Kirsten Cheong

Anxiety can often stand in the way of our goals. It makes even the simplest of tasks seem dreadful. Living with anxiety can lead to restlessness, frequent worry, and even body sensations like shakiness, sweatiness, and panic. There is no cure for anxiety but there are tons of ways to learn how to manage it. Since 2016, I have been helping overthinkers and "sensitive" people learn how to build their confidence through coping skills, communication techniques, and logic to find relief.

Do you often find yourself involved in relationships where you are giving more than you are receiving? Is your energy drained by others around you? Are you your own dead last priority? You might be suffering from codependency. Our familial relationships from childhood really shape how we allow others to treat us in adulthood. If we are taught early on that our value comes from how we can serve others, we will live our lives never serving ourselves. Call me if you'd like to break the cycle.

The dread of feeling like you're going to have another panic attack can dampen your quality of life. The fear, anxiety, and holding yourself back from doing what you want to do are touchstones of suffering from panic. You are deserving of living through an entire day without the fear of or actually having a panic attack. Even though it feels like you might die, panic attacks are just that, panic attacks. They are treatable and you can overcome them.

Growing in popularity, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a therapy that helps people to heal from symptoms of distress brought on my disturbing life experiences. While psychotherapy can help people heal, it can take years. EMDR is a robust and effective kind of therapy that has the potential to heal clients in a shorter amount of time. EMDR believes that the mind can heal from trauma much like how the body can heal from trauma.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is one of the most well-known and widely-used psychotherapies in the country, and for good reason. It is an effective way of challenging thoughts and behavior patterns that are unhelpful to us. The thoughts that we think and our behaviors can actually be the problem. CBT teaches you that there isn't anything inherently wrong with you, but your habits can be the problem. Negative thoughts and behaviors are the disease, and CBT is the medicine.

Another popular and effective treatment model, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is an incredibly useful way of getting to know yourself, accepting that which you cannot control, and learning to commit to what you actually like. Oftentimes, we tell ourselves one thing, but never act on it (like going to the gym!). Maybe it's time to accept that you don't care about personal fitness as much as you say you do and lean into the things you actually enjoy doing. ACT helps you find your true self.