Our therapists provide anxiety therapy in Alexandria, VA

My go-to approach for treating anxiety is educating clients on the behavior of the amygdala and vagus nerve and the role they play in warning of danger. I also instruct the client on CBT and REBT techniques, relaxation breathing, imagery, and writing activities. I prefer to educate clients on the amygdala and vagus nerve roles to help them realize there is a way to control emotions, I enjoy teaching cognitive behavioral and rational emotive behavior techniques that allow the client to separate themself from the experience in order to rationalize and imagine the problem and solutions. I find the best benefit in engaging in conversational-style therapy, as it helps the client feel more at ease in sharing their difficulties, then helping them identify problems and solutions, and challenging them via homework to address what was discussed in sessions.

I teach the following tools in anxiety therapy:

• Empty chair: Imagining the person the client identifies as having importance in an issue in the chair across from the client, with the client either telling the other person their feelings about them, the situation involving the person, or their anger toward the person, using a pillow to hit the chair if needed.
• Letter writing: Writing a letter to an identified person, dead or living, that has some importance in the client's concerns and using it to express the client's emotions. The client is then directed not to give it to the person, but to burn the letter, and imagine the smoke taking their words to the deceased helping them find their way into the person's thoughts.
• Calming breathing: All done in reps of 3 — breathe in through the nose for a slow count of 4, blow it out the mouth gently to the slow count of 6 or 8; take a deep breath and hold for as long as they safely can, then exhale.
• Guided imagery: 3 slow breaths to start and end, closing the eyes and continuing slow breathing as I describe either a light scanning activity or a walking/word descriptive activity.
• Thought stopping/thought challenging: I instruct the client to tell themselves “STOP!” immediately when they're having anxious thoughts, then to try to solve a multi-digit math problem, do an exercise or activity, or schedule the thoughts for an hour on a certain day at a certain time. Then, they should keep the thought from invading afterward.
• How the mind affects the emotions that influence body language or verbal language that occurs based on the roles of the amygdala, hormones, memory center, placement of the amygdala in relation to the eyes (visual effect), frontal and pre-frontal executive functioning, and more brain functions, even including research showing how actual neurons have been identified in study participants stomach linings.

I know a client is making progress in anxiety therapy when they start the session telling me they did the homework activity and were surprised how much better they felt afterward! I know a client is making progress in anxiety therapy when they can maintain a level of calm, starting with short periods of time, while discussing the issues that are anxiety triggers for them.

Clients can supplement their time in anxiety therapy with handouts I send to them after intake, engaging in exercise, other activities discussed in sessions, or reading suggested books or books they found independently on the topic discussed.

To prepare for your first anxiety therapy session, you can write down what you feel, when you feel it, how long it lasts, and how you address it. This way, you can let me know what you are bothered by, what happened before and after, and how you dealt with it.