Anxiety therapy across Wisconsin, in person or by telehealth.

Anxiety is the experience of your nervous system reading the present moment as dangerous when it isn't. The thoughts run loud, the chest tightens, the sleep gets thin, the small decisions become exhausting. You start avoiding things you used to do without thinking about them, and then the avoidance becomes its own problem.

That experience responds well to therapy, and often faster than people expect. Most of the people I see with anxiety notice the worst edges soften within four to six weeks of starting weekly sessions. Many keep going past that point because the work becomes interesting on its own terms.

What anxiety actually looks like (yours might not look like the brochure)

The textbook list (racing thoughts, restlessness, fatigue, sleep trouble, irritability) is real, but it misses the way anxiety actually shows up in people's lives. It might be the third time this week you've rewritten the same email. It might be the fight with your partner about how you "always seem somewhere else." It might be the way you've started quietly avoiding social plans, group chats, the phone ringing, the grocery store.

• You replay conversations after the fact, looking for what you got wrong
• You feel keyed up but tired at the same time, especially in the evenings
• Decisions that used to be easy now feel like they require homework
• You wake up early with a knot in your stomach for no apparent reason
• You've started to suspect this might just be how you are now

How we'd work on it

I draw on a few approaches that have strong evidence behind them for anxiety, and I match the mix to the person. Cognitive behavioral therapy gives us the tools for catching the spiral early. Dialectical behavioral skills are useful when the body is too activated to think your way out of it. Person-centered work, which is most of what I do, holds the room while we figure out what's actually being protected by all of this.

In practice, most weeks we will talk through what came up since the last session, notice the patterns, and try out a small experiment between now and the next time we meet. Not homework. Small experiments. Most of them are about a single sentence you didn't say, or a single choice you tried differently.

Your anxiety is doing a job. The work is figuring out what job, and whether there's a better way to do it.

If you're a college student

If you're enrolled at a UW campus, a private college, or a technical college in Wisconsin, your campus counseling center is a real resource, and it usually has a waiting list. I take BadgerCare and most major insurance. Telehealth sessions from your dorm or apartment are the most common way I work with students, including the in-between weeks between semesters. Scheduling is Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., which lines up well with between-class or lunch-hour slots.

What this is not

I am not the right person if you need medication management. That requires a psychiatrist or your primary care doctor, and I can help you find one. I am also not the right person if you're in active crisis right now. If that's where you are, please call 988 (the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) or go to your nearest emergency department, then call me when you're stable enough that weekly therapy will land.

What to do next

If anxiety is what brought you here and the rest of this read like a description of something you recognize, the next step is to schedule the consultation or intake session. I ask a few questions, you ask whatever you want, we both get a sense of whether we'd work well together. No pressure to book if it doesn't feel right.

Schedule a free 15 minutes consult →