Anxiety lives in both your mind and your body
Most people recognize the mental symptoms — the racing thoughts and relentless worry. But the physical manifestations are just as real and just as important to address. Without a regulated nervous system, it is genuinely difficult to process anything rationally.
In Your Mind
- Constant or excessive worry about everyday things
- "What if" thoughts that loop without ever resolving
- Catastrophizing: always imagining the worst-case scenario
- Difficulty concentrating or your mind going blank at critical moments
- Replaying past conversations and interactions over and over
- Indecisiveness and a deep fear of making the wrong choice
- Shame and self-criticism about feeling anxious at all
- "Should" statements: I should be further along, I should be handling this better
In Your Body
- Rapid or pounding heartbeat
- Chest tightness or shortness of breath
- Sweating or feeling overheated
- Stomach upset, nausea, or butterflies
- Tension headaches or jaw tightening
- Restlessness, leg bouncing, or feeling jittery and on edge
- Difficulty falling or staying asleep
- Fatigue from living in a constant state of hypervigilance
When you are in fight-or-flight mode, your brain floods your body with adrenaline. Blood and oxygen rush to your muscles to prepare you to respond to a threat. But when the threat is a work presentation or an unanswered text, there is nowhere for that energy to go. It gets trapped in your body — and that is what creates those uncomfortable physical sensations.
The content of your what-if thoughts reflects what you care about most
One of the most defining features of anxiety is the "what if" thought: the mind's attempt to gain certainty in an inherently uncertain world. Because life is unpredictable, anxiety will always lose this battle. And the harder it tries, the more exhausting the cycle becomes.
Here is something worth sitting with: the content of your what-if thoughts is usually organized around what you care about most. Your health, your relationships, your career, your children. In that way, anxiety actually reflects your values. It just expresses them in a way that is unhelpful and exhausting. Part of anxiety therapy is learning to hear what your anxiety is trying to protect, without letting it run your entire life.
What "What If" Thoughts Actually Sound Like
- "What if I fail at this and everyone finds out I was never as capable as they thought?"
- "What if something is seriously wrong with me and no one catches it in time?"
- "What if I said something weird and they are judging me right now?"
- "What if I make the wrong decision and it costs me everything?"
- "What if I feel like this forever?"
Anxiety does not look the same for everyone
Whether your anxiety is broad and ever-present or focused on something specific, anxiety treatment can help. Here is what I work with:
| Type | What It Looks Like |
|---|---|
| Generalized Anxiety | Worry that spans many areas of life: work, relationships, health, finances. Chronic, hard to turn off, and exhausting to live with. Often accompanied by physical tension and sleep disruption. |
| Social Anxiety | Fear of being judged, embarrassed, or perceived negatively by others. Affects dating, friendships, professional interactions, and everyday situations. Rates of social anxiety have increased significantly since COVID, and I work with both teens and adults navigating this in Chicago and throughout Illinois. |
| Panic Attacks | Sudden, intense waves of fear with overwhelming physical symptoms including a racing heart, difficulty breathing, dizziness, and a feeling of impending doom. Panic attacks are highly treatable. |
| Health Anxiety | Persistent, intrusive worry about having or developing a serious illness. Often involves fixation on physical symptoms, frequent reassurance-seeking, or avoidance of anything health-related. A subset of this overlaps with OCD. |
| Separation Anxiety | Fear of being separated from important attachment figures. In teens this often involves parents; in adults it can appear in romantic partnerships or friendships. Often dismissed, but genuinely debilitating. |
| Specific Phobias | Intense, disproportionate fear of a specific thing such as vomiting, leaving the house, or certain situations that restricts daily life. Exposure therapy for phobias produces some of the strongest outcomes in all of anxiety treatment. |
A reframe worth sitting with: The goal of anxiety therapy is not to eliminate anxiety. It is to change your relationship with it, so that you can live a full and meaningful life even when anxiety is present, rather than waiting until it is gone to start living.
My approach is always individualized
Different people respond to different modalities, and I draw from several evidence-based frameworks so I can genuinely meet you where you are. Here is how the work typically unfolds as an anxiety therapist in Chicago:
Acceptance & Commitment Therapy
Learning to allow anxious thoughts and feelings to exist without struggling against them. Separating your identity from your anxiety — you are not your anxiety. Clarifying your values and moving toward the life you want even when discomfort is present.
Learn MoreIdentifying distorted or unhelpful thought patterns and replacing them with more balanced, realistic ones. Particularly effective for should statements, catastrophizing, and the kind of harsh self-criticism that often co-occurs with anxiety.
Learn MoreExposure & Response Prevention
For phobias, OCD, and social anxiety. Gradually approaching feared situations in a controlled, supported way that retrains your nervous system to stop responding with alarm. One of the most evidence-supported treatments in all of psychology.
Learn MoreAddressing the shame and self-criticism that so often travel alongside anxiety, especially for high achievers who feel they should not be struggling. Building a kinder, more accepting internal relationship.
