Therapy for Anxiety, Panic, & Phobias in Colorado Springs | Online Across CO & FL
Deeply specialized support to help you take your life back from anxiety and experience real joy again.
You’re tired of always being on high alert, living in survival mode–exhausted from constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Racing heart, rapid breathing, tense muscles, tight chest, sick stomach, difficulty sleeping, isolating, panic attacks...
You know exactly what anxiety feels like. You'd do anything to stop it, but in spite of trying everything you can think of… it's still there. You even have anxiety about your anxiety, always worrying it could take over again at any moment - which creates a vicious cycle that's hard to break.
You really want to stop feeling like your anxiety is controlling you, but instead you feel constantly sucked down the rabbit hole of what-if and worst-case-scenario thinking. And even though your thoughts seem completely irrational to you, you don’t know how to change them, which is endlessly frustrating.
Despite appearing to have it all together, your inner critic is on overdrive, and it’s hard to keep up the facade - let alone actually feel good about yourself.
Living with high anxiety is like wearing a pair of dark glasses - it’s difficult to see yourself and the world around you clearly.
Excessive worry impacts every area of your life - often holding you back from your biggest passions, desires, goals, and dreams. And after a while, it can start to feel like something you’ll always have to live with… “This is just who I am, and I can’t change it.”
Anxiety does not have to be your normal, and life does not have to keep feeling this way.
You are not broken - nothing is wrong with you, something very normal is happening inside of you. And anxiety is not who you are - it’s a response to perceiving a threat, or believing something bad could happen.
Your brain and body are hard-wired to keep you safe, so when something feels threatening - even if rationally you know it’s not - your body will launch an automatic response before your brain has a chance to think about it. When this happens, your internal alarm system is actually doing exactly what it’s supposed to… but it’s on overdrive, reacting at the wrong times in the wrong ways. In therapy we’ll use practical tools to calm and reset your internal alarm so it works like it’s supposed to again - allowing you to get relief and regain control over anxiety quickly.
You can actually get to a place where you relax and enjoy life again, with a steady inner stability regardless of external circumstances. I see it happen all the time - even if you’ve been living with anxiety for years or have tried therapy before without experiencing much change. Therapy with me can help you shift from what-if and worst-case-scenario thinking to living in a calm and quiet mind. You can regain your confidence, experience peace in the present, and restore a sense of hope and excitement for the future.
MY APPROACH
I often have clients reach out and tell me they’ve been to therapy before but felt like they were just talking, they didn’t get things done and their anxiety didn’t change. In our work together, we’ll build a relationship, we’ll talk, we’ll explore emotions, and we’ll even laugh together, but at the end of the day our primary goal is to create healing and change in your life.
For more than 25 years I’ve helped people overcome anxiety using a step by step process and evidence based approaches that help you take control of anxiety for good.
Together we’ll work to…
-
Anxiety takes a tremendous toll on your body, your mind, and every area of your life. The thing is, you can calm anxiety symptoms pretty quickly if you just know what to do. In our first two to four sessions we’ll identify coping skills that put you back in control of anxiety so that you can start feeling relief right away. Different things work at different times, and different things work for different people - so we’ll experiment with many options, from the things you know like deep breathing, to other nervous system calming techniques you may not have tried yet - until we find the things that work best for you.
-
Patterns of negative “what-if” thinking and mentally tearing yourself down hold you back and keep you stuck. We’ll work together to shift into new ways of thinking that quiet your inner critic and the constant hum of anxiety in your mind so you can start to relax and feel more present. Sometimes this is as simple as learning a straightforward process of catching anxiety-provoking thoughts and challenging them to change them, and other times this happens as we heal deeper wounds and process past experiences.
-
There’s a big difference between managing symptoms and actually healing what’s causing them. I want you to leave therapy not just coping with anxiety day in and day out, but completely healed from the root cause of the anxiety. Our ultimate goal is to come to a point of resolution so that anxiety is no longer holding you back from the life you want to live. We’ll partner together to create a treatment plan designed around your goals that takes you from relieving symptoms early in our work, to healing the root cause of those symptoms by the end of our work.
Maybe you’ve been to therapy before (or you’ve scrolled through endless internet searches) and you’ve picked up some coping skills - only to feel frustrated because they barely move the needle.
Here’s where a lot of coping falls short - it’s not enough to learn a few skills, you also need to understand why you’re having anxiety for it to make sense what you do about it. Otherwise, most techniques just feel random or temporary.
