IBS and anxiety create a firestorm that needs to be calmed down, soothed
Anxiety, Managing emotions, Neurology

IBS and Anxiety: How to soothe your gut using your mind

Written by herecounseling

IBS and anxiety can negatively impact some of the most meaningful and connecting moments in life. It can turn a casual get-together or date sour. People who experience IBS can constantly worry about having another attack. Agoraphobia is common too – the fear of leaving home. It’s understandable why people who experience IBS issues experience heightened anxiety around everyday situations. 

People with IBS can sometimes feel powerless, like the best they can do is avoid food triggers.

Yet one of the main causes of the inflammation of the gut is your brain.

We’re going to look at the link between anxiety and the gut so you can understand your body better. You’ll learn how anxiety impacts your gut and how to listen to your gut’s activity as a signal. My hope is that by learning to pay attention to yourself in a new way, you’ll be able to not only avoid difficult IBS symptoms, but to learn how to soothe anxiety and feel more like yourself.

The gut is connected to the brain? How? Why??

First of all, all parts of the body have a bi-directional connection with the brain. In fact, the purpose of the brain is to receive input from the entire body, make sense of it contextually, then relay a response that changes the body. The reason the gut-brain connection often needs special explanation is because it’s hard for us to think of the gut as a part of the body that would need connection with the brain. Isn’t the purpose of the gut kind of passive? Don’t we just digest food there? Why would it need to be connected with the brain?

There are 2 reasons worth exploring.

First, what we eat tells us a lot about our environment.

When we’re full, for example, it’s a signal that our bodies are safe, we have what we need. When we’re hungry, that’s contextual information too. We can extend this to how our bodies feel when we eat certain foods. All of this is good information that should impact our intuition about our environment, something the brain is always trying to grasp. 

But there’s a second reason for the connection as well:

The gut needs context to do its job well.

Imagine, for example, you have a 16oz steak you’re trying to digest (something that requires significant blood flow and energy), and suddenly you need to run from a threat. If the gut didn’t know there was a threat, it would continue to try to digest the steak and you would be unable to run. But since your brain is connected to your gut, your gut receives a signal to stop digesting (and in some cases to vomit or defecate) so you could use that blood and energy for your heart, lungs, and muscles. In contrast, when you feel safe, you’re surrounded by loved ones, and you eat a satiating meal, your brain tells your gut it’s time to dig in.

In this way your mental state – ideally a result of your intuition of your current environment – impacts the permeability, blood flow, gut microbiome composition, and digestive enzyme composition… and vice versa.

There are 2 main pathways by which your brain and gut interact: a hormonal pathway and a neural pathway. Both pathways are bi-directional, meaning that the activity of the gut impacts your brain, and also that the activity of the brain impacts the gut.

The cortisol pathway: stoking the fire

The hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis) is the hormonal highway between your brain and your gut. The hypothalamus’ job is to keep your body in homeostasis – to keep things in rhythm. When you wake up in the morning, like clockwork your hypothalamus signals to your pituitary to produce adrenaline to get your body moving. Your adrenal glands in turn release cortisol. Your gut has cortisol receptors that signal to the gut that it’s time to move around. This signal changes the composition of your gut biome, your gut biome’s permeability, and blood flow. 

Cortisol, over time, creates a leaky gut that is vulnerable to IBS episodes.

The vagal pathway: dousing the fire

Your body also needs a way to soothe itself and return to normal. This is the job of your vagus nerve, which signals for your body to slow back down. If cortisol is like gasoline on the fire, then your vagus nerve is like cooling water that helps the gut return to normal. The vagus nerve is part of your parasympathetic nervous system, which is the way your body returns to safety and calm. 

The vagus nerve runs down past your heart, lungs, and gut. When you see something sweet or comforting, you might feel an opening sensation in your chest and put a hand over your heart. You might take a deep breath and say “awww”.  This wonderful sensation is your vagus nerve signaling for your heart, lungs, and gut to open up and slow down. 

When your gut receives the vagus nerve signal, lots of things change. The vagus nerve signal:

  1. Starts an anti-inflammatory process in your gut
  2. Slows the cortisol signal
  3. Enforces a stronger gut barrier (decreases gut permeability)

The vagus nerve signal builds a strong gut environment that protects you from IBS episodes.

What an IBS episode looks like inside: Anxiety as a firestorm

When your body is in extreme and prolonged states of stress, high cortisol levels keep the gut in an inflamed state, leading to chronic changes in the gut microbiome and difficulty processing food. This puts the gut – and brain – in a fragile position, or a high “allostatic load”: the cumulative burden of multiple stressors. In this fragile state, any additional stressor can set off a spiral much like a spark will ignite a dry pile of hay. 

An additional stressor could be anything: an inflammatory food, or a psychological or environmental stressor, or a combination of all three. While the trigger may be like a spark that starts the fire, the real issue is not the spark itself. The real issue is the spiral – the firestorm – left unmitigated.

When your body gets anxious, it usually has methods to calm back down.

We call this self-regulation. It’s like a fire hose that stops the emotional mind from getting overwhelmed. We might think of a person who is able to take a deep breath when they feel stressed, or to reassure themselves of a positive outcome when they are auditioning. This calming ability happens in our frontal lobes. The orbital frontal cortex and our anterior cingulate helps us soothe ourselves by bringing to mind soothing experiences from our past. We quite literally pull into mind a comforting memory, perhaps a parent rubbing our backs when we’re scared. For someone with a panic disorder or IBS, this frontal lobe circuitry isn’t strong enough to combat the flames of anxiety. 

Thus, in an IBS episode, anxiety creates inflammation in the gut either directly or via the HPA axis. In turn, the gut sends a stress signal back to the brain that there’s a problem. If not soothed, this signal triggers the HPA axis, and we release more cortisol into the gut. The changes in our levels of cortisol change our brains as well. When in a panicked state, our frontal lobes shut down in order to get to immediate safety. When this happens, our ability to soothe ourselves is inaccessible.  It’s as if the raging fire destroys the few available fire hoses. 

IBS and anxiety create a firestorm that needs to be calmed down, soothed

When our level of stress passes a certain point, we are unable to stop the spiral: the fire will simply exhaust itself. For those who experience IBS, this is a familiar emotional place: the depressing surrender to an uncontrollable experience. 

So what can you do? How to stop the firestrom of anxiety and heal IBS

It’s common for people with IBS to simply avoid triggers. This often means making a list of foods that trigger an attack and avoiding the list as much as possible. Yet, if we think about IBS as a complex neurological pattern that doesn’t simply originate in the gut, but in the relationship between the brain and the gut, then we can start to think about healing in a different way.

1. Create a calmer baseline

Part of the reason certain foods are triggering is the fragility of your gut – the baseline level of functioning that exists. Earlier we referred to this as the “dry bed of hay” that is ready for a match to send it up in flames. What would it mean to have less fragile intestine? Part of what creates fragility in the gut is chronic stressors, or high allostatic load. Elevated cortisol changes our entire physiology. In a real way, anxiety is not simply a “feeling” that impacts IBS – it’s a bodily state.

