What I truly love about treating anxiety is that it is curable! Yes, there is a cure to anxiety and the cure is...being willing to have it! I know that that might sound cavalier especially to someone who is struggling with severe and debilitating anxiety. However, given some time and some tools, even the worst cases of anxiety can be relieved.
When I work with clients who struggle with anxiety I teach them that anxiety is a "what if" experience. When we are anxious, we are "what iffing" -- we are not in the present moment but have been kidnapped by our fears of some future moment. The trick is to free ourselves from being kidnapped into the future and get back to living in the present moment. We do this very gently and slowly by learning how to lean into the sensations in our body associated with the experience of anxiety. By returning to our body's response we come back to the present. We can't be "what iffing" and in the present moment at the same time. Once we are living again in the present, our anxiety begins to dissipate and we feel "normal."
With anxiety I also use some of the trauma treatment techniques I discuss on another page of this website. I also use mindfulness-based practices to reduce stress, and to calm and relax the body and mind.
All of these approaches together create a very powerful and effective toolbox to manage anxiety.
I use similar tools to treat Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. I have found the book, Brain Lock, to be extraordinarily helpful in both understanding the nature of OCD and providing tools to release OCD's hold on the mind -- IT WORKS!
