I am a therapist with experience living with anxiety. Through my own ongoing process of healing I have learned it is possible to manage anxiety and to turn the volume down on the fears and negative voices that often take over during episodes of anxiety. Anxiety is a tricky one to treat because anxiety exists for a reason and it is not possible to never experience anxiety again (I know, wouldn’t it be nice if it could be fully eradicated). Anxiety serves a real purpose for all of us in helping us stay safe when in danger and to make decisions when under stress. For some of us however, whether it be because of past trauma; intergenerational trauma; genetics; daily living in oppressive systems and/or life stressors and changes - the volume of our anxiety is turned up way too high. We find ourselves experiencing high levels of fear and bodily discomfort daily and start feeling terrible more often than not. Anxiety is like the iceberg that we can see and can name and below there are often root causes that are not in our full awareness. For many folks with anxiety, we have great difficulty making contact with or allowing ourselves to experience the emotions of sadness, grief, shame and anger. We fear that these emotions will overwhelm us and swallow us whole. The good news is your hard emotions won’t swallow you whole, but like a muscle that has lost its strength - it will take time and self compassion for you to allow these big emotions the space that they need to move through you. If you don’t - anxiety will keep screaming to get your attention. My approach is bottom up - that is I start with supporting you in our sessions to notice, name and stay with your hard emotions and to help you build more awareness of where emotions show up in your body. Secondly, I approach this from the perspective that when we are experiencing anxiety it is our nervous system that is dysregulated and we are caught in a constant state of fight, flight, freeze or fawn. The focus of my work is to support you to turn down the volume of your anxiety by learning more about how the nervous system works and finding ways that work for you in regulating your nervous system. As you began to allow yourself to feel your emotions, to learn how your body is connected to your emotional body and to have more tools to regulate your nervous system - the volume of you anxiety will become quieter and you will find more space to rest, play and be creative.