Anxiety Therapy in Weston and throughout CT
You can quiet the constant mental noise and feel at ease in your own skin.
Have you been wrestling with a sense that something is off even though you can’t put your finger on what it is?
It’s driving you crazy.
From your perspective, you should be happy. Everything in your life looks good on paper: your successful career, financial stability, loving partner, beautiful children. You’ve checked all the boxes you believed would bring you security.
And yet, there’s a gap between how you believe you “should” feel and how you really feel.
The sense that something is wrong or that something bad will happen feels so real, and you can’t explain why.
Your reactions are often disproportionate to the situation, daily life feels draining in a way it doesn’t seem to for other people, and you regularly question yourself, your decision-making, and your perceptions.
But you’re a rational, educated, and capable person, which makes your seemingly irrational anxiety all the more confusing and frustrating. After all, nothing is obviously “wrong.”
Here’s what you do know:
In your relationships, you notice you repeatedly react in ways that harm your closeness with your partner and loved ones.
During emotional conversations, you want to express yourself authentically, but this has often meant that your partner gets hurt in the process.
You’re in a double-bind: you’re not sure how to be both honest and kind when you’re feeling flooded with emotion - not to mention anxious that your partner will eventually decide that this is too much work.
You have enough awareness to recognize that your emotions might lead you to say or do hurtful things you’ll regret. So, to mitigate this, you withdraw: you shut the door, turn your phone on silent and stop answering texts, or drive away. In your mind, it’s to protect yourself and your partner from your overwhelming feelings.
But to your partner, this is seen as rejection or even manipulation. And it pushes them away when your intention is the exact opposite.
It sends you into a spiral and you feel deeply misunderstood.
If you're honest, anxiety is affecting all areas of your life.
When it comes to your career, your anxiety has helped you excel at tasks that require attention to detail, anticipating others’ needs, or managing complex or urgent situations.
On the other hand, you've also had to develop strategies to navigate the difficult parts of being in a professional environment.
While independent tasks feel like a breeze, workplace meetings, team projects, or responsibilities that require interaction with others are draining.
Even sending an email feels like taking a final exam. You stare at it and rewrite it multiple times before sending, only to immediately check your "sent" folder to reread it again.
What should be a 5-minute task becomes a source of anxiety. The energy required leaves you depleted, confused, and drowning in self-doubt. And the confusing part is that work tasks don't seem to be this draining for your colleagues.
You've been trying to manage this on your own for a while.
You’ve read books and listened to podcasts about managing anxiety
You’ve tried changing your thoughts and focusing on positive things
You’ve tried meditation
You’ve attempted to reset an intention every morning to stay calm, be kind, be confident, and, well, just do better
You’ve even tried therapy before, but it hasn’t brought long-term change. You intellectually know more about why you feel the way you do, but the strong emotions are still there.
None of these have brought long-term relief.
This is because these methods all rely on rational thinking to address your anxiety. But even though you understand your patterns intellectually, your emotional reactions continue to feel overwhelming and automatic.
This makes perfect sense from a neurobiological perspective.
Your brain has different systems working together. There’s the “thinking brain” that handles logic, planning and understanding - and there’s also the “emotional brain” deeper inside that processes feelings and danger signals, and keeps track of what feels safe or unsafe.
This is why you might logically know something isn't dangerous, but still feel terrified.
How do I know if I have anxiety?
You might notice things like:
Your heart racing
Tight chest or stomach
Shallow breathing
Tension in your shoulders or jaw
Feeling on edge
These physical responses aren't just reactions to your thoughts – they're actually part of the emotion itself.
Your body is responding to signals from your nervous system saying "danger!", even when your thinking brain knows you're safe.
When you try to use only words and logic to deal with deep emotional responses, it’s like trying to fix a computer problem by explaining the solution to the computer instead of actually reprogramming it.
Your emotional brain and body need their own kind of “programming language.”
This is what we’ll do together.
How Anxiety Therapy can help you:
Instead of just talking about and trying to understand your anxiety, our work may include:
Identifying how your feelings show up in the body (for example, where you feel tension when you're anxious or what happens in your chest when you're worried) so we can address them directly, helping you find relief that thinking alone can't bring.
Helping you get comfortable with sensations related to anxiety bit by bit so they become less overwhelming over time.
Practicing relief techniques for those moments when your anxiety hits hard and you need a breather right away.
Using gentle movement exercises where you might shake out tension, stretch tight areas, or practice moving in ways that help release stored stress.
Using your eyes as gateways to access and process emotions that keep you worried, stressed and stuck.
In all of our work, we will move at the speed of trust so that you don’t feel overwhelmed during sessions, and make gradual and sustainable progress.
Contact me today for therapy for anxiety in Weston, CT.
Therapy for anxiety with me is different from (all of) the things you’ve tried.
I use approaches like Somatic Experiencing, IFS and Brainspotting because these modalities work with your anxiety at the source.
I've been specifically trained to work with these deeper levels of emotional experience – not just the thinking mind.
I know how to help you:
Recognize and work with body sensations so that you can catch emotions before they escalate and cause a conflict
Change your automatic stress responses so that you stop procrastinating on important tasks or emotional conversations
Acknowledge the competing needs within yourself – like wanting to be healthy but also needing comfort when stressed – and find ways to satisfy both without them fighting against each other
Heal the emotional wounds, not just understand them, so that your body’s reaction matches your intellectual reaction
I’ve dedicated my practice to understanding emotions and healing at deeper levels - because I’ve seen how transformative these approaches are, especially when other methods haven’t brought relief.
When we work together at these deeper levels, you’ll notice changes like:
Feeling calmer in your body, not just your thoughts
Reacting differently in situations with your partner that used to trigger you and cause a big blowup fight
Handling challenging social situations without breaking down into tears or needing a rageful vent session later
Being surprised at the positive emotions that will start to show up, and how sustainable they will begin to feel
Working with your anxiety “symptoms” directly (rather than trying to control or change them) helps us go beyond understanding the reason why they happen and instead be able to work through them and let them go.
How Anxiety Therapy With Me Works
STOP SPINNING YOUR WHEELS
We’re a good fit to work together if:
You’ve been in therapy before, but feel like there are things that you haven’t been able to address or change with traditional talk therapy;
You have learned some skills to manage your anxiety, but still live with a pervasive sense that something is wrong that you just can’t shake off;
By all external measures, you “have a good life”. But you still feel uneasy, unable to relax, and feel like you’re always “waiting for the other shoe to drop”;
You take a holistic approach to healing and want to go beyond exploring thoughts and incorporate mind-body modalities into your healing
Anxiety Therapy FAQs
If you have more questions have a look at the FAQ page or reach out.
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Therapy can still be helpful even if you don’t know the source of your anxiety. In fact, it’s usually helpful in clarifying what’s driving your anxiety. We can work together to explore anxious behavior patterns such as obsessively analyzing conversations or worrying how you’re being perceived by others; and use Brainspotting, Internal Family Systems (IFS) or Somatic Experiencing (SE) to identify if and how past experiences may be impacting your current anxiety. Over time, this work can help you feel more at ease in your relationships, have more balanced responses to stress, and break free from the constant cycle of worry and fear.
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In the first meeting, we’ll get to know each other and lay the foundation for our work together. In a typical first session, we will
Discuss what's brought you to therapy in greater detail. We’ll talk about how it’s affecting your life presently and touch briefly on any history that may be relevant and helpful for me to know so I can understand you better.
Talk about your previous therapy experiences. If you’ve tried therapy before, I’d like to hear about it - what worked well and what didn’t quite click. This will help me tailor your treatment so that our work can feel helpful and effective.
Discuss how I can help. I’ll answer any questions on how I work and discuss how we may collaborate to help you feel better and reach your goals.
If we both feel good about moving forward, we'll find mutually convenient times for our next sessions.
To learn more about the first appointment, you can read my blog post about it here.
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During the first few sessions, I’ll be listening closely to understand your story so that we can develop a personalized treatment plan that focuses on what you need the most support with. I’ll also share some information about how your brain and body work together, and we’ll explore simple ways to help you tune into your body’s signals - something most of us weren’t taught, but which can be incredibly calming.
Once we’ve built a foundation together, we’ll dive into the approaches I’m trained in, which I have found to be very helpful for clients:
Somatic Experiencing: offers gentle techniques to help your nervous system settle and help you feel calm and safe again. Learn more here
Brainspotting: offers a way to access and release emotions your body has been holding onto; Learn more here
Internal Family Systems (IFS): helps you understand and heal the different parts of yourself that are impacted by and try to manage anxiety. Learn more here
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Most clients start off attending weekly sessions. This often changes to every other week (and later to once/month) as you make progress. We will decide when we should change session frequency as your needs change.
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Treatment length differs from person to person. Some of the modalities that I use can lead to relatively fast change. However, I am very intentional and mindful about making treatment decisions based on what feels safe and clinically appropriate for each client, not speed of treatment alone.
While some people choose to be in therapy for a few months, others appreciate long-term support and continue to set new goals to work on as they progress in treatment. We can work together for as long as we both feel it is helpful.
An estimate of how long your therapy will be is something that we will decide together once we’ve had a chance to discuss your individual needs and goals for treatment.
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Click here to send me a message so we can schedule a time to chat.
Reasons you need Anxiety Therapy in CT
You want to be able to:
Be free from the constant mental chatter
No longer obsess over very glance or word in conversations
Express yourself without fear of saying the wrong thing
Talk to your spouse without the conversation invariably turning into an argument
Stay in control of your emotions and be less triggered by perceived criticism
Actually go to sleep when you go to bed - instead of lying awake, your brain on overdrive for hours.