Specialties — Anxiety and Stress Management

Anxiety can play a positive role in your life. Anxiety acts as a natural alert system to your body, exclaiming "danger, danger!". Having this natural system in place is a healthy and necessary part of our survival. However, anxiety can feel problematic when your body sends out it's alert signal and danger is not present. When might this occur?

Some examples include:

Stress and anxiety are closely related. Anxiety roots itself in fear where stress roots itself in feeling overwhelmed. Examples of stress include:

pressure from your boss to perform days, nights and weekends
having over-scheduled activities to do each week with family and friends
financial pressure to pay bills or to care for elderly parents

Both share similar physical symptoms. With each, you might experience:

• shortness of breath
  
• rapid heart-beat
  
• racing thoughts
  
• sleeplessness
  
• tingling in the arms
  
• trembling
  
• upset stomach and/or "nervous" stomach
  
• high blood pressure

Since they both share similar physical symptoms, they can be difficult to separate. Whether you are dealing with stress or anxiety, you can overcome those painful symptoms through similar means.

In therapy, you can learn how to increase your self-awareness so that you can better understand how you relate to the environment around you. You can learn how to:

• effectively use breathing exercises
• use progressive muscle relaxation to reprogram your muscles to relax
• cultivate a mindful way of living
• use guided imagery to calm your nervous system
• create schedules that provide space

You can learn how to dispel the powerful hold that stress or anxiety may have on you so that you can relax more, move through each day with ease and comfort, feel confident and actually enjoy life.