The thinking
never
stops.
You think about what happened yesterday. What might happen tomorrow. What you said, what you didn't, what they heard. What you should have done.
You prepare. You anticipate. You analyze.
And just when it seems you've exhausted every possible worry, your mind finds something else.
But it isn't only
the thinking.
It's the dread that comes with it. The gnawing in your stomach. The racing heart. The nights when your exhausted body is begging for sleep and your mind simply will not let you rest.
It's that awful moment after you've said something when you almost seem to be watching yourself from outside:
Why did I say that?
Did they notice?
Can they tell?
It's needing to know and knowing you can't.
Needing to stop and being unable to stop.
Feeling that you have to do something while having no idea what else there is to do.
From the outside, people see someone thoughtful, responsible, capable—the person who can be counted on.
They have no idea how tired you are.
How much effort goes into getting things right.
How often you question yourself afterward anyway.
How “letting it go” simply doesn't seem to apply to you.
Did I disappoint them?
Did they notice that mistake?
Can they see how uncertain I really am?
If people really knew...
After living this way for long enough, anxiety can stop feeling like something you experience and begin to feel like something you are.
I don't have anxiety.
I am anxiety.
I DON'T BELIEVE THAT'S TRUE.
Possibility
Things can be
better.
I don't mean that everything will turn out well.
Life includes uncertainty. People disappoint us. We disappoint them. We make mistakes. Sometimes the things we fear actually happen. Loss and pain are part of being human, and therapy cannot make them otherwise.
But the suffering created by constantly anticipating, analyzing, second-guessing, criticizing, and trying to control what cannot be controlled can change.
And change doesn't require you to wake up one morning suddenly able to “let it go.”
It begins more quietly than that.
You begin to notice what fear is telling you.
You become curious about it rather than simply being swept along by it.
You learn which thoughts deserve your attention and which can be allowed to pass without being solved.
You begin to discover that feeling uncertain does not always mean you need to find certainty. That feeling afraid does not necessarily mean something is dangerous. That making a mistake does not make you a mistake.
And gradually, something shifts.
Fear may still speak. Anxiety may still show up. But neither automatically determines what happens next.
There is more room between what you feel and what you do.
Working Together
We begin where you are.
You don't need to arrive at therapy knowing what needs to change.
You don't need to understand why you feel this way.
And you certainly don't need to know how to fix it.
That's part of the work.
For more than three decades as a clinical psychologist, I have worked with people overwhelmed by experiences they could not seem to think, reason, reassure, or work their way out of.
I bring experience, knowledge, perspective, curiosity, and practical tools to our work together. I listen carefully. Sometimes I will offer a perspective you haven't considered or ask a question that invites us to look at something differently.
But therapy is not something I do to you.
It is something we do together.
The things that are difficult to say elsewhere have a home here.
The thoughts you fear will sound terrible if you say them aloud.
The things you worry would disappoint someone.
The feelings you think you shouldn't have.
The mistakes you haven't forgiven yourself for.
You do not need to protect me from your experience.
You do not need to perform therapy well.
We begin where you are.
Understanding
matters.
So does doing
something
different.
My approach is grounded in humanistic/person-centered psychology and informed by cognitive behavioral and acceptance-based approaches.
But I am less interested in fitting you into a model than in understanding what is happening to you.
Sometimes change means recognizing a belief you've treated as fact and becoming willing to question it.
Sometimes it means noticing what anxiety has been asking you to do—and discovering what happens when you respond differently.
Sometimes it means sitting with uncertainty a little longer before seeking reassurance.
Sometimes it means noticing the story you've been telling yourself about who you are and becoming curious about whether the story and your actual experience are the same thing.
At first, these can be very small changes.
But small changes teach you something.
and stay here.
solve
this right now.
not knowing.
thought
isn't a fact.
a choice.
Over time, those discoveries accumulate. You begin not merely to understand anxiety differently, but to experience yourself differently in its presence.
Relief
And relief begins to mean something different.
At first, relief may simply be having a place where you don't have to edit yourself.
Where you can stop managing someone else's reaction long enough to tell the truth about your own experience.
Where someone understands why this is so difficult without concluding that you are incapable of doing something about it.
That kind of relief matters.
But there is another kind.
The relief of sleeping instead of solving.
Making a decision without putting yourself on trial afterward.
Allowing someone to be disappointed without immediately concluding that you have done something wrong.
Recognizing anxiety when it speaks without assuming that everything it says is true.
Being uncertain without frantically trying to make uncertainty disappear.
Making a mistake and remaining, in your own eyes, a worthwhile human being.
And perhaps, eventually, looking back at the person you once were not with embarrassment or shame, but with compassion for how very hard she was working to find her way.
That is a quieter kind of relief.
It comes not from finally controlling everything around you, but from discovering that you can increasingly trust yourself to meet what comes.
Practice
A little about my practice.
I provide individual psychotherapy through secure telehealth to adults located in Washington and Oregon.
My practice is intentionally small and private-pay. I work exclusively with adults, with a particular interest in thoughtful, conscientious women living with chronic worry, overthinking, perfectionism, self-doubt, and generalized anxiety.
I do not participate with insurance companies. This allows our work to remain individualized and guided by what is clinically useful to you rather than by the requirements of an insurer.
Telehealth allows us to meet from an appropriate private location wherever you are in Washington or Oregon.
You don't have to know yet whether therapy will help.
If you've spent a long time thinking I've tried everything, nothing I do matters, or this is simply who I am, certainty may be too much to ask of you right now.
So I won't ask for it.
Perhaps it is enough to wonder whether something could be different.
Choosing a psychologist is personal. Training and experience matter, but so does something harder to put on a résumé: whether you feel understood by the person sitting across from you.
If something here has felt familiar—if at some point while reading you've thought yes, that's what it's like—I invite you to contact me.
We can talk about what has brought you here, what you hope might change, and whether working together feels like the right next step.
You don't have to know where this will lead.
Get in touchSend me a brief message through the contact form. I'll respond by email so we can determine next steps.
We begin where you are.