It's not all in your head

Anxiety Counseling

Everyone keeps telling you that you have nothing to worry about, which is useless, because that was never the point. You know it's "irrational." That knowledge has never once stopped it. The worry doesn't care that you can see it clearly. It just keeps running.

Maybe it's the 3am spiral where your brain rehearses every conversation and every catastrophe. Maybe it's the low hum that never fully shuts off, the sense that something's about to go wrong even when everything's fine. Maybe it's the full physical event, the racing heart, the tight chest, the feeling you're about to die that a doctor already told you isn't a heart attack. Maybe it's the exhaustion of managing it so well that nobody around you even knows.

The thing about "just relax"

You've been told to breathe. To do yoga. To stop drinking coffee. You've maybe been handed an app. And if any of that had solved it, you wouldn't be here.

Anxiety isn't a relaxation deficit. It's usually your nervous system stuck in a threat-response that made sense once, protecting you from something real, and never got the message to stand down. You can't logic your way out of it because it isn't running on logic. The work isn't calming down on command. It's teaching a nervous system that's convinced it's in danger that it's actually safe, which is a different and more durable thing than white-knuckling through another panic attack.

What we work with

Generalized anxiety, the kind with no single subject that attaches to everything. Panic attacks. Social anxiety. Health anxiety. The specific dread that comes with big decisions or big changes. Anxiety tangled up with depression, because they travel together more often than not. And the anxiety that's actually the surface of something underneath, trauma your body is still bracing against, or a grief you haven't been able to sit still long enough to feel.

How we work

We use the approaches that actually have evidence behind them for anxiety, and we use them for real, not as a worksheet we hand you on the way out. That can mean CBT to interrupt the thought-spirals, exposure work to teach your system that the feared thing is survivable, and when the anxiety is trauma-rooted, EMDR to get at the thing your nervous system is still defending against.

And you get a real person, not a therapist performing serenity at you. Anxious people are the fastest in the world at detecting when someone's being fake-calm to manage them, and it makes the anxiety worse. We're not going to do that. We'll be straight with you, including about what's working and what isn't.

In our Greeley office, or by telehealth across Colorado, including Loveland and the surrounding area.

Frequently asked

Is it anxiety or is something medically wrong with me?
Worth ruling out the medical side, some things (thyroid, heart, medication) can mimic anxiety, and we'll say so if we think you should get checked. But if you've already been told you're physically fine and the symptoms persist, that's real, it's treatable, and "physically fine" doesn't mean "it's all in your head."

Do I need medication?
Maybe, maybe not. Therapy alone resolves a lot of anxiety. Some people do better with both. We're not prescribers, but we'll help you think it through and coordinate with someone who is if that's the direction.

How long does it take?
Anxiety often responds faster than people expect, some of the tools start helping in weeks. Deeper or trauma-rooted anxiety takes longer. We check in on progress and won't keep you past the point of usefulness.

Do you take my insurance?
Aetna, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, UnitedHealthcare and Optum, and every Colorado Medicaid plan, with a sliding scale for private pay. Check your actual per-session cost in about thirty seconds, no phone call.