Feeling anxious?
Your mind is racing and you can’t quiet it.
You have the hardest time falling asleep!
You wake up in a sweat, worried.
I can help.
What is anxiety?
Physiologically, anxiety is your body’s natural reaction to a stressful situation or perceived threat. When we don’t have the tools to cope with anxiety productively, it can cause a great deal MORE problems down the road.
There are three kinds of anxiety:
Generalized Anxiety: excessive worry in several areas of life, such as work, personal life, finances, health, and minor concerns
Panic: an extreme case of anxiety includes panic attacks. During a panic attack you’ll experience physical symptoms.
Phobias: an intense fear of a specific situation or object which is out of proportion to its actual threat. For example: fear of spiders, public speaking, fear of going out…
What does anxiety feel like?
Anxiety can show up in our bodies and thoughts in various ways - and none of them feel good!
They can include:
racing thoughts
digestive issues, muscle tension, and/or headaches
restlessness, agitation, irritation, and/or nervousness
panic attacks, which can include difficulty breathing
uncontrollable worry or obsessive, looped thoughts
difficulty concentrating, lack of focus, loss of productivity
Sometimes, our own anxiety compounds itself and becomes a cycle, making it even harder to break that negative feedback loop.
I can help you move past it.
What can cause anxiety?
Anxiety is caused by many things, but the end result is the same - we feel stressed out, out-of-control, and irritable.
Anxiety can be caused by many things, including:
Stress in our personal and/or work life
a lack of support in our relationships
traumatic experience(s), whether recent or long-past
financial stress
low self-esteem or low confidence
feeling stuck and helpless
ignoring your own needs and wants
over-scheduling your time
In short, feeling anxious all the time can really impact your life!
How does anxiety affect your life?
When we live with untreated anxiety, it can negatively impact our lives in many ways.
It can manifest itself at night, when we try to sleep, keeping us awake or waking us up. This can lead to chronic exhaustion.
It can make it hard to focus on our work, making us fall behind or feel stress from the lack of focus.
It can show itself in repeated negative thoughts that are hard to quiet, making it hard to focus; making it hard to see anything positive.
It can create awful, sometimes-debilitating panic attacks. Panic attacks are NO JOKE. It feels like you can’t breath, can’t focus, can’t do ANYTHING.
Panic attacks can mimic the sign of a heart attack - and that can be terrifying!
It can make us feel on-edge all the time, like we’re going to snap at the next little thing that frustrates us. And then, of course, we feel guilty for snapping! It can be a viscous cycle.
One of the worst things about living with anxiety is how it can compound itself - one problem builds on the next!
I get it. And together, we can find your relief.
YOU can find joy again!
How Can I help you cope with anxiety?
As we work through, I’ll provide you with the guidance and resources.
You’ll learn about your own anxiety, and then you’ll glean tools to help you manage it.
The tools you’ll adopt will be unique to you, but may include:
changing negative thought patterns
learning how anxiety & depression are linked
reconnecting you to yourself
helping you linking feelings, thoughts & actions
helping you learn to prioritize yourself
Does this sound good to you?
Life JOY Therapy specializes in treating professional women in Ontario with issues that are affecting their quality of life, productivity, relationships, and feelings of self-worth. Founder Jennifer Bartok offers an attachment-oriented experiential approach to therapy based on your own humanistic experiences making each and every session custom-tailored to you and your needs. She draws from her expertise in Emotionally-Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) that uses our biological needs of attachment to understand our emotions, reactions within relationships and helps clients experience the impact that their emotions have on their life and ways to change. She holds multiple credentials and certificates. Read more about Jennifer here.
