Shana Evans-Bassett, LPC Counseling & Psychotherapy
(404) 735-9039 Free 15-Minute Consultation

Anxiety

You’ve Gotten Very Good at Getting Ahead of It

You make the decision, then put it back on trial for three days.

Did you do it right, or could you have done it better?

The worry finds its openings: your health, a room full of people, whether the person closest to you is pulling away.

You know this isn’t working and have tried strategies for this. None of them hold for long.

Some of It You’ve Never Called Anxiety

Everyone I’ve worked with has carried anxiety they had no idea was there.

They call it their personality.

Yours looks like a sharp, on-edge quality you’ve had as long as you can remember, or a system that gets overwhelmed faster than you think it should.

Anxiety is universal. It shows up wherever life stops being predictable.

It turns into a problem when you start arranging your life around not feeling it.

Your Arranging Takes Three Forms

Avoiding the thing outright.

Forcing yourself through on adrenaline.

Thinking and planning until you have a version of it you can tolerate.

All three buy back a sense of control. And all three charge interest.

The Thing You’re Avoiding Is Your Own Feeling

Seif and Winston (2014) put it plainly: “Anxiety is maintained through avoidance, and willing exposure is the active ingredient in recovery.”

In that sense, all of therapy is exposure therapy.

What you’re avoiding is spontaneous emotion, because in your feelings you aren’t the one in charge. Your effort to avoid your feelings is what ends up controlling you.

Learn That Your Feelings Won’t Do You In

When the picture is straightforward, we’ll map your triggers and the avoidances that grew up around them.

From there I’ll help you meet them gradually through willing exposure.

You’ll steady yourself in real time while you do.

When Your Anxiety Has Roots Further Down

What you call anxiety reaches past the trigger and into emotional territory.

Then the work goes there with it. You’ll talk about the fear, the anger, the disappointment, the shame, and the grief you’d rather leave alone.

And you’ll learn they can be survived.

Whole New Worlds of Choice Open Up for You

The people I work with have grown out of their OCD, their health anxiety, and their obsessive thinking.

That happens through long, process-oriented, emotion-focused psychotherapy, not through a technique aimed at the symptom.

Your decisions stop needing a tribunal.

And the tyranny of needing to be in control at all starts to lift.

Tell Me What You’ve Been Managing on Your Own

This is long work, and it’s the kind that holds.

If you’re ready to go at your anxiety from the root, call me at (404) 735-9039 for a free 15-minute consultation.

We’ll talk about what’s been going on, how I work, and whether I’m the right therapist for you.

I’ll be honest with you about what it takes, and I’ll be for you the whole way through.

I am known for my ability to work with complex cases, and I have had success with clients who have had previous unsatisfying experiences in therapy.

If you’re ready to break free from frustrating cycles of despair, overthinking, miscommunication, and emotional gridlock, and start changing your life and relationships for the better, I am at your service.

Book a 15-minute consultation with me to discuss your situation and how I can help.

Book Your 15‑Minute Consultation

Free, 15 minutes, in person in Buckhead or online.