Stress, PTSD and Anxiety Therapists in Ellicott City, MD.

Many clients considering psychotherapy are dealing with two levels of anxiety and stress. The idea of consulting with a therapist can be stressful and anxiety provoking. Anxiety and stress can also be experienced when discussing issues of compulsive sexual behaviors, or anger issues, that one has not been successful in managing. I approach my psychotherapy practice with a non-judgmental, compassionate and respectful attitude. You will find a confidential and safe environment in which to discuss the difficult issues that have disrupted your personal and professional lives.

To help you manage your stress and anxiety symptoms, we start with understanding the nature and patterns of your symptoms in relation to environmental triggers, traumatic life events, and unhelpful thinking patterns that influence your daily perspective. Using a collaborative alliance, we will look for better ways to manage both your external stressors and internal reactions. A cognitive-behavioral approach offers practical methods to understand how thought patterns influence emotional reactions and behaviors. By redirecting and re-framing your thoughts with alternative thoughts, you can experience a reduction in unpleasant emotions and an increase in personal effectiveness.

There are at least four components to reducing anxiety. The first is to learn self-soothing techniques. the second is to become aware of the thoughts and images which are making you anxious and to deliberately choose other thoughts and images. The third is to discover and face what you are most afraid of. Sometimes, when there has been trauma, this fear is something that has already happened and from which you have not recovered. Often it is something out of your control, a fact of life, like death! We need to make peace with these, accept their reality and make the best of what we have. I have some excellent tools from hypnosis and a field of study called NLP to speed your progress.