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Worries & Fears
Worries, fears, anxiety and stress...therapy is designed to help you manage these better.
YOU MAY BE EXPLORING THIS PAGE BECAUSE…
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You're worrying too much. You can't put your worries aside. It's affecting your sleep. You feel stuck.
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Your friends and family are telling you that you are too stressed. You know they are right, but you can't get back on track.
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You're struggling with family estrangement, trying to make sense of a very low contact situation.
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You might be experiencing a significant life-event and feeling a lack of control or an inability to take action. Lot's of life events can create stress:
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Co-workers are starting to make you feel suspicious of their intentions.
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Or it's time to make a change in your career. Is this the right time to pull the trigger?
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Or your manager has a tremendous amount of confidence in you and puts you into high-pressure situations with others. You want your manager to know that you this is stressing you out but you are afraid about sharing any vulnerability.
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Or you've gotten so far behind with work or home responsibilities that you feel like it's impossible to create a path forward.
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Please read a little bit about the services that I offer and see if they might help you.
Your environment can be a large source of worry. Or maybe it's you (and that's okay).
Much of the time, your surroundings can be the source of your stresses. Whether it's managing the needs of your family, work stress, moving homes, or vacation planning, sometimes the real world can feel very challenging.
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Or maybe you are someone who is generally more sensitive. That's okay, while sometimes that added sensitivity can make you feel miserable.
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If this is you: You need a place where you can openly and safely explore these situations, identify what’s triggering you, and get some help.
My Goals for Therapy Regarding your Worries and Fears
The first steps in helping reduce worries, fears and anxieties is to be able to describe the situations in detail. By getting the details, we can tease out the parts that are working well from the parts that are more of a struggle.
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For example, you might worrying about making a career change. You may know that you want to make a change and you may know what you want to do next. It could be that the stress is about timing. You could be fearing that making a shift too soon is going to lead to disaster or that waiting too long is going to be a disaster, too. In therapy, we try to identify what's behind those worst case scenario fears and face them directly.
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Another aspect of having worries and anxieties is that some people are reluctant to give themselves permission to sit with those worries. If you are very goal directed, you may lean away from the feelings that you see as being unproductive. Therapy helps you address those worries, rather than having to waste energy keeping them hidden.
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Many of the fears and worries that lead to stress are irrational. One goal of therapy is helping to bring those irrational fears to light, which helps reduce their intensity.
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Many people's worries come from the struggle with navigating estrangement in their families, whether it is you who is reducing contact, or whether it is you who is managing with having reduced contact by a loved one. The goal of therapy is to help you process these types of separations, without forcing an agenda on what "should" or "should not" be done.
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Lastly, it's important to know that it's impossible to feel relaxed and scared at the same time. Mindfulness exercises and physical activity are important aspects of reducing worries and fears.
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My Experience Treating Worries and Fears
A key component of my clinical psychology training was to learn individual psychotherapy, learning behavioral, cognitive-behavioral, psychodynamic and eclectic/hybrid models. These early training experiences became a bridge for me when I began practicing on my own.
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Of course, being an adult I have my own personal experiences to draw on, too.
Unlike some therapists, I spent part of my career working outside of traditional clinical settings as a biotech leader, and have learned about the complexities of adult work-related relationships. This included some time working in academia. This also included some time working in the public sector at The National Institute of Mental Health. Finally, I have spent time working in the private sector in several biotechnology companies, both large and small. Visibility to these less empathic settings has helped me to appreciate how these settings can be a significant cause of worry and stress.