That’s what makes my approach different. Instead of just handing you a toolbox, I teach you - clearly and simply - how your brain and body create anxiety, what keeps it stuck, and exactly how to calm it for good. When you get the “why” behind it all, the skills finally click, and relief starts to last.
My methods
I developed the Anxiety Reset Protocol ™ to quickly relieve anxiety and put you back in control.
“I don’t want to just talk, I need to know what to do.”
I’ve heard this so many times from my clients with anxiety needing to get their lives back. In response, many years ago I decided to dig in deeper to really understand the root cause and neurobiology of anxiety, and how to use that understanding to quickly change longstanding patterns. What I learned and put into practice evolved into The Anxiety Reset Protocol ™, a simple 3 step process that can help you…
Understand why you’re having anxiety - it’s probably not what you think
Use that understanding to interrupt cycles of anxiety - now you can quickly diffuse it and stop feeling constantly on edge
Identify a variety of tools and coping skills that work for you consistently - so that you regain a sense of control over anxiety
Using this approach, my clients typically experience relief from anxiety within 2-4 sessions - it won’t solve the entire problem, but it will put you back in control so that life starts to feel manageable again. It doesn’t have to take a long time or a complicated process to feel better, you can get fast relief.
EMDR
Anxiety can be connected to a past painful event or an anticipated future event. EMDR can help to resolve the root cause of anxiety so that you get out of the cycle of constantly managing symptoms and actually heal what’s causing them. EMDR is an evidence based protocol that can bring resolution more quickly than traditional talk therapy.
Faith Integrative
Anxiety can be complicated for Christians. It can feel like if you just pray more, if you just have enough faith, your anxiety should leave. However, you have both a physical life and a spiritual life, and incorporating both into an overall treatment plan can leverage your faith as a resource while addressing the physical causes of anxiety.
Therapy for Anxiety, Panic, & Phobias can help you to:
Replace shame with understanding - when you know the why behind your anxiety you can stop feeling “broken” and finally rebuild your confidence
Gain tools and skills to cope so you can consistently lower and control anxiety, feeling assured that you can handle whatever comes
Quiet the “what-if” spiral and worst-case-scenario thinking, freeing you up to go after the life you want without fear holding you back
Build an unshakable state of calm on the inside - no matter what’s happening on the outside - leaving you grounded in strength
Feel fully present instead of worrying about the future - so you can make clear, confident choices and live with ease and joy instead of constant worry
You can take control over anxiety so it finally loses its control over you.
Frequently asked questions
-
Treating anxiety, panic, and phobias is not just something I can do… it’s what I specialize in. Rather than being a general practitioner, I have committed to being a specialist in this area. Anxiety is so common, that you’ll find most therapists say they treat it - however, there are some unique considerations that need to be understood when working with anxiety. Through more than 25 years of experience treating anxiety and extensive, advanced training specific to anxiety, I’ve developed an approach that takes these considerations into account and has demonstrated success in resolving anxiety symptoms. Now I train other therapists on how to use this approach with their own clients to treat anxiety, panic, and phobias.
-
EMDR can be tremendously helpful in resolving anxiety, panic, and phobias at the root so that these experiences truly change in a deep and lasting way. Whether anxiety is connected to a past experience or trauma, or related to a future worry or event, EMDR provides a clear and structured way to process what’s triggering to the point that it feels neutral. I have advanced training in using EMDR to treat anxiety, panic, and phobias, and have found it to be very effective with each of these issues.
-
Currently, the most researched and evidenced approach to treating OCD is Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), although there is emerging research demonstrating the effectiveness of EMDR in the treatment of OCD. I am a Certified EMDR Therapist, but not a trained ERP therapist. If OCD is the primary diagnosis and reason for seeking therapy, I recommend seeking out an OCD specialist trained in ERP. If OCD symptoms are related to a trauma, I have experience and success treating the trauma and reducing OCD symptoms using a specific EMDR protocol. I also offer adjunct EMDR Intensives in which I’ll coordinate care with your OCD therapist so that you can continue to work with them while you and I process trauma in short term, intensive therapy.
-
My clinical license is not a medical license and does not allow me to prescribe medication. Sometimes medication is helpful in reducing symptoms just enough to make the work of therapy easier and results quicker to achieve - when we agree that medication may be helpful, I maintain connections to prescribers I trust so that I can provide referrals and coordinate care when requested. Many of my clients do not want to take medication, and when this is the case we have lots of other avenues we can explore to manage and resolve symptoms. I may make recommendations based on my observations, but I will always support your decisions when it comes to medication as these decisions can feel complex.