Life can be so much better than perfect.
Anxiety Therapist in Atlanta
Hi, my name is Cheryl Delaney, and I’m an anxiety therapist in Atlanta.
For most of your life, the fact that you had high standards barely occurred to you - it was the water you were swimming in. Recently, you've started to feel like the water was getting deeper and deeper. You've always had a hard time staying focused on the moment at hand. You're always thinking about what comes next. What might you be forgetting? What do you need to make sure you get to before the end of the day?
Now that things have taken a turn for the worse, you’re not sleeping well, you're distracted, and you almost never feel relaxed.
I help people stop their thought cyclones and start feeling calm.
If you want to understand your emotions and change your anxiety for good, contact me. If you’re ready to start feeling better, schedule a complimentary consultation with me today.
How Does Perfectionism Lead to Anxiety?
What's your biggest weakness? Isn't the best answer, "Well, I'm a bit of a perfectionist?" Perfectionism - an intense desire for flawless execution - seems so desirable at times! It has probably contributed to your proudest achievements. At the same time, it often doesn't let go and doesn't turn off when you lie down to sleep at night or go on vacation.
Perfectionists often drive themselves with negative, self-critical thoughts. When those thoughts come up, they may lead to action, but they're threatening and cruel, especially when things don't go according to plan.
The belief that perfection is possible causes tremendous suffering. A need to achieve perfection to be successful, loved, or worthwhile is even more dangerous. It's painful and frightening to worry about making a single error or pissing off a single person. Errors and differences of opinion are inevitable! That means there's always something to dread, try to avoid, and then regret.
How Anxiety Therapy Can Help
You want to enjoy the rewards of your hard work. To feel focused and engaged when you're talking to a friend or going for a walk - but the voice always seems to intrude. Right now you dread your downtime and hide your shortcomings! Imagine feeling contented, relaxed, and excited instead. Using warm connection and powerful tools, I can help you feel at ease and confident, exactly where you want to be.
Anxiety Isn’t All Bad
You may already be aware that anxiety plays a crucial role in your life! It might motivate you or protect you. It keeps your eyes on the prize and helps you push through barriers that would otherwise get in your way.
But Anxiety Does Cause Problems
Of course, it also carries a cost. You feel distracted and uneasy, and you can't seem to turn off the buzzing and enjoy your life. Your anxiety prevents you from living your values. You don't accept invitations to speak to large audiences; you go to extremes to avoid mistakes. Anxiety keeps your life small. It saps your energy and takes you away from pleasure and relaxation. I can show you how to transform your thinking about anxiety and live the life you want.
Our Brains Are Trying!
At every moment, we are collecting information about the world. We learn over and over through experience what we like, what threatens us, how other people behave. We are terrible statisticians, though!
We are always under- or overestimating risk and telling ourselves that we can't bear a bad outcome.
Treatment
Anxiety comes in different forms, and the model that helps you specifically will be unique to you. To treat your anxiety, we'll use a combination of models. We'll take a look at your thoughts, check for unconscious motivation, confront the thing you fear the most, and check for hidden conflict.
The Cognitive Model (Thoughts)
“I'm going to screw this up.” “This plane is going to crash.” “They're going to hate me.” “This is going to end badly.”
If you experience anxiety, you have thoughts like these. The thoughts are enough to start your adrenaline pumping whether the project deadline, the flight, or the party are anywhere in sight. We have powerful tools to generate new, positive thoughts that will crush your negative thoughts and lower your anxiety. Treatment isn't just a matter of "thinking positive!" and forcing yourself to recite mantras you don't actually believe. You can read more about it here.
The Exposure Model (Facing Your fears)
Exposure won't be sufficient on its own, but you will have to be willing to face your fears to recover fully. You'll need to attend parties, face criticism, or vividly imagine making mistakes. Whatever the thing is that you fear the most, it will be part of treatment. If that sounds horrifying, that's promising. It would likely give us results! At the same time, you'd be right to hesitate to sign up for such a thing. If it sounds both horrifying and worth it, we have a promising path forward.
The Motivation Model (Understanding What’s Driving You)
One powerful cause for anxiety is the desire to control the uncontrollable. You might believe (usually unconsciously!) that if you worry hard enough or well enough, you can keep the plane in the air by sheer force of will. Sometimes recognizing this unconscious motivation is enough to unlock a pattern of worry.
The Hidden Emotion Model (Unwanted Feelings)
Sometimes anxiety shows up because there's some uncomfortable emotion you're avoiding. Anxiety often strikes exceptionally caring and considerate people. Those who don't want to ruffle feathers or hurt feelings sometimes pay a high price.
This often develops because of some feeling we aren't "supposed" to have. It could be that someone else is driving your career choices, and you feel resentful. If you stifle resentment at every pass, it might cause underlying anxiety. Maybe your partner isn't doing enough of the household labor. You feel annoyed but suppress that feeling because they do other things.
Tying It All Together
We will likely use more than one and possibly all the models described above. Our goal will be to give you skills you can use for life. When you leave therapy, you will be able to treat yourself for life.
Frequently Asked Questions
-
Everyone has anxiety. Without anxiety, we wouldn't set our alarm clocks or bring an umbrella on cloudy days. It also can be more and less intense. For some people, it’s a simple matter of preparing for what's ahead. For others, it interrupts every moment of rest with the sense that something bad is about to happen. You are the only person who knows how much it gets in the way of your life.
-
I’ve described some features of treatment above but you can read more about the specifics here. I also recommend listening to the Feeling Good podcast and these episodes about anxiety:
Anxiety with physical symptoms
My approach moves far beyond careful listening and smile-and-nod responses. Connecting is crucial, and I am an excellent listener, but that won't produce much change on its own. TEAM is demanding of therapists and clients, and it delivers results.
When we start working together, we'll see that your anxiety is not a sign of what's wrong with you. Your anxiety causes suffering, and it has incredible benefits. Once we see how that works in your life, we'll be ready to consider changing the thoughts that are harming you.
-
My clients work hard. To join my practice, you will need to be willing to do at least 10 minutes of homework every day. This might include listening to a podcast, reading a book, or doing written exercises. We'll tailor the homework to what we're working on together in session. It will be essential to continue working on your own no matter what we're doing.
My clients also fill out a mood survey before and after each session and an evaluation after the session. The mood survey can tell us if we're making a difference in your mood.
The evaluation lets us know if our relationship is on solid footing. If I've said something that landed the wrong way, the survey will bring that to light, and we'll be able to get back on track.
This type of therapy is different from what you see on TV. It will be different from your past experiences in therapy, and it will challenge you. It also delivers results.
-
You will be the best judge of whether treatment is working. More important: you'll have some evidence to back up your gut feeling. You'll take mood surveys every time we meet, and we'll look at trends over time to see whether therapy is working.
Filling out the surveys will also show how your anxiety connects to other factors. Nothing works in isolation: your depression affects your anxiety, anger, and relationship satisfaction.
-
One of the things that makes me great at this work is that I've experienced a lot of anxiety myself. One of my anxiety responses is to start weeping! This can be highly inconvenient for me, but luckily I know how to treat the sources of my anxiety. I've done exposure work myself and will continue to do more. Since I've been there myself, I know how tough it can be to do exposure, and I know how effective it is. I love seeing my clients get it and feel vicarious joy when we crush another fear together.
More Info
If you want to hear from other people who practice a similar approach, check out Thai-An Truong or Daniel Mintie. For background on TEAM and how it works, including case examples and recordings of live sessions, listen to the Feeling Good podcast or read the blog on David Burns’ website.
Let’s Talk.
Click below to schedule a free, 15-minute consultation.