Anxiety can be sneaky. Sometimes you know exactly what set it off. Other times, your heart is pounding, your palms are sweaty, your mind is moving a mile a minute – it starts showing up in your body or takes over your thoughts before you even realize what’s happening.

And that’s usually what brings women to us. Not the anxiety itself, but the point where those feelings and thoughts become overwhelming and consuming, and anxiety starts taking over the life you want to live.

EMDR therapy can help us do more than give you tools for getting through those anxious moments. It helps us understand what your anxiety is responding to, get curious about why your brain believes it needs to protect you this way, and work at the root of that response.

What Does Anxiety Feel Like?

Anxiety rears her ugly head differently for all of us.

You may feel it physically first. Your chest gets tight. You sweat. Your stomach turns. Your breathing changes. You start having heart palpitations so intense that you wonder if you’re having a heart attack. It’s genuinely frightening.

And because symptoms like chest pain or palpitations can have medical causes too (I think we’ve all seen enough ER & Scrubs to know that…), new, severe, or concerning physical symptoms should always be medically evaluated rather than assumed to be anxiety.

For someone else, anxiety is the constant stream of scenarios happening in their head.

You think about what could go wrong before you leave the house. You check something five times because you still don’t trust that you remembered correctly. You mentally rehearse conversations that haven’t happened. (Guilty!) You imagine good outcomes, bad outcomes, and six backup plans for all of them.

At a certain point, those thoughts stop feeling useful and start feeling consuming.

That’s the distinction I care about as a therapist. Anxiety itself is not inherently bad. Your brain is designed to anticipate problems, notice danger, and help keep you alive. Anxiety becomes a problem when that alarm system starts going off too often, too intensely, or in situations where it is no longer helping you.

There Are Different Kinds of Anxiety

When you come in for EMDR, one of the first things we want to know is what your anxiety actually looks like. Is there something that regularly triggers it? Or does it seem to arrive out of nowhere? That difference gives us somewhere to start.

Sometimes Anxiety Has a Clear Trigger

Let’s say you were driving down the highway one day and you happened to pass an ice cream truck. Then, seconds later, you witnessed a terrible accident.

Now, for reasons you don’t understand, your heart starts racing every time you see an ice cream truck.

Why? Because that beautiful, magical brain of yours is very good at making connections when it thinks they’ll prevent you from harm. Which is absolutely great. But sometimes, it connects pieces of the experience that were never actually dangerous.

Logically, you know the ice cream truck didn’t cause the accident, but your body doesn’t care about logic. Somewhere along the way, your brain filed those two things together under danger.

That is the kind of connection EMDR can help reprocess.

We’re helping your brain update the information. The accident happened. It was frightening. Your response made sense then, but an ice cream truck today doesn’t mean that same danger is happening again.

And Yes, Anxiety Can Be Genetic And Chronic

Then there is the anxiety that doesn’t hand us such a neat little trail of breadcrumbs.

You’re anxious a lot of the time. There may not be one obvious trigger, memory, or situation you can point to. Sometimes anxiety like this can have biological or genetic contributors, and we’re not going to pretend EMDR can change your DNA.

What we can change is your relationship with that anxiety.

This is where I love getting curious about your beautiful, magical brain. Your brain is doing its best to keep you alive. So instead of immediately treating the anxiety like an enemy, in EMDR, we start asking what it is trying to do for you.

What does your brain think it is protecting you from?

When did uncertainty start feeling impossible to tolerate?

When did you start to feel powerless with your anxiety?

When did your nervous system learn that staying on high alert was the safest option?

Sometimes we find a root. Sometimes we find several. And sometimes the work becomes less about making anxiety disappear forever and more about helping you stop feeling powerless every time it shows up. The point is, even if you have genetic, chronic anxiety there is a way you can live a healthier, happier life where anxiety isn’t running the show.

EMDR Treats Anxiety Differently Than Traditional Therapy

A lot of therapeutic modalities can give you excellent tools for managing anxiety. Breathing exercises. Grounding. Challenging anxious thoughts. Recognizing your triggers. Learning how to calm your body when it starts ramping up.

We teach those skills too. They are useful, and I absolutely want you to have them. But I don’t want symptom management to be the finish line. 

If there is a reason your nervous system keeps sounding the alarm, I want to know what it is.

That’s one of the things that makes EMDR different. We can work with the experiences, beliefs, and connections underneath the anxiety rather than only helping you manage what happens after anxiety has already taken over.

For anxiety with a clear trigger, that may mean reprocessing the experience where your brain made the wrong connection.

And I’m not saying ditch your therapist, if you have one. EMDR pairs really well with traditional therapy for anxiety and on its own. Many of our patients are referred to us by therapists so we can work to give you both sides of help you deserve.

You Can Understand Your Anxiety Without Letting It Run Your Life

One of the biggest shifts I see with EMDR is moving from “Why is this happening to me?” to “Oh. I understand what my brain is doing.” That understanding gives you options.

Instead of anxiety showing up and immediately taking control, you begin to recognize what’s happening inside your body. You have strategies for regulating your body, but you also have the deeper understanding that comes from doing the root work.

Your brain can learn that something that once felt unsafe is safe now.

And if you are someone whose anxiety has a stronger biological component, the goal does not have to be pretending you will never feel anxious again. The goal can be knowing that anxiety doesn’t get to decide what kind of life you have.

You can feel anxiety and still go after the promotion. You can feel anxiety and still fulfill your dream of traveling. You can feel anxiety and still become a parent, start the business, date, speak up, or do whatever else you have decided belongs in the life you want. Heck, you can flag that ice cream truck down that used to trigger you and indulge in a sweet treat again.

That is a very different relationship with anxiety than feeling powerless every time it arrives.

Which Is Better: Ongoing EMDR or an EMDR Intensive for Anxiety?

Both ongoing EMDR and EMDR intensives can be used when we are working with anxiety. The better fit depends on what your anxiety looks like and how much groundwork we need to build together first.

If you haven’t done much therapy before, ongoing EMDR may make more sense. We have time to understand your anxiety, identify triggers and patterns, build regulation skills, and then begin working with the deeper material underneath it.

An EMDR intensive may be a better fit if you already have those skills, have done therapy before, and have a clearer idea of what you want to work on. For some women, especially those who already understand their anxiety well but feel like there is a piece they still cannot shift, concentrated EMDR work can give us more uninterrupted time to go after that specific target.

You do not have to figure that out before you call us. That is part of what the consultation is for.

You’re in Control

Anxiety has a purpose. Your brain isn’t trying to ruin your life. It’s trying to protect you. 

Sometimes it’s just protecting you from something that is no longer happening. Sometimes it has connected danger to something that was never actually dangerous. And sometimes you may simply have a brain that is more prone to anxiety, which means our job is not to “fix” who you are. It’s to help you build a relationship with anxiety where you still get to choose the life you want.

EMDR gives us a way to get curious about what’s underneath the anxiety, process what your brain is still holding onto, and help you feel less powerless when that familiar alarm starts going off.

Because the goal is not simply to become better at managing anxiety. The goal is to have enough freedom from it that you have room for joy, too.

So if you’re ready to tackle the root of your anxiety and finally tell her to back the heck down – let’s do a consultation to see which options are right for you. And if you’re not ready yet, that’s ok too. Bookmark this blog for the next time anxiety starts to creep in. Let yourself giggle at the GIFs, be reminded that you’re not alone, and remind yourself that your brain is (hopefully lovingly but mistakenly) working hard on your behalf. Find comfort where you can!

Now remember – you’ve got this! And as always, I’ve got you.