"Soften your forehead, unclench your jaw, relax your shoulders. This is your reminder to release the tension in your body."

Feeling anxious? You're not alone.

Everyone experiences feelings of anxiety and stress.

Anxiety and stress are actually a wonderful indicator of a healthy nervous system.

Maybe you're late and there's traffic, having an argument with a friend, having a conflict at work, or have a big test coming up. This is a natural part of life.

If you find that anxiety is affecting your life and how you function, it can help to remember that all types of people experience anxiety. Knowing the facts might just help you feel less alone. Check out this article for more facts about anxiety.

Anxiety and the nervous system

The brain knows what to do.

When anxiety strikes, it's actually our nervous system doing what it does best--keeping us safe. Just like our heart beating, eyes blinking and many other functions our bodies do automatically, our autonomic nervous system is 'on' all the time determining if our environment is harmful or harmless.

If our brain and body even slightly perceive threat..boom...for some, it's a flood of anxiety. Most of the time it seems anxiety is out of the blue or 'for no reason'. But when we really take a look, your senses picked up on something. For example, maybe that song that just came on is the same one that was playing when you got in that horrible accident, or while walking in a dark garage at night hearing a loud noise brings a rush of fear. Anxiety rarely lives in the present, it's a little nudge that something may be unhealed or needs attention from your past.

Befriending the nervous system

Making friends with what our brain and body is trying to do is the first step.

I like to call it an internal alarm system. The sound of an unattended car alarm can sound pretty annoying sometimes, but the function is doing its job by getting the car owners attention. The same goes for our human experience. Sometimes anxiety can feel annoying or frustrating--but actually pretty wise and helpful. Once we can slow down and be with our anxiety, take a look at the situation, we can understand why it was trying to get our attention. In therapy, we can begin to let it know it doesn't have to be the one in the front seat. We can work to slow down and allow the messages of your nervous system, befriend our anxiety and have more choice in how we want to respond.

After therapy you may begin to:

• Accept the protective and adaptive role of anxiety as part of our human experience (and there is ultimately no 'getting rid' of it.)
• Be able to identify your anxiety triggers
• Discern between feeling anxious and being anxious
• Feel more 'in control' during anxious moments and reduce distress
• Increase ability to have understanding for the message anxiety is trying to send
• Reduce frustration or suffering anxiety brings
• Respond vs. react to anxious thoughts or situations
• Understand your automatic thoughts in response to a trigger and make choices with healthy self talk
• Use mindfulness skills and tools to combat anxiety

Anxiety Treatment Modalities

My work draws on several modalities such as:

• Mindfulness Practices
• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
• Attachment Theory
• Polyvagal Theory
• Hakomi Mindfulness Based Somatic Therapy
• EMDR: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
• IFS Informed Parts work
• Mindfulness Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

"Anxiety is not a personal failure or flaw. It's a complex manifestation of my genetic inheritance, environment, and result of trauma and perceptions." ~Tiffany Roe