Don’t Let Anxiety Steal Your Joy

What’s really happening? Anxiety activates your brain’s fear center—the amygdala—triggering a survival response: fight, flight, freeze, or even fawn. These instinctive reactions once helped us escape danger, but today, they often hijack our thoughts and emotions. To learn more about how anxiety affects the brain’s fear response systems, this breakdown explains it beautifully.

Anxiety isn’t inherently negative—it keeps us alert and safe.

But when it overfires, even small triggers can feel like major threats. Imagine this: a delayed text from someone you care about suddenly makes you fear abandonment; a grumpy boss sends your mind spiraling into thoughts of failure. In these moments, your brain’s “fire alarm” is blaring, making it hard to tell real danger from an overblown response.

• You struggle to sleep due to racing thoughts.
• Catastrophic thinking increases – especially at night
• Focusing on tasks feels nearly impossible.
• Minor setbacks quickly turn into worst-case scenarios.
• A delayed reply feels like an urgent crisis.
• You feel an overwhelming urge to act impulsively.
• Your internal alarm rarely lets you relax, even when there’s no real threat.

Imagine waking up refreshed, feeling confident and in control—knowing you have practical tools to manage your thoughts and emotions. Our goal is to help you ease anxiety through personalized anxiety counseling that empowers you to truly enjoy life and your relationships.

Seriously. This is possible. We know – we have been there and now have tools to help us reduce the catastrophic thinking, and find more ease.

Anxiety is usally about going into the future and worrying about something that may happen there. The thing is that, we can’t know how to solve a future problem with today’s resources.

So what we do is first bring you back to the present, What is happening now? Are you in danger? We do this through Mindfulness exercises. We teach you how to manage the overwhelming feeling of distress so that you can calm and then figure out solutions.

At our practice, our anxiety counseling approach combines of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Mindfulness, and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) to equip you with lasting, practical skills.

CBT has consistently been shown to reduce anxiety symptoms—here’s an overview from the American Psychological Association on how psychologists help with anxiety disorders.

However for some people with anxiety, other treatments are better – for example, Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) where we work on how to handle anxiety in the moment where your brain wants you to do a behavior that probably isn’t the best.

Cooling the Soup:  Step-by-Step

Pause and Assess:When anxiety strikes, freeze. Just stop. Take a moment to ground yourself by noticing simple details in your environment—perhaps count the blue or round objects around you. This pause gives your brain a chance to reset.

Do the Opposite:

Instead of reacting impulsively (like making repeated calls or showing up unannounced), choose a different response. For example, if a delayed text triggers you, distract yourself with a quick walk or a fun movie. Over time, these deliberate actions help curb overreactions.

TIP: A Practical DBT Technique

Marsha Linehan’s official DBT Skills Workbook utlines tools like TIP for managing high emotional arousal:

• T – Temperature: Cool your body with an ice pack on your face, neck, or wrists—or even put your feet in a bucket of cold water.
• I – Intense Exercise: Short bursts of movement (like 30 air squats or 10 knee pushups) help redirect anxious energy.
• P – Paced Breathing: Try square breathing (in for 4, hold for 4, out for 4) to calm your body and reduce racing thoughts.