5 Signs You Could Benefit From an Online Anxiety Therapist in Maryland

Could online therapy in Maryland be helpful for reducing anxiety?

It’s been another exhausting day. Your mind works overtime, trying to keep up with the endless string of “What if”s. Your nervous system ping pongs between freaking out and shutting down. And the lack of a good night of sleep isn’t helping. If you’ve been wondering if working with an online anxiety therapist in Maryland could help, here are five signs that it might be the next right step for you.

Many Marylanders struggle with anxiety. It’s an incredibly common condition that responds well to treatment. While it’s expected that everyone experiences some anxiety from time to time, especially under stress, there are some clues that can let us know that perhaps it’s time to reach out for some extra support around this.

1. Your Anxiety Is interfering with Daily Life

Is anxiety impacting your social life?

This is one of the biggest clues that it might be a good time to ask for some help with anxiety. Once anxiety begins to interfere with multiple areas of your everyday life, it’s often helpful to get some support.

Here are some places where anxiety often shows up:

Social: Are you avoiding social plans and contact with friends because you it’s too exhausting to deal with the discomfort of trying to constantly figure out if you said the wrong thing or managing panic about sudden changes in plans?

Health: Do you have trouble sleeping because your mind is racing when it should be resting? Have you been having trouble with muscle tension, GI problems or heart palpitations, that haven’t been explained by an underlying medical issue?

Work: Is your inbox a disaster because you’re unsure how to prioritize things because you’re terrified of what happens if you make a mistake? Do you put off tasks until you can have time to “ do them right” but then have trouble getting around to them because there’s never that right pocket of time?

Relationships: Are you having frequent conflicts with your partner because you are often trying to get them to act differently so that you can be more comfortable? Or, are you avoiding all conflict because you get completely out of sorts any time you try to address an issue?

When anxiety starts showing up in multiple areas of life, therapy can be useful in helping things feel doable again. A skilled anxiety therapist can help you to calm your body and mind, and come up with plan to better manage anxiety when it pops up in your daily life.

2. You Feel Stuck in Cycles of worry

Anxiety can make our minds feel like a bad merry-go-round, with our thoughts and worries looping around endless but not really getting us anywhere. You’re exhausted and desperate for sleep but you end up laying in bed, awake for hours, as you replay the conversations that happened with your boss or friends or partner, cringing at everything that you see is so wrong about those conversations now and worrying about what others are thinking of you. Perhaps you know you need to get on a plane in a couple of weeks and, instead of being excited for the trip, you can’t stop imagining something terrible happening, which floods you with panic every time you think of it, and you wonder if you should cancel your trip, or change your flight, or change your seat ,or something else.

Even when you know your mind is going in these circles, it can be hard to break out of them. Online therapy for anxiety can help give you some tools to shift out of these thought loops and get unstuck from the cycles of worry, so you can reclaim some peace of mind.

Anxiety can be too much to carry all alone.

3. You’re exhausted from carrying it alone

Trying to “keep it all together”, day after day, can be utterly exhausting. Most folks with anxiety are not only trying to manage all the symptoms and impacts of it, but also make it look like they are “doing ok”. They don’t want others to know how much they are struggling. Sometimes they don’t want to be thought of as “weak” or “incompetent”. Sometimes it’s about not wanting someone you respect to see you differently. There can be a sense of shame or failure about having anxiety, feeling like “everyone else has it together better” and that you should too.

This all leads a lot of people to carrying the burden of this alone, and that gets incredibly tiring and very lonely. It can be really helpful to put down that burden of carrying it alone for an hour and allow an anxiety therapist to help. You don’t have to do this all alone. A therapist can also help you figure out how to talk to your loved ones about anxiety, if that might be helpful to you.

4. you want support that fits into your busy life

Time is precious. There is never enough of it for everything—work, school, family, relationships, personal interests, commuting, that gym you’ve been meaning to get to, that laundry that still needs to be put away, and on and on. Even if you think that therapy might help you manage your anxiety better, time for appointments can be a big barrier. Trying to find hours in a week to get to an office, have an appointment, and get back to all you need to do, can create even more stress on top of what already feels like way too much.

The good news is that online therapy has proven to be very effective for anxiety, and many other concerns. With online therapy taking just one hour out of. your time, instead of however long it would take to come to an office for an appointment, it can be easier to get the support you deserve in a way that fits your schedule and your life. Some people really like in-person appointments and find the extra time in getting to them well worth it. But the best set up is the one that you can stick to consistently and if having therapy online works best for you, that’s a terrific choice. There are lots of benefits to choosing online therapy if that meets your needs.

5. you’ve tried coping on your own but it’s not enough

If you’ve been trying to use a mindfulness app, move your body, or give yourself some good self-talk about getting out of those worry loops, and it just won’t stick or isn’t enough to make a meaningful difference on reducing your anxiety, it might be helpful to get some pro level support on board. Well-meaning friends and family can even inadvertently make anxiety worse, if they don’t know how to walk the line between support and reassurance that can contribute to avoidance and more anxiety.

Getting professional support isn’t a “less than” option. It’s not a crutch, but is a support. It’s a strategic move to consult with someone that has expertise in this area and can help you make more progress, more quickly. An experienced anxiety therapist has seen the many ways that anxiety shows up in people’s lives and can offer effective strategies that might not yet be on your radar. We can also suggest other supports that can be useful too, whether that includes exploring medication, meditation, or mediation!

Get Support From a maryland Anxiety Therapist

If you’re ready to partner up to find ways to reduce your anxiety, please contact me. I offer specialized anxiety therapy appointments in-person, located in College Park, MD, for folks looking for in-office visits. Online anxiety therapy appointments are available anywhere in Maryland. Contact me to schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation and take the first step toward a clearer, more peaceful mind.

Other services I offer include hypnotherapy, mindfulness-based therapy, life coaching, and support for LGBTQIA+ clients. Additional information is available on my home page.

About the author, an anxiety therapist:

Beth Charbonneau, LCSW-C, is a Maryland therapist, specializing in anxiety therapy and treatment. With over 20 years of experience, she brings a holistic approach to calming both the mind and the body, and helping her clients feel empowered to find more joy in their lives. Learn more about her counseling practice here.