The best therapy approaches for managing anxiety & CBT work together to reduce anxiety

Anxiety is more than just racing thoughts and worry; it’s a full-body experience. This means that transformative healing has to include both the mind and the body.

One of the most important and validating first steps in managing anxiety is understanding the loop that’s happening inside you. For instance, when your brain has a fearful thought—like “What if something’s wrong?”—it often treats that thought as fact. It sends an alert to your body, which responds by releasing stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones cause bodily sensations, such as heart racing, chest tightening, shortness of breath, and the classic stomach drop.

But it doesn’t stop there. Your brain begins to notice how your body feels and says, “I feel awful, so something must really be wrong with me.” These bodily sensations end up confirming the initial anxious thought. This creates a loop where anxious thoughts and physical symptoms reinforce each other, keeping your nervous system on high alert.

That’s why awareness is powerful. It first validates that what you’re feeling is real and biological and not all in your head. Then, by understanding this process, you can begin to intervene and interrupt it. Sometimes, the first healing step is simply naming what’s happening. Sharing this knowledge with someone you trust and love can also help your nervous system begin to soften because putting the experience into words reinforces your understanding of what’s happening in your body. The more you understand it, the more the anxiety begins to lose its charge.

In therapy, we build this awareness and then combine cognitive and somatic tools to help you manage the anxiety. We use CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) to help you gently challenge and reframe the fear-based thoughts that are fueling your anxiety. At the same time, we use somatic approaches to calm the physical response, working directly with the body to restore a sense of safety and ease. We also integrate visualization-based strategies to help your nervous system process and release past experiences that may still be living in the background and controlling your experiences today. These are powerful tools that, when combined, often help people feel better faster because they’re not just targeting anxiety but geared towards teaching your body and mind to feel safe again.

Anxiety doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. It means your system has learned to stay on guard. Therapy helps you unlearn that. We’re not here to push anxiety away. We’re here to help your body and mind remember what safety feels like so you can move through the world with more ease, clarity, and confidence.