As such, our blood flow, immune response, inflammation of gut lining, and even our gut microbiome change dramatically when cortisol is present. When our bodies are in chronic stress, our gut cannot heal. The gut stays in this permeable, inflamed, stressed state. Healing our gut doesn’t simply mean avoiding triggers, it means increasing the times when we are completely relaxed and safe. The “safe feeling” we get when we sit down to talk with a trusted friend, when we meditate or pray, or when we receive a long hug, is an indication of our physiology returning to a soothing baseline. That state is what your gut needs to reduce baseline inflammation and restore your microbiome.

2. Grow your Self-Awareness

While some triggers may be food-related, other triggers may be contextual. When looking back at recent attacks, we can wonder about larger contexts that might have created a higher cortisol response. It’s highly possible that attacks are due as much to your emotional state as the foods you eat. 

If you are unaware of the cause of your anxiety, you are also unable to self-soothe. To use our fire analogy, a lack of self-awareness is akin to having a fire department that has headphones in. It can’t hear the bells going off until they reach a deafening level; until it’s too late. However, when we’re aware of our anxiety, we’re able to self-soothe before the fire starts raging. We can calm ourselves down, helping the vagus nerve to send signals to our gut that we’re safe. 

Self-awareness isn’t an intellectual, but an empathetic effort.

Sometimes we can think of self-awareness as a cold process similar to cartography. For example, if we could just chart out our anxieties we could keep them in control. The real process is much more emotional. Heinz Kohut describes the process of self-awareness as “empathic inquiry”. This means visualizing, leaning in, and coming close enough to the emotions for us to feel their pain. This is a difficult and sometimes scary process to encounter alone. Often we don’t have the perspective to see ourselves. Sometimes we are simply too defended against our own pain to really feel it. 

Yet our brains are meant to heal with empathy. Remember those self-soothing frontal-lobe areas we mentioned earlier? (Orbital-frontal cortex and the anterior cingulate) Those pathways aren’t just there by default. When we’re very young, the empathy and soothing we receive by our caregivers become etched in our brains. These early interactions are the pathways that we rely on throughout life to self-soothe. 

Your self-soothing ability can grow. When we increase our self-awareness, our empathy for our the anxious and unsafe feelings grow. That empathy is like a fire department that can respond to a fire with soothing water before it begins to rage. 

3. Reduce Chronic Anxiety

It’s been demonstrated that even momentary times of calm and peace can be overshadowed and outweighed by stressors. When we’re exposed to a stress, or multiple stressors, the injection of cortisol into your system takes a while to subside. This is called allostatic load. The moments of deep breathing or mindfulness you practice throughout the day are important, but they sadly don’t outweigh the internal stress that can keep you in a high-cortisol state. 

What’s the solution? Often the biggest stressors we carry are internal beliefs that impact our entire outlook on life. There is a relationship between early traumatic experiences and later IBS symptoms. This is because like a tea bag in hot water, our childhood experiences color and impact everything we experience. Resolving IBS means experiencing the relief of working through your anxiety. Anxiety is a signal that needs attention and understanding in order to resolve. 

IBS and Anxiety: You can heal your gut

We have therapists who can help you reduce chronic anxiety. Identifying triggering foods is important, but can only get you so far. The stressor that most aggravates IBS is often not specific foods, but the chronic stress and anxiety that creates a fragile gut lining. Resolving and reducing anxiety physiologically allows your gut to repair the gut lining so you can be resilient.

Reducing anxiety impacts your everyday life. Not only does it help your gut, but helps your relationships, your job performance, your sleep, and your enjoyment of life. What would it be like for you to experience freedom from anxiety? How different would your day be today if you had more peace? We want to help you get there. Contact one of our therapists who specializes in anxiety. Schedule a free consultation and see how we can help you.

View our therapists who help with anxiety

This client addressed anxiety to heal IBS issues:

My gut wrenched as I lifted myself from the bathroom floor. I looked in the mirror at my face. It was covered in hives. The hives went down my neck. I lifted my shirt to find my entire torso was covered in hot, red, itching hives. Internally, my stomach was tied in knots. What was happening to me? I had no history of allergies. I didn’t eat anything out of the ordinary. And yet I had just spent to last hour on the toilet.

I had traveled to the desert to facilitate a leadership retreat. I pulled up to the AirBnB where we would all be staying, set out the chips and guacamole, and people began arriving. That’s when my scalp started itching. I ignored that until I began to feel a stabbing pain in my stomach and ran to the bathroom. The people I was there to lead filled the time. Finally I mustered the strength to come out of the bathroom and ask for help. They ended up driving me to the emergency room.

When I returned home, my doctors were perplexed. The allergy tests, MRI’s, scopes, bloodwork and exams showed nothing.

Two months later, I traveled to visit family for Christmas. The night after our Christmas family dinner, I woke at 2am with hives and pain in my stomach so intense I lost consciousness. My family called an ambulance and I spent three days recovering in the hospital. 

Over two years, this happened six times, all of them during a flight or visit with family. Finally, after numerous visits to doctors, I saw a therapist. Over the course of several months, we were able to explore each of these events. We began to pay attention to what my gut was signaling to me. It became clear that my body was dealing with anxiety that I had been repressing for years, anxiety I had become numb to.

Under the care of my therapist, I’ve been able to go on trips again without attacks. I am actually able to feel my anxiety now, rather than becoming crippled by it.

Today, I see my gut pain as one way that I can tell that I’m getting anxious. When my stomach begins to tighten up, I pay attention to what could be causing anxiety. In the past, my gut had to “shout” to get my attention that something was wrong. After therapy, my gut only has to tighten a little and I respond by caring for myself and asking for help.

– Anonymous Client
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Anxiety

How to stop a Panic Attack: Video Explanation

Written by Connor McClenahan

A panic attack can be really scary and overwhelming.

A lot of people can get frustrated with themselves when they experience a panic attack.

It can be something that happens constantly and as a “regular” thing in your life. Because of that, you don’t feel comfortable going out in social settings or to work or other places where you fear you’ll have another panic attack. So you stay close to home and isolate yourself.

Panic attacks are a difficult experience that can cause disruption to your daily life. Let’s talk more specifically about what they are and what you can do the next time you find yourself experiencing one.

What is a Panic Attack?

A panic attack is a heightened state of anxiety. It can feel like a heart attack; you might experience heart palpitations (your heart beats really fast), chest tightness, headaches, and the inability to think clearly.

Sometimes the only thing you can do when you’re experiencing a panic attack is lay down in bed or some other safe space and wait for the pain to pass.

Why do we Have Panic Attacks?

Panic attacks can be a sign of dysregulated anxiety that’s become extremely physiological. Whenever we get anxious, our bodies sometimes give out smaller signals at first. We might feel fluttering in our chest, or we feel tension and anxiety around certain situations. Then it can build without our knowing it, until it gets to the point where it feels like something is physiologically wrong. Many people even go into the ER because they think they’re having a heart attack.

Woman overcoming panic attacks with self-care

There’s actually a lot you can learn about yourself if you are experiencing panic attacks. When you experience panic attacks, it’s a sign that something is off in your life. Something is hard to deal with, something is putting pressure on you, you’re experiencing some sort of big stressor in your life. However, sometimes you don’t know what that is on the surface, which is frustrating and difficult.

How to Reduce Panic Attacks

1. Journal Panic Attack History


Set aside some time to journal and ask yourself a few questions. When did the panic attacks start? How bad are they? What’s the normal course of a panic attack for you? When does the pain start? What symptoms do you experience? How intense do those symptoms get? When does the panic attack finally pass? Usually panic attacks last under an hour, typically around 30 minutes. Have you always experienced panic attacks or when did they start to become a thing in your life? Was there a moment in which they became worse?


The reason these things are important to know is because when you go into a panic attack, you want to know what triggered it and how long the course of the panic attack might last.

2. Make a plan for the panic attack


A lot of people get frustrated when they experience panic attacks; they just want them to go away. But once you get to that heightened state, there’s not much you can do aside from waiting it out. As difficult as it may be, waiting it out requires you to release, relax, and let it all pass. So find a comfortable, safe space where you’re not around other people. It might be helpful to have something to hold, somewhere to lay down, something to drink – whatever will help you feel safest. Let yourself ride it out, knowing that it will eventually pass. You don’t have to talk about your anxiety during those 30-ish minutes or try to figure things out ways to make the panic go away. You just need to ride the wave. At the end of those 30-some minutes (or however long it takes for the panic to pass) is when you can do some assessing.

3. Assess Causes for the Panic Attack


Get out the same journal you originally wrote in (or a piece of paper or even a Notes app) and ask yourself: When did I first start experiencing this panic attack? When did it first start to come on? What was the earliest point that I can recognize I started to feel anxious? For some, the anxiety builds for a week before they experience a panic attack. For others, the anxiety builds for a day before they experience a panic attack. What was that moment for you, in which you started to feel anxious and tense? See if you can do a bit of exploration to understand the earliest moment at which you remember yourself feeling anxious.

4. Work with a Therapist who can treat a Panic Attack


In addition to these things, working with a professional will be important in order to understand your panic attack history and to learn ways to manage and regulate your anxiety before it escalates to a panic attack. Through therapy, you get the opportunity to learn how to pay attention to the cues your body gives you when you are feeling anxious, and know how to take care of yourself in the moments when you are feeling increasingly stressed. You learn to listen to yourself, to take care of yourself, and to resolve the anxiety before you find yourself in a full blown panic attack. We have therapists who can help with anxiety and panic attacks.

A panic attack can be treated, and you can experience relief

Those who deal with anxiety and panic attacks often feel very alone, but you are not alone. Please reach out to a professional if these are things you are struggling with. It might be nerve-wracking to do so but doing so is also a significant step towards better understanding yourself and prioritizing your mental and emotional well-being.

I help professionals who experience panic attacks to learn new ways of coping with difficult emotions.

Learn about Therapy for Panic Attacks
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Anxiety

The ABC’s of Panic Attacks: How to Empower Yourself

Written by Here Counseling

By Arianne MacBean

Many clients come to therapy because they experience panic. Panic, or intense anxiety, can show up in the most random places and moments. You’re sitting there, doing your thing, and then suddenly you feel dizzy, your heart races, you feel nauseous, and a sense of doom overtakes you. This is panic, and it can feel overwhelming. However, there are three steps you can take to understand, manage, and re-ground yourself if you find yourself in the throes of an episode.

Panic attacks are a way your body deals with fear.

Before we get to the ABC’s of how to deal with panic, it’s important to understand that panic is a way your body deals with fear, and it is a natural survival mechanism. In a way, panic is your body trying to help you. You’ve probably heard of the flight, flight, freeze responses that all animals have when they are faced with something that threatens them. These innate responses say that when the animal is frightened, they should either engage aggressively, run away, or hide. Fight, flight, and freeze are tools that keep animals alive.

You can ease out of panic attacks.

When a human animal experiences panic, it’s the same thing. Panic in a human is saying, “You’re scared, and you need to do something about it.” But why do we experience panic when we’re just sitting on the couch? Because life is complicated for human animals, and we have many kinds of micro and macro threats that we experience over a lifetime. Those threats become recorded into the body and, especially if we do not process them, they can show up unannounced to remind us that we do indeed need to deal with them. In this way, panic is a reminder that we have some fear that needs to be processed. This is why so many clients come to therapy – to deal with these unconscious fears. So, when you’re not in the therapy office processing emotions in a safe space with a caring advocate, how can you soothe yourself out of panic?

The ABC’s of Panic Attacks: 3 ways to recover

A. Acknowledge.

It’s vital that when you begin to experience panic that you acknowledge what is going on and that the panic is not YOU, but a feeling you have. Acknowledging panic can look like saying to yourself, “You’re feeling panic. Panic is just your body telling you to pay attention.” You can remind yourself that panic is an energy in your body that will pass soon. Our instinct when we feel panic is to distract ourselves from the discomfort and focus on something else, but like most emotions, being with the feeling will help you move through it more productively than ignoring it. Dealing with, and acknowledging panic, is the one of the best cures for it.

B. Breathe.

Focusing on your breath really is the trick to calming panic. A simple slow inhale through the nose and a long, controlled exhale through the mouth is always a great technique. If you watch any great baseball slugger at bat, you will see them use this method to calm themselves under pressure. If you want to try something a little more structured, you can inhale for a count of three, and exhale for a count of five. Lengthening the exhale will activate your parasympathetic nervous system, which controls how the body relaxes.

C. Center.

Centering is a way to re-orient yourself back to the here and now. A great way to center is to look around and notice three things in the environment around you. When your eyes fall on, let’s say, a bookshelf, really look at it. Notice the spines of the books, the colors of covers, the sheen of the wooden shelf. Then, let your eyes wander to another thing in your field of vision. Focus on it, see the details, textures, as if you’re looking at it for the first time. This will help bring you to the safety of the moment. It will help you see that you are not under attack.

As much as panic can feel engulfing, it is not entirely out of your control. Understand that panic is your body’s way of letting you know you have feelings of fear that need to be addressed. Acknowledge that panic is an energy force moving through you. Breath to anchor yourself and calm the panicky energy. Center yourself by gently engaging with the environment around you. These ABC’s are steps you can take to befriend panic as a signal to slow down, check in with yourself, and be in the process of healing.

LEARN MORE ABOUT ARIANNE



Further Resources for Understanding Panic:
https://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/Resources/Looking-After-Yourself/Panic

https://washingtoncenterforcognitivetherapy.com/problems-treated/panic-disorder/panic-disorder-organizations/

https://www.psychologytools.com/self-help/panic-attacks-and-panic-disorder/

https://www.healthline.com/health/anxiety/best-anxiety-books#A-quick-look-at-the-13-best-books-about-anxiety

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Anxiety, Managing emotions

What is somatic psychotherapy? How body awareness restores your mind

Written by Here Counseling

Somatic psychotherapy is the umbrella term for methods of therapy that are rooted in the body where trauma, stress, and memory are housed. Somatic psychotherapies are based on the theory that the body holds emotion and experience. When hard-to-handle feelings and traumas are not processed, they can manifest as anxiety, panic, depression, chronic pain or illness, relational issues, self-esteem problems, grief, or post-traumatic stress disorder. Somatic methods aid in draining the power of these feelings through attunement with the body – its positions, gestures, energies, and sensations. 

Somatic Psychotherapy Modalities

There are many somatic psychotherapeutic modalities. You may have heard of some of them such as, Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), Hakomi Method, Brainspotting, and plain old Mindfulness. Ultimately, the kind of somatic work that happens in the therapy room depends on the client and the therapist and can involve a wide variety of techniques, including breath work, visualizations, sensory awareness, posture tracking, guided imagery, gesture, and movement. 

Somatic Psychotherapy Exercises

Sometimes, somatic exercises are very straight forward, such as simply sending compassionate breath toward a particular part of the body that is experiencing activation. Other times, exercises are created on the spot to aid a client’s specific needs in the moment. For example, a client who struggles with low self-esteem feels they are unable to accept compliments. They might say, “Positivity just flows right through me – in one ear and out the other.” In this case, we might mindfully “build” a space in the body to hold compliments, positive feedback, and love. Then, when they hear a compliment, they can visualize the affirmation dropping into and being held compassionately in the space they created for it in their body.

Somatic psychotherapy is a way to help people feel safe in their bodies while exploring thoughts, feelings, and memories. Painful experiences live in us on a cellular level, but we can heal by restoring the body to live with vitality, ease, and joy.

Questions about Somatic Psychotherapy

  • One question I often get is, “Does somatic psychotherapy include talk therapy?” The answer is YES! Although somatic practices are body-based, talking through feelings and sensations is an essential component of the therapeutic work.
  • Another question I get is, “Do I have to dance?” And the answer is NO, not unless you want to. Like most productive therapy, somatic work is client-centered and client-lead. Together with your therapist, you decide when and how to integrate the body into the healing process.

If you choose to work with me, you can expect:

  • I will naturally return to the body in the here and now as a way to ground and understand authentic self.
  • I utilize body scanning techniques to gain awareness of where pain or emotion is located in the body.
  • I track and bring awareness to repetitive gestures or postures that align with certain memories or feelings to aid in self-knowledge.
  • I share tools for calming, centering, and releasing emotions in productive ways.
  • I gently guide clients through painful experiences while noting the accompanying physical sensations and addressing them in the moment.
  • I emphasize the body as a base to locate natural resources, strengths, and self-empowerment.

If you have interest in somatic psychotherapy and healing your body, I would love to talk with you.

Learn about Somatic Psychotherapy with Arianne

Further reading on somatic psychotherapy:

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (Hardcover) by Bessel van der Kolk 

Hakomi Mindfulness-Centered Somatic Psychotherapy: A Comprehensive Guide to Theory and Practice (Paperback) by Halko Weiss 

Somatic Psychology: Body, Mind and Meaning (Paperback) by Linda Hartley 

Awakened Heart, Embodied Mind: A Modern Yoga Philosophy Infused with Somatic Psychology & Neuroscience (Kindle Edition) by Julian Walker

Here Counseling

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Anxiety

Why do I get panic attacks? How to soothe yourself and restore calm inside, for lawyers and other professionals

Written by Connor McClenahan

The familiar pounding in your chest, the tightness in your lungs – it can feel like you’re having a heart attack. What’s worse is you are afraid it could happen again at any moment. You feel hesitant going out, being social, even driving, for fear that you’ll have another attack.

As someone who takes pride in your work, who is used to pushing hard and getting a result, it’s common to feel shame about the anxiety attacks. You can wonder

  • Why is this panic attack happening?
  • Why won’t it go away?
  • What do I do when I have panic attacks?
  • Do other professionals experience this?

There are many people who experience panic just like you. It’s a common way our bodies react when anxiety flares up. Let’s talk about why panic attacks happen and how to shift your approach to help you grow.

Why you’re experiencing panic attacks: suppressing anxiety

Panic attacks happen when anxiety is “disregulated”. This means that the anxiety isn’t consciously seen or paid attention to. When this happens, the anxiety doesn’t have a backboard. It becomes louder and louder until it shows up in a strong physiological way: heavy breathing, tight chest, and the feeling like something is seriously wrong in our bodies.

Why is the anxiety not consciously paid attention to? For some of us, we don’t like to pay attention when we’re anxious. We might avoid feelings like disappointment, worry, and concern because they make us feel out of control. Sometimes our way of getting through those feelings is to “change the channel”. This is called affect suppression. When the feeling of anxiety comes up we don’t pay attention to it or wonder about it – we try to get it out of our heads. This can look like

  • Addictive behaviors
  • Fidgeting
  • Workaholism
  • Excessive phone use
  • Substance use
  • Sleeplessness
  • Avoiding silence

But the trick is, the less we pay attention to the anxiety, the louder it tends to get.

How to make panic attacks stop: seeing anxiety as a signal

For panic attacks to stop, we need to see anxiety as a signal, not a disease. Our anxiety is usually a signal that something doesn’t feel safe. It’s a sign that something needs attention, just like when a fire alarm goes off.

If your building’s fire alarm went off, you wouldn’t put in headphones right away. You’d turn, look, not for the alarm sound, but for the look and smell of smoke. In the same way, our panic attacks are not themselves the thing we need to “fix” or make go away. They are a signal that something is off in our lives. It may be a relationship, a re-emerging trauma, a life-transition, or work-related stressor that is no longer tolerable. Your mind is telling you that you’re unsafe and you need to pay attention.

What happens if we don’t pay attention to the anxiety signal?

If we don’t pay attention to the signal of anxiety, our panic will get worse. The more common panic attacks become, the more they lead to agoraphobia – the fear of leaving the house. You may feel this presently in your life. It’s the feeling of fearfulness and avoidance of any trips or engagements that take you away from home. The fear that you’ll have another panic attack keeps you close to home. People who have agoraphobia struggle to accomplish daily tasks and the world feels unsafe to them.

Additionally, if we don’t pay attention to anxiety, we continue to avoid and suppress it through addictive behaviors. It becomes hard to sleep, hard to rest, hard to concentrate. We depend more and more on substances like caffeine, alcohol, and other addictive substances. We avoid anything that will trigger an attack.

Most of all, when we don’t pay attention to anxiety, we diminish some of the most vibrant parts of ourselves.

There’s a different way to handle anxiety and panic attacks

We need to learn a new way to engage our anxiety if we want panic attacks to subside. For lawyers and other professionals, it can be hard to slow down and trust that doing so will actually move them forward faster than “changing the channel”.

It’s incredibly difficult.

Because listening to your anxiety requires a new voice inside: one that can be understanding and empathetic toward your experience. One that is soothing rather than critical. It can be difficult to trust that this small act is actually a fulcrum that will change the course of your life. Yet this is the work I engage in all the time with people just like you. One of the most powerful things you can do with your panic attack is give yourself a chance to listen to yourself. I can help you do that. Contact me today for a consultation.

Learn About Connor

Connor McClenahan

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Anxiety, EMDR, Managing emotions, Neurology

Maximize EMDR Therapy: How to Find a Good Therapist

Written by Connor McClenahan

Maybe you’re wondering about how EMDR therapy can treat trauma. Trauma can negatively impact an individual’s life and well-being for years, even decades, after the traumatic event has passed. Trauma is a natural survival response to any life-threatening situation. If you’ve experienced trauma, you may notice how it seems to intrude into everyday situations.

Trauma can impact:

  • Sleep: the quality and restfulness of your sleep
  • Relationships: increase feelings of insecurity and fear
  • Anxiety: increase blood pressure, heart rate, jumpiness
  • Addiction: increased dependence on external substances to reduce symptoms
  • Focus: increased scattered, intrusive thoughts

Our brains heal from trauma.

In fact, like a wound that simply needs rest and clean bandages, there’s a natural reparative process that takes place – all on its own – when our minds feel safe enough. We find ourselves sharing more, feeling more, telling the story of what happened with a trusted other. EMDR therapy taps into this natural healing process.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy is a powerful tool in helping individuals overcome trauma and regain control of their lives. In this article, you’ll learn how EMDR works for you, and why the relationship between the therapist and client is key in producing long-term change.

How EMDR works

EMDR therapy is based on the idea that traumatic memories are stored in a person’s brain in an unintegrated form. Normally, in non-traumatic experiences, memories of the experience can be retrieved and shelved easily with language (think of checking out a video at a library), giving us control and mastery. When someone experiences a traumatic event, however, their brain shields itself from the painful memory, leading to the memory becoming “stuck” in the right prefrontal cortex and limbic system. This can result in persistent symptoms such as anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). EMDR therapy works by accessing these stored memories and integrating them through a shared experience with the therapist.  

EMDR Therapy and Tapping

The key component of EMDR therapy is the rapid back-and-forth movement of the eyes, also known as “tapping.” This tapping is believed to stimulate the brain’s information processing system, allowing it to process and integrate the traumatic memories. As a result, the negative emotions and physical sensations associated with the trauma are reduced. The individual is then able to move beyond the event and regain control of their life.

EMDR Therapy and the hidden ingredient: Your therapist

While the tapping component of EMDR therapy is crucial, it is not the only factor that leads to successful outcomes. In fact, research has shown that the therapeutic relationship between the client and the therapist is even more important in producing long-term change in trauma. A strong therapeutic relationship provides a safe and supportive environment for the individual to explore their traumatic experiences and work through them in a controlled and guided manner.

Your brain wants – and even needs – to process trauma. Biologically, your brain is looking for safety. While safety can come from trusting a specific intervention or technique, such as EMDR, it will primarily come from your relationship with your therapist. Your ability to feel comfortable and safe with your therapist is exactly the environment your brain is looking for to integrate a painful emotional experience.

EMDR Therapy Girl wanting to process trauma with an EMDR therapist

A good EMDR therapist will help you

  • Gingerly approach the trauma, listening to your comfort level
  • Will appropriately challenge you to trust yourself to share
  • Give you space to stop when you’re feeling overwhelmed
  • Review and help you understand what you’re feeling
  • Check in about your symptoms

In conclusion, EMDR therapy is a powerful tool in helping individuals overcome trauma and regain control of their lives. The rapid back-and-forth movement of the eyes (tapping) stimulates the brain’s information processing system, allowing it to process and integrate traumatic memories. However, it is the therapeutic relationship between the client and therapist that is the most important factor in producing long-term change. A strong therapeutic relationship provides a safe and supportive environment for the individual to work through their traumatic experiences, leading to a more successful outcome.

EMDR Therapy can help you

Consider reaching out to a qualified EMDR therapist. With the right support and guidance, it is possible to overcome trauma and reclaim your life.

You want a therapist who fits you, who you feel safe talking with. I promise, it’s worth it to work through trauma. We can help you find the right fit so you can regain health and peace.

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Anxiety, Managing emotions

Navigating stress as a college student

Written by Here Counseling

This week, a 12am deadline came on the same day a super cute someone invited you to the event with the film club after class. And last week, hours of YouTube searches didn’t help you narrow down between your 3 top potential majors. You know you need to navigate between sleep and deadlines and family and dating and maintaining friends, but it all seems too much. 

Being a college student comes with a fair amount of stress. Trying to balance these never ending elements can make us feel like we aren’t measuring up. What’s worse is that during such periods of stress, our brains are primed to adopt a negative self-monologue. 

Turn down the stress voice

Underneath these negative monologues is an unhelpful belief about the self. See if any of these messages fit with your experience, or if perhaps you can come up with one not listed:

“I’m alone.” 

“I’m not good enough.” 

“I’m not safe.” 

“I’m not loved.” 

Take a moment to reflect and analyze what your recent train of thought has been. Asking yourself these questions, could help you narrow it all down: 

  • How has it made you feel? 
  • Do you have that constant trepidation that everything is going to get worse? 
  • Are you replaying all the ways certain people or events have made you feel like you’re not good enough? 
  • Do your dreams feel far from reach? 

Raise the volume on your empowerment voice

Slow down for a moment. Take a look at how far you’ve come. It’s easy to focus on how much you’ve not done or the mistakes you’ve made. 

You cooked dinner for yourself? That’s amazing. 

Came to class even though you were emotionally exhausted? You’re doing your best. 

Have you fought the onslaught of negative words? That’s bravery.

In taking the chance to celebrate your wins, you adopt a more empowering self belief. See if any of these empowering identity messages fit for you, or if perhaps you can come up with one not listed:

“I have plenty of support around me.”

“I’m good at many things.”

“I can be safe with healthy boundaries.”

“I know people who love me.”

Try spending the first 2-5 minutes of your day celebrating what’s right in your life and what that means about your empowering identity message. You can go on preparing for your day. Celebrate all the wins you can in this time. Clap for yourself; applaud your endeavors, high five your mirror reflection! 

Live in your newfound empowerment. 

Think of these identity volumes as operating frameworks. When you step into the day from the framework of “I’m not good enough”, you second guess decisions, taking a long time to make any choice. Perhaps you’ll avoid talking to someone you find attractive. And sitting to write that term paper feels like running a marathon. 

When you increase the volume on your positive identity beliefs such as “I’m good at many things”, you experience the confidence to step out of your comfort zone. You discover an empowerment to make good choices quickly. You find that the term paper doesn’t bring as much stress as before. 

Knowing when you need therapy

Choosing to alter your operating framework to a more empowering self belief is not so simple all the time. Very often, we need to pick apart our life stories and our present stresses in order to understand and even believe what is truly positive and strong about who we are. This journey of exploration can easily be facilitated in a therapy setting. In therapy, we’ll peer underneath the messages and events holding you back from the goals you’ve set for yourself, uncovering and dismantling their negative power on your progress. 

Fill out a contact form or call our office to set up a free 15-minute consultation if you’d like to discuss how therapy could help you navigate through the stresses of college life. 

Gavin Cross, LMFT
Gavin Cross, LMFT

Counseling for men and couples
I empower men and couples to embrace an authentic sense of self.

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ADHD, Anxiety, Neurology

I can’t Focus. Do I have ADHD? What’s Happening Inside Your Brain When You Have Trouble Paying Attention

Written by Connor McClenahan

Sometimes focusing our attention feels impossible. As soon as we settle down at the computer, or into a conversation, we can find ourselves darting around, proverbially switching channels back and forth. We can start to wonder, “Do I have ADHD?”

Today we’re going to look at what actually happens in the brain when we have trouble focusing. Whether or not you’ve been diagnosed with ADHD, understanding how our brains pay attention will help you make changes so you can hold attention in a healthy way. 

Here’s what’s happening in the brain when you focus attention

Your mind is constantly receiving thousands of inputs every second – from your skin and muscles (the uncomfortable chair you’re sitting in), from your ears (that air conditioning in the background), from your stomach (it’s been a while since breakfast!), from your social awareness (I’m surrounded by people right now) and from communication from others (this article teaching you about ADHD), among other things. 

It’s a wonder that your mind can focus its attention at all. It needs a way of organizing a whole world of constantly changing pieces of information so it can keep you safe. The way the mind does this is really important: it focuses your attention on threats so it can resolve them and feel safe again.

Attention Neurology:

  1. The floodgate. First, your mind measures how much information it wants to take in. Picture the difference between eating an apple on an empty stomach, versus eating an apple after an ice cream sundae. On an empty stomach, you might taste intense, complex flavors from the apple. After an ice cream sundae, however, it might hardly taste sweet. This is the job of the reticular formation. It measures how much stimulation (excitement) your brain can take to keep you somewhere between feeling bored and overwhelmed.
  2. The emotional stamp (limbic system). Next, the information is stamped with emotion. Like a message coded by urgency (?), the limbic system tags how important this new information is to your safety and prepares your body to respond. When you feel a tinge of stomach tension at receiving an email from your boss, it’s because your limbic system told you there’s a threat to your safety: you could be in danger of being dismissed or abandoned. Your entire body responds right away, changing your heart rate, blood flow, and attention so you can be safe.
  3. The planning center (prefrontal cortex). Imagine a rider on top of an emotional elephant. The elephant is our emotional brain, charging haphazardly away from danger and toward safety. The rider (prefrontal cortex) has to decide how to direct the elephant’s energy. The rider is a bit frustrated with the elephant’s erratic impulses! He tries to navigate the elephant in a straight line toward the main goal of connection and safety, taking into account social norms, past experiences and outcomes, contextual cues, and other emotions in ourselves and others. The rider considers two main voices: the Behavioral Activation System (BAS) and Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS). The BAS is like a forward-thinking rider. She decides how to direct the elephant’s energy down a certain path. It’s good at planning logical steps that help it achieve goals and satisfy needs for connection and safety. The BIS is like a cautious rider. She pulls the reigns to keep the elephant from running wild. She’s concerned with holding back on emotional impulses, trying to steer clear of social stigma, rejection, and shame.
  4. The reward center (ventral striatum). Think of a party at the end of a marathon: the runner endures enormous pain, finally crosses the finish line, and feels immense relief and pleasure. He completes the goal and finally wins the needed sustenance and support. His brain is flooded with dopamine, which slows his heart rate and relaxes his muscles. Next time he runs the marathon, his mind will stay on task, knowing the reward at the end.

To summarize,

Whenever your mind receives an input, it first evaluates its strength and connection to your survival, and you feel your body become ready to respond. Your prefrontal cortex then plans what to do – to either resolve the need or suppress it and stay on task toward the current goal and reward.

So let’s say you’re writing a brief.

When the project first came up, you felt excitement. Your limbic system tagged the project as important because of your long term goal to make money – and more importantly – be included in a community and avoid abandonment (safety). 

Right away, you felt engaged with the project. Your BAS was organizing your excitement and planning different behaviors to get closer to your goal. You might sit down and outline your project. 

BUT THEN – you get a text. This time it’s from your partner. It says, “I didn’t feel great about how we ended last night.” You feel another rush in your body. This time, it’s not excitement but anxiety. Suddenly the project is out of your mind. If you pay attention, you might notice your BAS organizing yourself differently: “If I don’t respond right away, will they think I don’t care?” You feel the pain of an attachment strained. Your BIS then struggles to evaluate. How important is this new goal in relation to the project? How do I weigh my long-term survival against this immediate conflict? Should I stop working on the project now and call my partner?

Just then, a co-worker asks you a question. “Did you see the game last night?” Your mind is now balancing a few different bids for attention. This is where you start to feel your mind struggling to focus.

Attention problems can be caused by a few different areas

If you struggle with holding attention, there may be a problem with one or several of the brain areas we mentioned earlier. 

Now, before we jump ahead, it’s important to note that the structure of your brain is the combination of your genetics, past experiences, and present experience. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say about 50% of your brain’s structure is caused by your genetics, and 50% is the result of your environment. Why is this important? Too many people confuse “brain structure” with organic/genetic causes. If you have a weakness in your reward pathway, making it difficult to feel pleasure when you achieve a goal, it might be because of an organic/genetic difference, or it might be due to the way rewards have been handled throughout your life. Both genetics and experience alter the structure of your brain.

With this in mind, let’s look at different ways you might be experiencing problems with attention.

Is my focus issue a “floodgate” problem?

Sometimes our problems in attention have to do with how stimulating our environment is. Each of us has a “Goldilocks” zone where we aren’t too bored or overwhelmed, where things are just right and we feel engaged. For some of us, reading a book doesn’t hold our attention. It feels boring and it’s hard to pay attention. For others it feels just right: a quiet room, a book, low light is the perfect amount of stimulation to hold our attention. This has to do with our floodgate, the reticular formation, that is monitoring the volume of the world around us. 

Extraverts might need to add music, bright light, or tap their feet to raise the volume of the reading so they can pay attention. Introverts tend to feel overwhelmed by this idea! They might struggle to engage with reading in a loud room, needing to pull away into a quiet room to read.

How about you? If you struggle with attention, it’s possible that you’re either overwhelmed (“I can’t focus! It’s too much!”), or bored (“I can’t focus! It’s too mind-numbing!”). 

Try adjusting the volume of the task by adding or removing stimulation. 

Add music or exercise beforehand to make a boring task more engaging. Retreat to a quiet space away from distractions to make an overwhelming task more engaging. These volume adjustments help us focus our attention.

Is my focus issue an emotional problem?

Attention is anything but a cognitive task. Attention is mostly an emotional task that begins and ends in our brain’s limbic system (emotional center). Our emotional state is the elephant that moves our attention toward a goal to help us feel safe and connected. If anxiety and dread overwhelm you, writing a report is going to be incredibly difficult. Your mind will keep redirecting, over and over, toward your emotional state. 

If you’re depressed, your concentration suffers. Your mind will keep redirecting toward your sadness. But if your mood improves, so does your attention. You’ll even find yourself being more creative at solving problems. 

If you’re anxious, your attention suffers as well. PTSD significantly affects focus and attention. Why? When your world feels unsafe, your mind has to keep redirecting attention.

So what do we do? Trying to force ourselves to pay attention when we’re emotionally overwhelmed is like a tiny rider on top of that emotional elephant: it’s not gonna do much good. 

The only solution is to help ourselves feel safe. 

Regulating our emotions, and soothing ourselves is the first step. Sometimes this is as simple as reminding yourself of a loved one who cares about you. Other times this is about addressing emotional patterns in therapy.

Is my focus issue a planning problem?

After you feel an emotion and your body gets ready to act, your prefrontal lobe starts to plan how to achieve the goal. Sometimes it means telling yourself to stop working on other goals. Other times it means taking time to plan out each step you need to get to your goal. How you manage these two voices (BAS and BIS) has a lot to do with how others in your life have helped you achieve goals. For example, picture a child who’s trying to stack blocks, and gets frustrated. The parent who swoops in and stacks the blocks for the child, while well-intended, doesn’t help the child learn the planning skills they need. A parent that shows the child step by step how to stack the blocks will help strengthen the child’s frontal lobe, nurturing their ability to set and achieve goals. 

In the same way, if we struggle with attention problems today, it might be a planning issue. Maybe it’s hard for you to take a moment to stop and plan the steps to get to your goal. Maybe it’s hard to say “no” to something you want so you can get the larger goal. This can be a powerless feeling – like there’s no way to move forward. This is where we switch attention – largely to avoid feeling powerless.

If this sounds like you, you’ll need to take the time to outsource this part of your brain to a checklist. 

You might try taking time, before the start of the task, to outline the steps you’re going to need to take to get it done. You might also benefit from therapy. Addressing and understanding the feelings you have about setting goals can help you feel focused and in control again.

Is my focus issue a reward problem?

Sometimes our problem with holding attention has to do with a lack of reward. If we can hold our attention well, it’s because we know that by planning and holding out attention on a task, we’ll feel good again, relieved. Think of an Olympic athlete: they strain to hold their attention hour after hour because of the promise of winning gold. Think of a parent who spends an hour learning to bake a cake for their child: they hold their attention because of the promise of vicariously feeling their child’s joy. We hold our attention when we know there will be a reward.

For some of us, there’s no promise of reward. Maybe your own childhood involved a depressed parent who struggled to “light up” when you achieved a goal, and you felt like you could never make them proud. This experience lays pathways in your frontal lobe that influence how you experience daily tasks. Or maybe you’re living alone, so cleaning your house goes unnoticed. Maybe you have a preoccupied boss who doesn’t reward your hard work. In each of these situations, it will be a struggle to hold attention on a task, because your mind struggles to see the reward it’s working toward. 

If this is the main obstacle to holding your attention, you might tend to feel tasks are meaningless, hopeless, or boring. 

How do we help this issue? Some suggest giving yourself a treat when you complete a task: like rewarding yourself with chocolate. You’re welcome to try that if it works for you! For many people, however, this will only get you halfway there. The dopamine (reward) area of the brain is built around social rewards. The strongest reward we can receive is another person’s praise. 

If you struggle with reward pathways, don’t think of giving yourself a treat; think of making the task meaningful. 

How can you link the task with how it will contribute to your feeling connected and helpful in the world? Is there a way to include others in the task so you can receive feedback and praise? Is there a way the task could help someone else? How could you change the task to heighten these aspects?

So, do I have ADHD?

ADHD requires a diagnosis, something you can get by scheduling an assessment with one of our psychologists. Why a psychologist? Because too often, we diagnose ADHD whenever we spot an attention problem, without considering other factors, such as emotional health, life stressors, introversion/extraversion, etc. 

Whether or not you have ADHD, you can rework your relationship with attention. Whether it’s about reducing/increasing the input (floodgate), regulating your emotion (making it more meaningful or less panic-inducing in the limbic system), taking more/less time to plan, or giving yourself more meaningful rewards, there are ways we can shift gears to pay attention, regardless of your diagnosis.

The effort it takes to hold attention can be frustrating. Talk with one of our therapists today. We’ll help you find your way to feel on top of your life again.

Connor McClenahan, PsyD
Connor McClenahan, PsyD

I help lawyers and other professionals overcome difficult emotions and experience meaning and purpose in their lives.

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Anxiety, Managing emotions

What to do when I’m Anxious? Four simple questions to put you back on track.

Written by Here Counseling

Anxiety is that pesky companion that wants to rob you of your control in life. 

  • It hijacks your thoughts during important moments.
  • It tenses your shoulders, your chest, and your digestive system. 
  • It over activates your “what if” fears.
  • It can affect your sleep, diet, and ability to stay present and attentive to life.

You want to take a deep breath, rest once in a while, to be assured that somehow everything will be okay, but Anxiety’s “what if” voice has your amygdala doing somersaults, taxing your nervous system with a constant, low-volume version of fight or flight. 

Anxiety’s Master Plan

Anxiety is most successful at taking over if it can convince you there’s something in your life that isn’t secure or loved. Your amygdala may automatically trigger your fight or flight response when you feel unsafe or unloved.

Fight or flight is beneficial when you are in present physical danger. Your digestive system shuts down, your logic and reasoning are dulled, blood rushes to contracted muscles, and your heart rate increases, so you can expend the energy where it matters when in danger: getting to safety.

Fight or flight is less helpful when you’re worried about a promotion, when you don’t know if you and your partner see eye-to-eye, when a difficult test is around the corner and you aren’t sure if you studied enough. 

We want to turn down the volume on Anxiety’s voice of unsafety and insecurity. Turning down the volume will help you gain a little more control over when you need your amygdala’s essential function and when you don’t. The way to turn on the brain’s logic center is by asking ourselves four crucial questions.

4 Important questions to regain control from Anxiety

1) WHAT AM I FEELING IN REGARDS TO MY SECURITY AND SENSE OF BEING LOVED?

Anxiety’s power is in convincing you that things cannot be okay. Its voice is always found in an unhelpful statement about yourself:

  • Something’s wrong with me.
  • I’m not enough.
  • It’s hopeless.
  • I’m not wanted.
  • I should have known better.
  • I’m a failure.

This list is not exhaustive. There are many potential unhelpful messages that Anxiety may be trying to tell you about yourself.

For some, this first question will be the hardest of the four, but it’s essential to start here with Anxiety’s voice so you know how to speak to it. Behind your racing heart, behind your fear of calling that parent, behind your worry about what someone else is thinking, there is an unhelpful voice trying to convince you something negative about WHO YOU ARE. Try in this first step to name that message.

2) WHEN I FEEL THIS WAY, HOW DO I NORMALLY RESPOND?

Anxious symptoms and behaviors are a response to those unhelpful messages that Anxiety wants you to believe about yourself. If you’re convinced you are unwanted, you may struggle with sleeping or what you eat. When feeling hopeless, you may respond in outrage. If you feel like a failure, you may give up or spend hours thinking through a problem instead of experiencing peace, rest, and a solution.

You’ll win the battle against Anxiety when you can 1) name the negative message about your security and sense of being loved, and 2) when you can name how you are tempted to respond to the aforementioned negative message. Here is a small list of potential examples:

  • Excessive worry
  • Self-medication (drugs, alcohol, sex, TV, video games, etcetera)
  • Racing thoughts
  • Lashing out
  • Giving up
  • Fatigue
  • Body symptoms  
  • Feeling on edge
  • Changes in diet

3) WHAT’S POSITIVE AND TRUE ABOUT ME?

Here’s where you can consciously choose to divert your attention to evidence that contradicts Anxiety’s unhelpful voice, where you entertain thoughts that are more true about who you are. If this step is difficult, you can begin by journaling about times the negative message was untrue about you. Eventually, practice diverting to these more positive messages in the middle of Anxiety’s advances to lessen its power.

  • There are plenty of reasons to hope.
  • I have proven I can succeed.
  • I will get through it.
  • I did the best I could.
  • There’s reason to believe I am loved and cared for.

4) HOW WOULD I RATHER RESPOND?

Through knowing the truth of who you are and the strength and love inside of you, you have now turned down the volume on Anxiety’s unhelpful voice and can choose more helpful behaviors and fewer body symptoms.

  • Practice deep breathing and mindfulness.
  • Give attention to the people around you instead of to the problem.
  • Improve eating and sleeping habits.
  • Enjoy soothing behaviors like TV, alcohol, etc., in a healthier, non-excessive way.
  • Complete tasks efficiently with a more solution and strength-based mindset.

How do I know when I need therapy?

Anxiety can be a formidable adversary to fight. Maybe you want a coach to walk you through these four steps. Or perhaps you’d like a little help looking underneath the unhelpful messages, understanding the deeper unconscious drives that have led to some of the symptoms you experience.

There’s no harm in asking a therapist for a free consultation to see if you might be a good candidate for a little extra help. All therapists at Here Counseling offer free consultations, and if we’re not the right therapist for you, we can help you find someone who is.

You’ve got this!

Integrate these four questions into a regular routine. 

  1. What am I feeling in regards to my security and sense of being loved?
  2. When I feel this way, how do I normally respond?
  3. What’s positive and true about me?
  4. How would I rather respond?

Eventually, you’ll be able to quickly cycle through these four questions in the middle of a stressful experience, utilizing the empowerment of truth to turn down the volume on Anxiety’s unhelpful messages, and living in the peace and accomplish you long for. 

Questions to Respond to Anxiety Worksheet

Want these questions in an easy to use free downloadable worksheet? This worksheet will help you take steps forward in dealing with anxiety. You’ll also get access to all our worksheets in Here Counseling’s Resource Library!

Download Free Worksheet

Reference:

Hargrave, T. D., & Pfitzer, F. (2011). Restoration therapy: Understanding and guiding healing in marriage and family therapy. Routledge.

Gavin Cross, AMFT
Gavin Cross, AMFT

I empower young adults and couples to enjoy connection and embrace life transitions.

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clear your mind
Anxiety, Managing emotions

Three simple steps to help you clear your mind and give you more energy.

Written by Kristi Wollbrink

Do you ever have one of those nights – where you find yourself tossing and turning, your mind filled with thoughts and worries, “what ifs,” and feelings of uncertainty or fear? Sometimes these same feelings and thoughts pop up throughout the day, with a sudden sense of your mind racing, your heart rate speeding up, and breathing getting shallow. Suddenly, all you can think about is what you said or how you may have messed things up, and your mind begins to consider all the possible things that could happen or go wrong. All of a sudden, that one small thing feels like it has become a massive storm with certainty that everything will go wrong.

But could you learn to take back control of these moments of worry and begin to find a place of rest for your mind and body? By practicing just a few simple steps, you can start to quiet the storm inside your mind, leading to more clarity, better sleep, and the ability to breathe a little more deeply.

Consider these three simple steps to help clear your mind and begin to rest.

  1. Name the fear.
    It’s essential to identify what is at the root of our anxiety. Slowing down and naming what you are most worried about can help you see just what you are most fearful of happening. Maybe it’s the fear that you will lose your job or that you may lose someone you love. Whatever it is, taking a deep breath and saying what you fear will help you begin to take a step toward understanding what has you feeling overwhelmed and anxious.
  2. State a truth.
    Consider the fact that what you fear could happen, but it is essential also to consider that the facts that may support this fear becoming a reality may not be the whole truth. Often there may be some truths that challenge this fear. Maybe it was another project you worked on that proved you competent and a great asset to your workplace. Or that making one mistake does not mean that you are a complete failure.
  3. Imagine the “best-case scenario.”
    These feelings of fear and uncertainty are often based on the worst-case scenario. What would it be like to ask yourself to consider the “what ifs” for the best-case outcome? Seeing yourself as capable of overcoming or succeeding, rather than imagining only adverse outcomes, may allow you to realize that your fear is only one possibility of what could happen. In reality, there is a possibility of a positive outcome.

As you allow your mind to focus not only on the possibility of what could go wrong and consider what could go right, you may start to notice a mental shift. This shift comes as your mind begins to slow down, and you can think more clearly, sleep more soundly, and feel more energetic in your everyday life.

Clear Your Mind Worksheet

Want these questions in an easy to use free downloadable worksheet? This worksheet will help you take steps forward in dealing with anxiety. You’ll also get access to all our worksheets in Here Counseling’s Resource Library!

Download Free Worksheet
Kristi Wollbrink, AMFT
Kristi Wollbrink, AMFT

I help individuals and couples decrease anxiety in order to find meaning and connection.

Learn more about therapy with Kristi
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