Anxiety Therapist in Atlanta
I’m Cheryl Delaney, and I’m an anxiety therapist in Atlanta, Georgia.
Missing Out on Life?
For most of your life, the fact that you have 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 fully aware of the moment at hand because you're 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 maybe you never quite feel relaxed.
I help people understand their emotions so they aren’t at the whim of unpredictable waves of sadness or panic. If you want to know what makes you tick and change your anxiety for good, contact me. If you’re ready to start feeling better, schedule a complimentary consultation with me today.
What Does Perfectionism Have to do with Anxiety?
Most of my clients know rationally that perfection is unattainable. But in any specific situation, it still feels like perfection is the correct goal. With those ingredients in action, anxiety is inevitable. You’re constantly aware that what feels necessary is also impossible. Quite often, you don’t actually meet your own standards, but everyone around you is delighted with what you produce, so you get a bit of respite. It never lasts long, though, because there’s another goal just around the corner.
Life can be so much better than “perfect.”
How Anxiety Therapy Can Help
You want to enjoy the rewards of your hard work. To feel relaxed and present when you're talking to a friend or going for a walk—but fear always seems to intrude.
You don’t have to dread your downtime or hide your shortcomings! What would change in your life if you could reliably feel at ease instead?
With warm connection and powerful tools, I can help you feel satisfied and confident right where you want to be.
Imagine you woke up feeling hopeful and energetic most days of the week.
What would look different about your life?
Anxiety comes in different forms, and we can approach it using a few other models. We'll likely use a combination of the ones described here. We'll examine your thoughts, uncover unconscious motivation, confront the thing you fear the most, and check for hidden conflict.
Anxiety Treatment
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“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.
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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’ll do great work together.
An example of using exposure to treat anxiety might be intentionally spending time on a balcony if you’re afraid of heights. We can start off gradually and work our way up to a balcony (or the thing that most scares you) or, if you’re willing to brave it and want the quickest possible recovery, we can go straight to the most frightening thing.
If social interactions make you nervous and that’s getting in your way, there are lots of experiments we can do to find out if they’re as risky as they seem. Smile and Hello, self-disclosure, shame-attacking, the survey method - all are tools we can use to increase your comfort level around people.
And if your biggest fear isn’t something we can replicate in real life (let’s say you’re most afraid of losing someone you love), we can use our imaginations to confront that awful prospect.
Exposure is a powerful tool but it isn’t a panacea, so we’ll consider all the approaches as we find what’s most effective for you.
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One powerful cause for anxiety is the desire to control the uncontrollable. Most of us unconsciously believe that if we worry hard enough or well enough, we can keep the plane in the air or protect our loved ones by sheer force of will.
Sometimes recognizing this unconscious motivation is enough to unlock a pattern of worry.
For most of my clients, it’s powerful to recognize all the ways their anxiety reveals what is most important to them.
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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 pay a high price because avoiding friction requires vigilance. It means paying attention to facial expressions and tones of voice and picking up on any signs of discomfort or disagreement.
It’s also pretty common for simmering resentment to show up as anxiety or even physical symptoms. If I’m not supposed to feel hurt or resentful or especially angry, it takes energy and vigilance to make sure I never reveal those feelings.
Treating Your Anxiety Together
We will likely use more than one and possibly all the models described above. No two people are exactly alike, and no two courses of treatment are exactly alike. Luckily, we have a collection of tools and techniques to help you get the level of peace and contentment, even joy, you’re yearning for.
My goal is for you to leave therapy with the skills you need to be your own therapist for the rest of your life.
Let’s Talk.
Click below to schedule a free, 20-minute consultation.