Anxiety therapy in Manhattan, New York
Is anxiety holding you back from the life you want?
Do you find yourself worrying about something you said? Do you get overwhelmed thinking about spending time with other people, especially when they're new? Do you avoid situations where you'll be on the spot? Is it hard to concentrate because you feel so overwhelmed with things you have to do?Anxiety is one of the most common mental health conditions and it can be debilitating. If anxiety is preventing you from enjoying your life, reach out.
Does it all feel too much?
Anxiety has a number of different faces - social anxiety (or social phobia), performance anxiety, panic, anxiety attacks – and can manifest in a variety of different ways: it can feel sudden and unexpected or it can have a slow build up and linger, it can be overwhelming or it can sit in the background making you feel "on edge," it can be attached to a specific activity or it can be an ambient part of your life.
​​
Most people feel some form of anxiety at some point in their lives. While it is perfectly normal to feel anxious before giving a presentation or talking to someone new, if your anxiety is preventing you from doing those things, then it has become a problem.
Sometimes people feel anxious about a specific change in their lives. A new job or promotion has you worried that you won't be able to do what they hired you for; you've just started seeing someone and you are so anxious that you'll mess it up that you start messing it up; you're trying to conceive (TTC) and it is taking longer than you thought it would. Major life changes can be overwhelming, causing your mind to race with self-defeating, and sometimes self-fulfilling, negative thoughts. ​​
​
Therapy for anxiety can help. Therapy help you take control over your feelings, giving you the tools to deescalate anxiety in the moment and prevent it from coming back as strong. ​
Beyond Anxiety
There is a self-fulfilling quality to anxiety: you feel so anxious about doing or saying something embarrassing that you do things in an unnatural way that you're later embarrassed about. Or, you get so anxious about all the work you have to do that you put it off, it stacks up, and now there is too much to do and not enough time to do it. ​
​
Left untreated, anxiety can really overtake a life. It prevents people from going on dates and from applying to jobs, it causes couples to fight and for their fights to be unproductive, it makes fun and inconsequential hangouts awkward, it can make important periods of your life (like a new job, pregnancy, or a new diagnosis) feel impossibly overwhelming. It makes every day something to worry about.
​
And sometimes it feels like it can't be avoided. If you're in school, you will almost certainly have to work with some kids you don't hang out with or give a presentation. If you're dating, you're ​going to be interacting with new people. If you're applying for jobs or auditioning, you're going to be trying to impress strangers.
These don't need to be anxious situations. Therapy for anxiety can help you take control of your feelings so that you can meet these moments with your best self. ​​​​
What is anxiety?
Although anxiety is highly individual, and different people have different symptoms, there are several common features of anxiety shared by almost everyone.
​
-
Avoiding social situations, or situations where you will meet new people
-
Trouble sleeping or sleeping too much
-
Difficulty focusing
-
Feeling overwhelmed or on edge
-
Physical symptoms like shaky hands, headaches, tenseness, accelerated heart rate
-
Racing thoughts
​
These symptoms can be managed and, with the root causes of your anxiety understood, even eradicated. With an anxiety therapist you can work through the sources of your anxiety and get control over uncontrollable moments.
Anxiety therapy at Lexington Park Psychotherapy
​​Anxiety has a way of permeating a life. While many people experience anxiety on its own, at least as frequently it shows up with depression, ADHD, trauma, and chronic pain. The way that it can spread - touching other pain points in your life - can make anxiety feel unending and inevitable. But with an anxiety therapist in Manhattan, you can take control of your feelings again.
​
At Lexington Park Psychotherapy, our team takes an integrative approach to anxiety therapy, focusing on both the acute symptoms of anxiety as well as the structures of thought and emotion that sustain and give rise to those symptoms in the first place. This dual concentration helps us to both cultivate a sense of self that aligns more intentionally with who you want to be and make sure that tomorrow feels better than today. ​​​​
By combining elements of cognitive behavioral therapy, psychodynamic psychotherapy, internal family systems, emotion focused therapy, trauma-informed psychotherapy, and others, we can tailor our treatment to the way your anxiety manifests and to your specific needs.