When your mind won't stop scanning.

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health condition in the United States, affecting roughly 40 million adults — generalized anxiety, panic, social anxiety, health anxiety, and anxiety tied to specific situations or relationships. What these share is a nervous system response that produces worry, avoidance, physical tension, and hypervigilance in excess of what the situation actually warrants.

What's less often discussed is that anxiety, at its core, is a survival mechanism. The nervous system does not distinguish between genuine threat and perceived threat. When anxiety persists, it's usually because the nervous system has learned to treat a wide range of experiences as dangerous — often based on earlier conditions where that vigilance was warranted, even necessary. Understanding anxiety this way changes what treatment looks like, and why cognitive approaches alone frequently don't produce lasting resolution.

Anxiety therapy is most effective when it addresses both the cognitive and physiological dimensions, which are related but not the same. Cognitive work helps identify the thought patterns and beliefs that maintain anxiety. But for many adults — particularly those with anxiety rooted in early experience or trauma — the cognitive understanding is already present. They know the anxiety isn't proportionate to the situation. They simply cannot stop the response.

That's because anxiety is held in the nervous system as a learned pattern of physiological activation, not only in the mind as a set of beliefs to be corrected. Effective therapy works with the body's threat response directly, building the capacity to tolerate and gradually discharge activation rather than only manage it cognitively. Depending on the presentation, the work may also include exposure-based work, relational and attachment exploration, and parts-based approaches to understanding what the anxiety has been protecting against.

I draw on Somatic Experiencing, Internal Family Systems (IFS), exposure therapy, ACT, CBT, and psychodynamic and attachment-informed therapy — matched to what's driving the presentation and what your nervous system can access at each stage. For anxiety with a nervous system or trauma dimension, Somatic Experiencing addresses the physiological activation driving the experience regardless of what you understand cognitively. I'm a second-year student at Somatic Experiencing International, a multi-year training developed by Dr. Peter Levine.

IFS is particularly useful for high-functioning anxiety: the vigilant protective part running constant threat surveillance usually has a clear history and a specific function. Understanding that function — rather than trying to eliminate the anxiety outright — often produces more sustainable relief than symptom management alone. Exposure therapy and ACT are well-supported for generalized anxiety, panic, social anxiety, and avoidance patterns where gradual behavioral engagement is part of the clinical goal.

I work across a range of anxiety presentations, with particular depth in two patterns. The first is high-functioning anxiety: adults performing well externally while privately managing constant worry, physical tension, difficulty resting, and a persistent sense of impending threat. Because it isn't visibly disruptive, it often goes unaddressed or minimized for years despite significantly affecting quality of life.

The second is anxiety that hasn't responded to standard approaches. These adults understand their anxiety intellectually, have often completed cognitive work, and find that the understanding doesn't produce felt relief. That's not a failure of effort — it's a signal that the anxiety is held at a level cognitive reframing doesn't reach. I also work with anxiety rooted in trauma, early attachment patterns, cultural stress, and chronic life pressure, where the work means addressing the conditions that formed the anxiety rather than the anxiety in isolation.

Alchemy Psychotherapy is a private-pay, out-of-network practice. A reduced fee is available in limited circumstances based on financial need and current caseload. I do not bill insurance directly, but I provide a Superbill on the first of each month for clients with out-of-network mental health benefits, and HSA and FSA cards are accepted. Under the No Surprises Act, you have the right to a Good Faith Estimate of expected charges before treatment begins.