Your mind doesn't stop, even when everything is fine.

What this can look like

It isn't always panic. Often it's quieter, and it can pass for being responsible, prepared, or high-achieving.

• Replaying conversations long after they've ended.

• Preparing for every possible way something could go wrong.

• Holding yourself to standards you'd never apply to anyone else.

• Feeling tired from a day where nothing much happened.

• Struggling more now than you used to, without a clear reason why.

• Needing things to feel certain before you can relax.

• Lying awake running through tomorrow, or next year.

• Saying yes to everything, then resenting how little room is left for you.

How I approach it

If you've already learned the breathing exercises and the thought records and the anxiety keeps coming back, the question isn't whether you're trying hard enough. It's what keeps it going.

Look at what the anxiety is doing

Anxiety usually has a job, like keeping you prepared or keeping you from being caught off guard. Understanding the job makes it easier to change, and I'll tell you what I think the job is.

Practical tools, tested in your week

We work on what actually shifts the pattern for you, and when something doesn't work, we figure out why instead of just adding another technique.

Notice what's underneath

Sometimes anxiety is part of something else: ADHD, OCD, a major transition, or a body and schedule running on empty. We look at the whole picture. Your worries deserve to be taken seriously. That doesn't mean every worry is telling the truth, and part of the work is learning to tell the difference.

When it's tangled up with something else

• When you need to check or ask again: if your worries come with a strong pull to check, ask, or neutralize them, OCD may be part of it.

• When you're always behind: worry that grows out of years of compensating for attention that won't cooperate.

• When it started with a big change: starting college or grad school, moving to a new state, a new job, a new baby, or a loss.