It comes on all at once, your world shrinks down to a single instance, the intensity is stronger than you ever thought anxiety could be.
01 / Anxiety and panicPanic Disorder Therapy in Iowa City
A panic attack can feel like minutes of hell before it starts to let go of your nervous system. What it leaves behind can catch you off guard. You startle far more easily than before, and you now pick where to sit by how fast you could get out. The attack is the flash of lightning, and the rearranging of your life for safety is the thunder that follows.
02 / what it can feel likeHow panic shrinks your world
Many of the clients who come to me for panic have started avoiding parts of their life. It could be something as everyday as going to the grocery store, driving on the interstate, or a call with their manager, because they fear rejection or too many questions. To an anxious mind, avoiding these places can look logical. Anxiety takes your ability to think and twists it, ever so slightly, into one negative rabbit hole after another. After enough of that negativity, you wake up one day not wanting to go anywhere, because staying home feels far safer. You never agreed to any of this. It came as a slow march toward making the world around you as small as possible, so that you could at least feel in control of it.
When a panic attack hits, your body goes into fight or flight. It feels like danger is coming, or has already arrived, and you need to get the hell out of wherever you are. Your heart pounds, your breathing speeds up, and the room around you can feel like it is closing in. All of this can be incredibly scary. Panic disorder is treatable, and therapy is one of the main ways it is treated. Our goal is to help you live freely again, without the constant drain panic puts on your days.
To recognize ourselves in a struggling state is acceptance that its real, and also, that it can change...
03 / How I Work with itFour approaches
I use EMDR, NARM, DBT skills work and Ego-State Therapy to help you through the emotional difficulties you are experiencing.
EMDR has a place when something specific sits underneath the panic and pushes up on it: a loss, a betrayal, or a stretch of years you never healed from. It can help when a memory still carries a shameful or anxious charge. Processing that memory can ease the pressure it puts on the panic.
DBT skills work gives you something to do on the hard days while the deeper work goes on. You learn skills for getting through an evening you cannot think your way through, and for catching the negative inner voice as a voice that lies, rather than taking it as a fact.
Ego-State Therapy is for the moments you feel detached from your body or your surroundings, which is called dissociation.
NARM works on the patterns underneath the symptoms: the long-standing habits and survival strategies you built early in life to stay connected to your caregivers.
04 / The logisticsWhat it costs and how long it takes
I do not bill insurance, so you and I decide how your care goes. No insurance company sets a limit on the sessions you get.
You can still ask your insurer to pay you back. I will give you a superbill, which is an itemized receipt you send to them yourself.
You can also ask for a Good Faith Estimate before we start, and the No Surprises Act gives you the right to one. It lists what your care is likely to cost.
How long therapy takes is different for every client. One clear goal may take a handful of sessions, and patterns you have carried since childhood can take longer. I will give you my thoughts after the first few sessions, rather than a firm number on day one.
FreeFree Consultation
A relaxed, 15-minute talk about what you need and whether we fit. By phone, by video, or in person.
$185Therapy Sessions
Weekly 53-minute sessions shaped around your needs, in Iowa City or by telehealth in Iowa and North Carolina.
Free DownloadThe Grounding Guide
A one page set of grounding tools you can use the next time your body runs ahead of you.
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05 / Reach outA fifteen-minute call, and no obligation afterwards
Tell me what has been going on, and what you hope therapy with me can change. If I am not the right fit, I will tell you early and help you find a clinician who is.