Effective Anxiety Treatment in
Boulder, CO
Anxiety treatment is available throughout the state via online therapy in Colorado
You feel stressed, worried, overwhelmed, and anxious. Some nights you can’t fall asleep because you’re so worked up. It’s hard for you to be in the moment and enjoy life because you’re always worried something bad will happen.
Anxiety is one of the most common causes of decreased happiness and loss of satisfaction in our lives. Anxiety is treatable. There’s no need to keep living overwhelmed and unsatisfied.
You may have anxiety if…
- You feel like you’re failing even though you work hard.
- Most days, you feel unhappy or stressed out.
- Anxiety and stress are keeping you from being happy.
- You are doing all the ‘things you should’ but you still feel uneasy, anxious or defeated.
- It feels like you just can’t stop stressing even when you try to relax.
- You’re commonly overwhelmed by everyday life.
- You often feel inadequate or uncertain.
What is Anxiety?
Common Symptoms of Anxiety:
Anxiety looks different from person to person because as humans, we’re unique. But, people who have an anxiety disorder u usually some or most of these symptoms:
- Trouble focusing or your mind racing
- Overthinking things or fixating on fears
- Feelings of ‘high stress’ last for several weeks or happens when your life is mostly calm
- Often feeling tired and experiencing sleep difficulties
- Feeling like your brain is going fast most days, but you are not getting much accomplished
- Irritability or sadness is affecting your job, parenting, or relationships
- Feeling like there’s not enough time or you don’t know where to begin
- Commonly feeling defeated, hopeless, or frustrated
What is a panic attack?
There are quite a few ways to explain a panic attack, but for brevity and clarity, let’s think about it in terms of the nervous system. A panic attack happens when something triggers your brain system into an extreme fight, flight, or freeze mode. That’s why you may have a pounding heart, shortness of breath, or excessive sweating. The animal part of your brain is turned on high and the rational part of our brain is turned down or off. So, your brain begins sending out chemical messages that will help you run from or fight a perceived danger. Your brain fully believes you are experiencing a mortal threat even if you are just picking out bread in the grocery store. This process speeds up your heartbeat, it makes your breathing become shallow and your rational brain (prefrontal cortex) turns down/off because it’s too slow for that kind of response. If there was actually a threat, this would be a great response because it would help you survive.
But, the problem is that, by definition, a panic attack means that there isn’t actually a threat, but your whole body is behaving as if there is. Panic attacks can happen during high-stress times or they can appear out of the blue.
Common Symptoms of a Panic Attack Include:
- An intense sense of impending doom or danger
- Fear of losing control or dying
- Rapid or pounding heart rate
- Sweating
- Trembling, shaking
- Chills or hot flashes
- Shortness of breath or tightness in your throat
- Nausea or abdominal cramps
- Tightness in your chest (feels like a heart attack)
- Headaches, dizziness, or lightheadedness
- Numbness or tingling
- Feeling detached or numb
If you want to learn more about panic attacks and how to cope with them, Read therapist Gennifer Morely’s article How to have a better panic attack.
“Simply put, effective counseling can help you enjoy your life more. ”
– Gennifer Morely MA LPC
7 Ways our Anxiety Therapists Can Help You During Anxiety Treatment in Boulder, CO
- Teach you coping techniques to make the symptoms of anxiety less painful or destructive
- Lessen your overall stress and anxiety
- Help you increase your ability to prevent anxiety all together
- Assist you in understanding the role anxiety plays in your life
- Teach you the skills to stop anxiety from negatively impacting your career, relationships, and social life
- They give you control and power over stress, worry, and anxiety
- Help you feel more relaxed, happier, and at ease.
Anxiety is Destructive and it’s Hard to Change On Your Own
North Boulder Counseling’s Approach to Anxiety Treatment
Our Therapists use an Integrated Approach to Therapy for Anxiety
DBT or CBT
CBT: Cognitive Behavioral therapy
DBT: Dialectical Behavioral Therapy with Mindfulness
Both DBT and CBT help your therapist understand how your feelings, thoughts, and actions work together. When we understand this, then we can develop a treatment plan to help you cope with your symptoms and prevent anxiety and stress from being such a prominent part of your life.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a simple way of saying being present in the moment. It allows you to focus on getting to know your anxiety better. You often spend so much time trying to avoid our anxiety because it feels uncomfortable, so you really don’t know much about it. All you know is that you don’t like it. When you practice mindfulness and pay attention to your anxious thoughts you will learn a lot of useful information that will help you overcome it. Often the best way to interrupt anxiety is by leaning into it. When you do this, you will learn that your anxious thoughts are not as threatening as you thought. Mindfulness therapists ask things like; what do you feel in your body when you are anxious? How is your breathing, your heartbeat, your vision?
