Anxiety and Excessive Worrying
Anxiety has a way of making itself feel productive. If you worry enough, plan enough, or think through every possible outcome, maybe you can stay ahead of what might go wrong. But that sense of control is an illusion. Excessive worrying doesn't reduce the probability of a bad outcome, it pulls your attention out of the present and into a future that may never arrive, leaving you exhausted and no safer than before.
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How Anxiety Shows Up in Daily Life
Anxiety rarely announces itself clearly. For many millennials and Gen Z, it shows up as decision paralysis, the inability to commit to a choice because every option feels like a potential mistake. It shows up as social comparison, a constant, draining audit of how you measure up against others. It shows up at 2am, when the day is done and your mind finally has the space to surface everything you've been pushing aside. It can also show up in your body. Tension, fatigue, difficulty sleeping, a low-level restlessness you can't quite name. Over time, these experiences stop feeling like symptoms and start feeling like personality. That's when people tend to seek help.
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How Therapy Helps With Anxiety
Therapy for anxiety isn't about eliminating worry altogether. Some degree of concern about the future is normal and useful. The goal is to help you distinguish between thinking that's solving a real problem and thinking tha's running on a loop without getting anywhere. In our sessions, we work on understanding where the anxiety comes from, what it's protecting you from, and what patterns of thought and behaviour are keeping it alive. That understanding is the foundation for change.
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My Approach to Treating Anxiety
I work with Cognitive-Behavioural therapy (CBT), Dialectical-Behavioual Therapy (DBT), Schema therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Motivational Interviewing. In practice, these aren't separate tracks, they inform each other depending on what's most useful at a given stage of the work. CBT helps identify the thought patterns that maintain anxiety and develop more accurate, workable ways of responding to situations. Schema therapy goes deeper, examining the early beliefs and experiences that may have made anxiety a default response in the first place. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) adds a different angle: rather than challenging anxious thoughts directly, it focuses on building psychological flexibility, which means learning to hold difficult thoughts and feelings without letting them dictate what you do.
The goal isn't to feel less anxious before you act; it's to act in line with what matters to you, even when anxiety is present. Motivational interviewing shapes how the work unfolds in sessions, drawing out your own reasons for change rather than prescribing them. Most clients find that insight and practical skills work best together. Understanding why anxiety shows up is important. So is knowing what to do when it does.
If this resonates with you, I offer a free screening consultation to help you figure out the right next step.
Anxiety often co-occurs with Depression and Work-Related Stress. If you're unsure what's driving your experience, exploring our full range of Psychological Services to clarify the best path forward.