tension/aches, dizziness.
Emotional and Mental: persistent worrying, feeling nervous, difficulty concentrating, irritability, impatience, overthinking.
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State anxiety is a normal response to something that others would perceive as stressful or anxiety inducing. Examples include: an upcoming test or presentation at work, a hard conversation, or a sudden financial challenge.
Trait anxiety speaks to anxiety that is more chronic and almost seems to become a “trait” of someone’s personality.
In therapy, it’s good to differentiate what kind is going on so that the appropriate care can be provided. And please note: BOTH kinds of anxiety benefit from therapy.
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A panic attach is a sudden onset of a cluster of symptoms that are primarily physical including: racing heart, difficulty breathing, body trembles and shakes, chest pain, dizziness, sweating, and nausea. Emotionally, panic attacks bring about feelings of losing control or impending doom.
A couple interesting facts about panic attacks:
People will go to the ER thinking they are having a heart attack. That is how real and severe the physical symptoms can be
The thing that makes panic become a full blown panic attack is the fear and belief that the panic will not stop. So the best way to prevent a panic attack is to remind yourself that it won’t last forever and the physical symptoms will subside.
How to care for yourself if you feel like you are about to have a panic attack:
Bilateral tapping: make a butterfly with your hands and lay them over your heart and alternate tapping your right middle finger on your collarbone and your left middle finger on your other collarbone.
You can also add in a slow rocking motion as this calms the nervous system.
Gently put your pointer finger in your ear and pull down slightly.
Give your brain something to focus on like your physical surroundings.
Use sensory changes to give your brain and body something else to direct their attention to. You can stick your head in the freezer and take deep breaths. You can sit or lie on a cold surface such as the kitchen or bathroom tiles. Splashing cold water on your face can be helpful as well. As you can see, using cold is more helpful to stave off a panic attack than using warm because the cold is more of an alert signal to the body than warm temperatures.
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In my practice with clients, I like to use a holistic approach, so I love to bring in specific lifestyle changes that can support mental health issues. The brain and body are intricitly connected, and to ignore one and only treat the other is missing 50% of the problem.
Lifestyle factors that can increase anxiety are:
Caffeine intake
Sleep issues
Alcohol usage
Marijuana usage
Too much sugar in the diet
Not enough exercise
Time management
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Connecting back to my holistic approach with clients and using my Masters in Nutrition and Nutritionist License, here are some examples of changes you can make to help decrease anxiety:
Getting adequate sleep (7-9 hours, ideally asleep before midnight. Every hour you sleep BEFORE midnight counts as 2 hours in terms of health benefits)
Eating breakfast within 30-60 minutes of waking up and making sure it has protein in it
Balancing your blood sugar throughout the day with dietary modifications
Allowing yourself time outside to get fresh air (bonus if this connects you to nature in some way)
Consistent exercise. Doesn’t matter what kind- just matters that you like/love it!
Supplements- there are certain supplements that you can take to help decrease anxiety symptoms. Always consult a professional before trying one.
Allowing time for rest and downtime. Bonus if this is without screens!
Decrease phone usage and especially social media. A digital detox has done wonders for my clients
Decrease alcohol intake. While alcohol is a depressant, once you have metabolized it, your body speeds back up to get back to baseline and often times speeds up too much in it’s attempt to find equilibrium. This is especially true for peri menopausal and menopausal women
Having healthy relationships with loved ones. We are meant to lean on our partners, friends and family. Having a good support system is a great way to help you with anxiety
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I absolutely love using brainspotting for anxiety because we are getting out of our prefrontal cortex (where we think, analyze, talk) and are getting into the midbrain where feelings, beliefs and memories are stored.
When working with clients using brainspotting as the primary modality, we assess limiting beliefs, traumas and childhood adverse experiences. From here, we come up with a list of goals and just about every time, there are many beliefs, events and goals that are closely related to anxiety. Using brainspotting, we get to the core issue and root of what is causing anxiety, and instead of just talking about tools to help cope, we can actually create deep change so that anxiety is no longer a constant state of being. This can be done in regular sessions or in a therapy intensive.
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A lot of people using medication to help manage their anxiety symptoms. Some medications help in a more long term way like SSRIs and SNRIs. Other medications can help with anxiety if there is a sudden increased onset such as benzodiazepines.
While medications can be monumental for helping some, it’s always best to be working with a therapist as well. I think of medications as helping you access things that can help, but therapy is where you can do the work to understand the root of your anxiety and hopefully significantly decrease it or eliminate it all together
