Anxiety

Anxiety is one of the most common reasons people come to therapy, and one of the least precisely named. It can mean dread that won't leave you alone. It can mean a racing mind that won't quiet down at night. It can mean perfectionism that looks like high-functioning ambition from the outside but feels exhausting from the inside.

What anxiety usually has in common is the experience of trying to control something that doesn't quite respond to control — your future, your body, the people you love, the way things might go wrong. Therapy doesn't necessarily make anxiety disappear, but it can help you change your relationship to it.

What I work with

The forms of anxiety I see most often:

Generalized anxiety. The pervasive low-grade worry about everything and nothing. The mental loop that doesn't stop. The body that's always braced.

Perfectionism. The standard you can never quite reach, the inner voice that's always finding what you missed, the relief of completion that never lasts. Perfectionism often looks like discipline from the outside but feels like a treadmill from the inside.

Health anxiety. Fear about your body, your symptoms, the people you love — the kind of anxiety that lives at the intersection of caring deeply and being unable to put the worry down.

Body image anxiety. A feeling like the noise is just too loud when it comes to thoughts about your body, food, or eating. It doesn’t need to be a full eating disorder to feel like you wish you had more ease around this part of your life.

Postpartum anxiety. The version of anxiety that arrives after a baby. It's different from "normal new mom worry," and it's treatable. (More on perinatal-specific work here.)

Social anxiety. The dread of being perceived, of being judged, of getting it wrong in front of other people. Social anxiety can be quiet and severely limiting at the same time.

Anticipatory anxiety. The anxiety about future things that haven't happened yet — the upcoming meeting, the upcoming appointment, the upcoming conversation. Sometimes the fear of the thing is more painful than the thing itself.

How I work with anxiety

I draw on several frameworks because anxiety responds to different approaches in different people. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is helpful for some anxiety — particularly the kind that lives in unhelpful thought patterns. But for many people, anxiety is also held in the body, formed in early relationships, and tangled up with deeper questions about safety, control, and self-worth.

In practice, that often means working at three layers: the thoughts that fuel anxiety, the patterns underneath those thoughts (where they came from, what they're trying to protect), and the body that holds the felt sense of anxiety even when the thoughts are quiet.

We'll meet weekly to start, in person in Arlington or online if you live in Massachusetts, New York, or DC.

If you're not sure whether what you're feeling counts as "real" anxiety or is "just" stress, that's a common question — and a great topic for a free 15-minute consultation call.