Learn MorePractical tools you can use right now
These are practical tools you can use in real moments, not just things to think about in theory. Part of anxiety therapy is building a personal toolkit based on what actually works for your nervous system.
| Strategy | How It Works |
|---|---|
| 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding | Engage your five senses to interrupt a spiral and return to the present moment. Five things you see, four you can touch, three you hear, two you smell, one you taste. |
| Sensory Interrupts | Cold water on your face, holding an ice cube, or eating something intensely sour forces your nervous system to redirect its attention. Particularly useful during the onset of a panic attack. Sour candy genuinely works. |
| Breathwork | Slow, diaphragmatic breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system, your body's rest and recovery mode. Simple, free, and available anywhere. |
| Movement & Environment Change | Moving your body or changing your physical environment gives anxious energy somewhere to go. Step outside, take a walk, move to a different room. A scene change can interrupt a spiral. |
| Coping Statements | "This is hard, and I will get through it." We build a personalized set of honest, realistic statements that reinforce your resilience and capacity to cope. |
| Healthy Distraction | After acknowledging the anxiety and using grounding tools, engaging in something you genuinely enjoy helps your mind recover. This is not avoidance. It is intentional rest. |
Your anxiety questions, answered directly
What does anxiety therapy actually involve?
Anxiety therapy in Chicago with me typically starts with understanding your specific anxiety: what triggers it, how it shows up in your body and your thinking, and what patterns have developed around it over time. From there, we build a personalized treatment approach drawing on evidence-based methods including CBT, ACT, and ERP depending on what fits your situation. Sessions are 45 minutes, usually weekly, and the work happens both in session and in your daily life between appointments. Most clients start noticing shifts in how they relate to their anxiety within the first several weeks. Deeper, more lasting change builds over months of consistent work. I offer both in-person sessions in Chicago and virtual anxiety therapy throughout Illinois, so you can choose the format that fits your life.
Is anxiety something I will always have to deal with?
Not in the way you are experiencing it now. While some degree of anxiety is a normal part of being human and is not something we want to completely eliminate, the intensity, frequency, and impact on your daily life can change substantially with the right anxiety treatment. Most clients who commit to the process find that their anxiety becomes much more manageable. Even when it shows up, they have the tools to work with it rather than be controlled by it. The goal is not a life without anxiety. It is a life where anxiety no longer determines what you do or do not do.
I feel anxious but I am not sure if it is bad enough to need therapy.
This is something I hear very frequently, especially from high-functioning adults who compare their experience to others and conclude they do not have it bad enough to deserve support. Here is my honest take: if anxiety is affecting your sleep, your relationships, your work performance, your ability to make decisions, or your general quality of life in any way, that is more than enough reason to seek anxiety therapy. You do not need to be having daily panic attacks to qualify. The earlier you address anxiety, the less entrenched the patterns become and the faster the work tends to go.
Do I need medication for anxiety, or can therapy alone be enough?
Therapy alone is highly effective for anxiety, and research consistently supports CBT and ACT-based anxiety treatment as first-line interventions for most anxiety presentations. Some people benefit from medication alongside therapy, particularly for more severe anxiety or when symptoms are making it hard to engage in the therapeutic work. If medication is something you want to explore, I am happy to discuss it openly and can refer you to a psychiatrist in the Chicago area for an evaluation. That is always your decision to make, and I will support whatever approach makes sense for you.
How is anxiety therapy different for teens versus adults?
At its core, anxiety works the same way in teens and adults: the negative thought patterns, the physical sensations, the avoidance cycle. What is different is the content and the delivery. Teen anxiety tends to organize around school, peers, social media, and identity. Adult anxiety tends to focus on career, health, relationships, and financial concerns. The therapeutic relationship also looks different with teens: I spend more time building trust, I speak their language, I involve parents strategically rather than as a default. I use CBT extensively with teens because its logic resonates with them. If you are looking for anxiety therapy for your teen in Chicago or throughout Illinois, the free consultation is a good place to start.
How quickly will I feel better after starting anxiety therapy?
Many clients notice some shift within the first few sessions, even just the relief of finally talking about it with someone who genuinely understands anxiety and does not minimize it. More substantial change typically takes weeks to months depending on how long the anxiety has been present, how entrenched the avoidance patterns are, and how much you are able to practice the tools between sessions. Anxiety therapy is not passive. The work that happens between appointments matters just as much as what happens during them.
I have had anxiety my whole life. Is it too late to change?
No. I want to be direct about this because it is a belief that keeps a lot of people from seeking help. The brain retains the capacity for change throughout adulthood. Clients who have lived with anxiety for decades still make meaningful, lasting progress in anxiety therapy. The patterns may be more established, which means the work takes longer, but it absolutely still works. If you have been living with anxiety your whole life and have accepted it as just who you are, I would gently push back on that. It may be who you have been so far. It does not have to be who you are going forward.
You deserve to feel lighter. You deserve to stop carrying everything alone.
Take the first step toward anxiety relief. A free 20-minute consultation costs you nothing — and it's the best way to find out if we're the right fit.