Anxiety

As soon as you complete one task, you may get a few seconds, breathe a sigh of relief—and then you start thinking, and planning, and worrying about the next thing on your to-do list. Maybe you are worried about your health, or your family’s health. Maybe you are worried about money. Maybe you are afraid that you’re acting weird and people are laughing at you behind your back, and it makes it so difficult to hold a conversation with them and act “normal”, because you are constantly waiting for their judgment. Maybe you’re in the shower for forty-five minutes replaying that one time you said something silly, over and over and over again. Maybe you can’t seem to stop yourself imagining that one worst thing, the thing you are dreading, happening.  

You may keep yourself relentlessly busy, trying not to think about your worries. Maybe some worry creeps in around the edges, but whenever it does, you find something else to try to keep yourself occupied. That’s when the worry starts growing in your physical body. That’s when your fingers start tapping, your feet start pacing, you may bite your nails or pick at your face, and you start to feel like you can’t catch a breath. That’s when it starts to seem like the most minor inconvenience in your day is overwhelming and you can’t get through it. That’s when you get irritable and start snapping at people, even the people you love. That’s when you stop sleeping.

You know that you “should” be able to relax. But you can’t.

I work with folks every day who are struggling with anxiety. The good news is, no matter how long it took you to get here, you can “unlearn” the habit of worrying. You can train your brain with evidence-based techniques to relax your “worry centers.” You can grow your capacity for rest and even for fun and learn to enjoy life again. My hope for you is to be able to find your peace, whatever that looks like, and let anxiety drift into the past.