Anxiety Therapist for Denver, CO & Chicago, IL

Why Seek Therapy for Anxiety?

Anxiety can feel like it’s driving the bus and dictating what you can and can’t do. Sometimes anxiety might tell you to avoid something completely. Other times, you may follow through with your plans, but anxiety steals your attention. When this happens, it can feel like you’re only partially present, because you’re so focused on your anxiety.

Anxiety also tends to perpetuate itself. Although avoiding something in the short-term might make you feel better, this typically increases anxiety in the long-run. There may be some things in your life where this doesn’t matter, because they’re not important to you. For things that you value though - avoiding them can be devastating. For example, you might value close friendships and relationships, but feel nervous and anxious around other people out of fear you’ll be judged in some way, so you avoid social gatherings that involve new people or larger groups. 

Working with an anxiety therapist can help break those unhelpful patterns and put you back in the drivers seat.

Types of Anxiety Treated

Adjustment-Related Anxiety

Anxiety often occurs when you’re experiencing a major change in your life or a stressful situation. For example, moving to a new city, changing jobs, becoming a parent can all lead to anxiety. When the anxiety due to the life change or stressful event feels difficult to manage and cope with, and is interfering with your life, therapy with an anxiety therapist can help.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Generalized anxiety includes anxiety and worry happening more often than not over the course of at least 6 months. The worry is difficult to control, and is related to additional symptoms like: feeling restless, feeling fatigued, having difficulty focusing, irritability, muscle tension, and trouble sleeping. An znxiety therapist can help you with managing the worry.

Social Anxiety Disorder

Social anxiety is anxiety that is related to a fear of being judged. For some people, this anxiety is only related to one type of interaction (e.g., public speaking). For other people, the social anxiety is generalized to many types of social interactions. With this type of anxiety, you may avoid the social interactions that cause you anxiety completely, or you may endure them, but with significant distress. An anxiety therapist can help you with getting back to the things you want and need to be doing.

My approach as an anxiety therapist

Research has shown that online therapy is effective for treating anxiety. As an anxiety therapist, I typically use a blended approach of:

  • Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

  • Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)

  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

These treatments can help you to get some distance from worry thoughts, clarify what’s important to you, and ensure that you (and not your anxiety!) are driving the bus towards things that are important to you. These treatments are also designed to help you make lasting change.

Mindful Health Psychology provides mindful, compassionate online anxiety therapy for people in Denver, Colorado & Chicago, Illinois

Other services offered at Mindful Health Psychology:

Mindful Health Psychology is a practice offering online therapy for Denver, CO, Chicago, IL and beyond in the states of Colorado and Illinois. We specialize in therapy for depression, distress during pregnancy, postpartum depression and anxiety, coping with miscarriage and pregnancy loss, PMDD, coping with fertility-related stressors, birth trauma, coping with a chronic medical condition, insomnia, nightmares, circadian rhythm disorders, and hypersomnia disorders. We provide online therapy, making treatment more accessible, which means you can be located in Denver, Chicago, or another city in Colorado or Illinois to receive services.

References

American Psychiatric Association. Anxiety disorders. In Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.). 2022:171-175.