Oakland Psychotherapy & Online Counseling
Therapy to help you cope with anxiety
How counseling helps you deal with stress
Types of anxiety I treat in therapy
I work with clients to address and manage all kinds of stress and anxiety. Having a safe space to discuss your worries and concerns is the first step to reducing the negative impact stress can have on your life. Common sources of anxiety for my clients include:
social anxiety
uncertainty about the future
unhealthy relationships
dealing with conflict
family dynamics
body image / weight loss
pressure & expectations
career path
money
Social anxiety and how therapy helps
Social anxiety is one of the most common problems clients seek counseling for.
Do you worry too much about what other people think?
If you find yourself constantly wondering what your friends, coworkers, family, or even strangers think about you, then therapy with me can help.
Find more helpful ways through counseling to deal with the fear of being judged.
Comparing yourself to others can make you feel like you are never good enough. This leads to self doubt and lack of confidence.
Acceptance & Commitment Therapy teaches us how to manage social anxiety in a more helpful way.
Being rejected never feels good but if we avoid being rejected we can’t be ourselves and live freely.
Book with Chloe Demisch, Oakland therapist today to get support for your social anxiety!
What are the symptoms of anxiety
Symptoms of anxiety are both physical and mental. Common symptoms include:
Mental symptoms:
excessive worrying
panic attacks
difficulty focusing
feeling scattered
rumination
Physical symptoms
tightness in chest
difficulty breathing
numbness
headaches or migraines
heart racing
sweaty palms
stomach aches
Counseling with me will provide you with tools to identify anxiety symptoms and management strategies that help you get back to living your best life. Helping you find alternate ways of dealing with anxious thoughts and feelings will be a large part of our work together. You will learn new coping mechanisms to reduce the power that fear and stress can hold over you.
Anxiety Treatment
10 steps of Defusion
Defusion is a tool that Acceptance & Commitment Therapy teaches to help us have some distance from our difficult thoughts so we don’t automatically believe and act on them.
Below is an example of how I might help you cope with anxiety in a therapy session using Defusion.
Step 1: What are some things that are worrying you?
“I’m going to fail”
”They’re not going to like me”
”I might get hurt”
”I’m not good enough”
”I can’t do it”
Step 2: Say that worry out loud.
Let’s use ”I’m not good enough” as our example.
Step 3: Now put this phrase in front of the worry.
“I am having the thought that…”
Step 4: Now try this phrase in front of the worry.
“I notice I’m having the thought that…”
Step 5: Say the initial worry and then say it with the last phrase in front of it.
”I’m not good enough”
vs.
“I notice I’m having the thought that….I’m not good enough"
Step 6: What did you notice about your initial thought vs. the one with the phrases added in front?
Did you feel some distance? Or maybe some separation? That’s good because now you’re in a better mindset to evaluate…
Step 7: What is not helpful about this initial worry?
It’s keeping you stuck.
You’re beating yourself up about it without a plan to fix it.
It doesn’t motivate you to get better.
It makes you feel worse and then your confidence and performance suffers.
You are not present in the moment because you are ruminating on it.
Step 8: What is helpful about this initial worry?
It can be good to look at areas where we can improve so we can grow.
It’s helpful to challenge ourselves so we can strive to always be getting better.
We can more clearly identify our problems and come up with a plan to work on them.
Now we have some goals to work towards to be our best selves.
Step 9: If the worry is primarily not helpful, it’s time to refocus on the current moment, focus on what is important or valuable to you, and allow the thought to continue to chitter chatter in the background without letting it hold too much weight.
Some common examples of what this thought might feel like when you’ve defused from it:
an annoying gnat buzzing about
a quiet radio announcer in the background
the ticker on the bottom of a sports or news channel on TV
traffic noise in the distance
the ocean or the sky constantly changing
Step 10: If the worry has some usefulness, do what you can with it to improve yourself or the situation. However once you have a plan, it’s time to let that worry fade into the background so you can be present with whatever you are trying to do that’s more important or valuable at that time.
If you like what you’re reading, book a free consultation with me today to see if we would be a good fit in therapy together!
Mindfulness therapy for stress relief
Using Acceptance & Commitment Therapy, we will look at how you are currently managing your anxiety and identify any unhealthy patterns that may be making your stress levels worse. We will discuss your specific symptoms of anxiety and develop a plan to deal with them in a way that helps you:
Below is an example of one of the many stress relief techniques you’ll learn with Chloe.
When you are feeling anxious, grounding is a very powerful technique to bring your mind back to your body.
6 steps to Grounding
Step 1: Take a deep, slow breath.
Step 2: Sight
Find 4 things that are the same color. An example would be…
“I see a sunflower, a yellow car, a banana, and a yellow stoplight. “
Step 3: Sound
What are two things that you can hear at this very moment? An example would be…
“I hear children playing in the park, and the sound of leaves rustling in the wind. “
Step 4: Smell
What are two things you can smell right now?
“I can smell the scent of grass. I can smell the autumn breeze. “
Step 5: Touch
And finally, what are two things you can touch at this very moment?
“I can feel the heel of my shoe meeting pavement, the wind grazing my cheek.”
Repeat as necessary.
Find balance. Find mental health.
Many clients come to therapy seeking counseling on how to improve their overall wellness. Establishing balance is critical. A healthy diet, exercise, and sleep routine are also essential to managing anxiety.
Let’s look at how much time you devote to
work
relaxation
exercise
friendships
hobbies
romantic relationships
dating
kids/partner/family
time spent outdoors
creativity
travel
Let’s assess their presence in your life to maximize your productivity and emotional wellness.
In psychotherapy we will discuss how spending quality time with loved ones, tidying your living space, slowing down, establishing a daily routine, creating structure, building healthy boundaries, and making time to pamper yourself are all part of finding and maintaining lasting peace.
Why am I so anxious?
You know how horror movies only show the shadow of the monster? Maybe just the spiky tail, or its horrible fangs?
That’s because your mind is the greatest illustrator of all. Your mind fills in the gaps with all sorts of scary images and ideas.
This is exactly how anxiety works in your brain.
Our mind is simply hypothesizing. It’s trying to prepare us! Our mind is a problem solving machine. So it fills in the blanks. But oftentimes these are very scary thoughts that are usually not that helpful.
Is anxiety normal?
Yes! Yes! Yes! Anxiety is totally normal. Why? Because life is not easy. It is unpredictable and so much is out of our control. If you could have gotten ride of your anxiety by now, you would have, right? But unfortunately this is impossible because we are humans. We can’t just turn off our emotions. (For long anyways.) We actually need anxiety to help us prepare, plan ahead, and grow.
WHAT we do with our anxiety matters. When we try to distract or numb ourselves from feeling stress, it almost always makes things worse in the long-run. So I’d like to invite you try to the exercise below to manage your anxiety in a better way!
Let me know if this sounds familiar…
You’re sitting at home. Or perhaps you are on your way somewhere. All of a sudden you have an overwhelming feeling of
Worry, Panic, and fear. You start to go into overdrive and fill in the following blanks in your head….
I don’t know what to do if ______ .
What if _____ happens!?
I’ve heard it all. And you are not alone in this.
But did you know that anxiety is perfectly normal?
It’s what we do with it that causes problems. In our work together, we will use the power of
Breaking vicious cycles
Mindfulness
Cognitive defusion
in order to help you better manage your symptoms of anxiety.
Book today and receive a free 10-minute consultation
View other pages:
