If you live with intense anxiety or feel things deeply, you’ve probably been told - at some point - that you’re “too much,” “too sensitive,” or “overthinking everything.” It can cause you to withdraw, and to try to make yourself smaller.

But those same traits come with a lot of strengths. You notice details others miss, think several steps ahead, spot patterns quickly, and truly care about doing the right thing. 

In our work together, we won’t try to make you “less” - we’ll turn the volume down on the overwhelm and turn the volume up on the strengths that come with it, so these qualities start working for you instead of against you.

When anxiety spikes, or emotions feel like too much, it’s easy to think, “I’m broken” or “Everyone else has it together except me.” You wish you could just be “normal.”

I believe that nothing is wrong with you, something very normal is happening inside you. Your brain and body are reacting exactly the way they’re designed to when they sense threat. The alarm system is just stuck on high, firing at the wrong moments.

Anxiety and trauma activate our innate stress response system at a physiological level that can feel out of control - but our brains and bodies also have an innate ability to heal. In therapy, we’ll tap into your built-in capacity for growth and repair so that you can feel calm and steady again.

Your greatest strength is probably the very thing that’s also been exhausting you - an almost super-human ability to anticipate things that could go wrong, the needs and expectations of others, and exactly how to hold everything together - often at the expense of your own peace.

I know that the unique gifts that tend to exist alongside anxiety -  your sharp mind, deep empathy, and relentless drive - are actually the most important assets we have at our disposal in the healing process. In therapy we’ll leverage these strengths to address and overcome your struggles. 

This strengths-based approach speeds healing, reduces shame, and feels less like changing who you are and more like stepping fully into the person you were always meant to be.

You have a built in drive towards growth and success so you’ve worked hard to cope. But when you’re white-knuckling it through every day just to keep the anxiety or overwhelm from taking over, it’s exhausting. It starts to feel like life is something you have to survive instead of live.

My approach to therapy acknowledges that there’s a big difference between just managing symptoms, and actually healing what’s causing them. Together we’ll go deeper to address the root of anxiety and overwhelm so that things actually change. 

You can move forward free from distressing thoughts, feelings, and symptoms so that life feels good again, without always having to work so hard just to get through the days.

With your analytical, deep thinking mind, you’ve likely already identified a lot about yourself - your triggers, your patterns, what sends you spiraling, what just won’t work for you. You’ve probably studied your own mind like a PhD you never asked for.

I see therapy as an active partnership between us. I bring the mental health expertise, but you’re the expert on you - your story, your values, what feels right or wrong in your body, and what actually helps.

So here, your voice matters just as much as mine. If something I say doesn’t land, tell me. If you find a podcast, book, or idea that lights you up, bring it in. If you’re skeptical about therapy (so common and completely okay), you can say that too. We get the best outcomes when we partner together.

If you’ve been hauling this weight around for years (or maybe even decades), it’s easy to assume “this is just how I am now.” You can start to feel like this is just your normal - that a little less anxiety or a slightly smaller trigger response is the best you can hope for, but you’ll still always have to manage it, brace for it, work around it.

Here’s what I’ve seen over and over doing this work - anxiety and trauma aren’t life sentences. They’re signals that something got stuck in your nervous system - and stuck things can absolutely un-stick. 

Most people are shocked at how light and normal life can feel once healing finally happens. You really can wake up without dread, move through your day without constant scanning, and actually look forward to things again.