Sophie Elliott LCSW
What Anxiety Can Look Like
Anxiety shows up differently for everyone, but you might know some of these:
A mind that will not stop scanning for the next problem.
Dread that has no clear cause.
A racing heart, tight chest, or trouble catching your breath.
Avoiding things you used to handle without a second thought.
Lying awake replaying conversations or rehearsing tomorrow.
You are not weak, and you are not making it up. Anxiety is your alarm system stuck in the on position. We can reset it.
How I Help With Anxiety
I use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to catch the thought patterns that fuel anxiety and to test whether they are actually true. Alongside that, I teach Dialectical Behavior Therapy skills, mindfulness, distress tolerance, and emotion regulation, that calm the body and give you something concrete to do when anxiety spikes. The goal is not to never feel anxious again. It is to stop anxiety from running your life.
What The Research Tells Us
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Skills You Will Start Using Between Sessions
Anxiety does not wait politely for your next appointment, so the work we do has to live outside the session too. Early on, you will leave with a small set of practical tools to use during the week: a breath pattern that actually changes what your nervous system is doing, a quick way to test whether a worry thought is true, and a grounding skill for moments when your body races ahead of your mind. Nothing complicated, and nothing that requires perfect conditions to use.
These are starter tools, not the whole answer. Over time we tailor them to your specific triggers, your schedule, and the situations where anxiety hits hardest, so the skills actually fit your life instead of feeling like one more thing to do.
What Our First Few Sessions Look Like
The first session is mostly conversation.
We will look at:
What anxiety is doing in your day-to-day life.
When it started getting louder.
What has helped before and what has not.
There is no homework and no pressure to have your story figured out before you walk in.
By session two or three, we are usually putting the practical skills above into play and watching what shifts. I check in often on how things are landing, what is helping, and what is not. If we need to change course, we change course. The goal is steady progress at a pace that does not flare your anxiety further.
