There are lots of different breeds of anxiety so let me tell you about a few here that might sound familiar. General anxiety wears on you because it can be kind of a chronic, low-grade thing. You might not even realize you have since it’s been there so long. And you have developed excellent ways of coping with it, like avoidance and control.

Other types of anxiety comes in sudden jolts, like fear of flying, claustrophobia, or a panic attack. Usually, most people avoid the thing that is causing the anxiety or panic. It feels better, it even feels like it helps. But it’s temporary. After a while, the anxiety or panic comes roaring back and you are even more confused and scared than ever. This back and forth becomes a habit and we become almost addicted to our coping skills (which work, that’s why we use them!)

However….and here’s the big problem – the strategies we use to cope so well are making our anxiety and panic incrementally worse each time the stimulus comes back. So we have to take stronger and stronger measures to get away from the fear.

If you were a cave person in a cave and there were cave person eating prehistoric lions and tigers outside, you would naturally be very worried all the time. You would be scanning the jungle for lions and tigers most of the time. You would go hunting or picking berries with a watchful eye and return to the safety of your cave as soon as possible. Unfortunately, evolution has not caught up with us entirely. We still have that biology and those same coping skills. But now we are more afraid of things we usually don’t need to be afraid of. Usually we don’t live around lions and tigers. Now we are afraid of dirty hands, elevators, a spider, a bridge, a dirty sink, or a cat. We can become anxious when our kids come in and make a mess or our partner doesn’t clean up his socks for the 30th time this week.

So how do we work with this you ask? First by talking through what we perceive the threat to be. Then by looking together at the evidence of the true danger here. Then we use Systematic Desensitization and Exposure Therapy to get you back in the game. To get you facing your fears and lessening your reliance on coping skills one step at a time and thereby beginning to help you lower your anxiety one step at a time.

We want you to live your life to the fullest, to be free and happy, limitless even.  When you start to tackle your anxiety head-on, your world begins to get a lot bigger and more interesting. Even fun. And that is exactly where we are hoping to help you to go.