Neurobiology and Anxiety
Your brain takes input from your senses and determines in milliseconds if an event is a threat or not. If it is deemed a threat, your reaction is determined by the fight or flight center part of your brain. Whenever that portion of your brain is employed, access to higher-level thinking is limited. This means: if you are feeling anxious, you are also unlikely to use rationale thinking to stop your anxiety.
EMDR for Anxiety
EMDR is short for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It’s famous for helping veterans and trauma survivors cope with PTSD. But, it can be very helpful to treat anxiety. Anxiety can be a side effect of trauma or caused by a distressing event or series of events. EMDR can help you remember what happened and acknowledge how sad or hard it was. But, it will lessen the “hold” it has on you. EMDR isn’t magic, but it may be able to help you move through your trauma or anxiety if traditional talk-therapy didn’t work.
“Therapy will help you make more room in your life for the good stuff”
– Gennifer Morley MA LPC
Begin Anxiety Treatment in Boulder, CO
You don’t have to let anxiety keep you from your best life. Therapy for anxiety can give you ways to work with your anxiety so it doesn’t consume you. It can also help you figure out how to have less anxiety so that anxiety doesn’t keep you from living your best life. Ultimately, therapy helps you make more room in your life for the good stuff so that your day-to-day life is more satisfying. To begin counseling in Boulder, CO, follow these steps:
- Contact our therapy center
- Request an appointment to learn more about our therapists and anxiety treatment
- Begin therapy and feel relief from the symptoms of anxiety so you can live your best life and thrive!
Other Services offered at North Boulder Counseling:
Our Boulder, CO counseling center is committed to helping you overcome anxiety so you can live the life you want. Our therapists offer an anxiety treatment intensive program, postpartum anxiety treatment, postpartum depression counseling, perinatal support, counseling for women, parenting coaching, grief counseling, trauma treatment and EMDR, depression treatment, teen therapy, LGTBQ counseling, young adult counseling, and play therapy. If you’re a clinician looking for professional supervision and consulting or business coaching for therapists, we can help! Furthermore, if you can’t make it to our counseling clinic, we offer online therapy in Colorado to help you overcome your challenges. Contact our counseling clinic today to begin your healing journey towards better mental health!
Which of these best describes you?
1. I don’t stop moving or thinking until I crash.
(I get a lot done *when* I can focus BUT I feel out of control and the crashes can be hard)
2. I worry a lot. If I am honest the majority of my thoughts are some kind of worrying.
(I feel like I’m keeping myself safe and being smart BUT I sometimes miss the good stuff looking for what’s wrong. And worrying so much is exhausting!)
3. I have a very full life, and things look great on the outside. But inside, I know that something’s out of balance.
(I have accomplished a lot that I am proud of BUT I don’t feel like I’m taking care of my well-being. It might be time to reassess my priorities.)
Do any of these feel familiar to you?
- I’m successful but not especially happy.
- I feel anxious and/or depressed at times
- I am a new mom and it feels harder than I’d like to admit.
- My child is sad or anxious and I don’t know how to help them.
- I am scared that my teen may be suicidal.
- I know everything is fine but I feel afraid and can’t enjoy my life.
- I am missing/wasting my life being anxious and stressed.
- I can’t focus.
- I feel anxious all the time.
WE GET IT...
Your anxiety is frustrating and can even be painful.
The good news is It Only Gets Better From Here
How can Therapy for Anxiety help you?
- Increase your awareness and understanding of your anxiety so you can see the patterns.
- Gain skills to better tolerate when you do feel anxious or stressed
- Find ways out of the anxiety sooner when it comes on
- Understand the role anxiety plays in your life, both helpful and not so helpful.
- Increase your control and power over stress, worry, and anxiety
- Feel more relaxed, happier, and at ease: enjoy your life more.