What if you have gotten so good at managing everything that nobody even knows how close to the edge you actually are?
This is therapy for people whose anxiety looks like competence from the outside. For teens who are showing up, keeping up, and falling apart quietly. For adults who have been running on vigilance for so long they cannot remember what it felt like before the constant low hum of dread.
At Embodied Therapy, anxiety is not treated as a character flaw or a weakness. It is understood as a nervous system doing what it learned to do. Therapy is about helping that nervous system learn something different.
If you recognized yourself in any of these, you are in the right place.
Anxiety in high-performing people often stays invisible for a long time. It looks like preparation. Like thoroughness. Like being responsible. From the outside, things may look fine. On the inside, there is an alarm that never fully shuts off.
The hard part is that anxiety often works, at least short-term. It keeps people safe, prepared, and ahead of potential problems. The cost of that vigilance is something people often do not notice until it becomes unsustainable.
Therapy is not about eliminating anxiety entirely. Anxiety is part of how the nervous system functions. It is about reducing the alarm to something proportionate to actual risk, and building the capacity to come back to baseline when it spikes.
Anxiety is the nervous system’s response to perceived threat. In its healthy form, it is a signal worth paying attention to. When it becomes disproportionate to actual risk, chronic, or begins to interfere with daily life, it becomes something that deserves real attention and real support.
Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health conditions in the United States. They affect people of every age and every level of external functioning. High-functioning anxiety is not a clinical diagnosis, but it is a real experience: the people who manage significant anxiety while still appearing, and often actually being, capable and functional.
Chronic, pervasive worry that is difficult to control and spans multiple areas of life. Often accompanied by physical symptoms including tension, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, and disrupted sleep.
Intense fear of social situations, judgment, embarrassment, or rejection. Can range from specific situations to broad avoidance of social connection.
Sudden, intense episodes of physical and emotional distress including rapid heart rate, difficulty breathing, and an overwhelming sense of dread. Panic attacks are terrifying and exhausting, and they are treatable.
Persistent worry about having or developing a serious illness, often driven by physical symptoms that feel real and frightening regardless of medical reassurance.
Anxiety tightly connected to performance, achievement, and fear of failure or judgment. Common in high-achieving teens and adults, and often mistaken from the outside for motivation.
Adolescent anxiety often looks different from adult anxiety. It may appear as school avoidance, social withdrawal, physical complaints, irritability, or perfectionism. It frequently goes unrecognized because the teen is still performing adequately enough for adults not to ask questions.
Anxiety is a body experience as much as it is a mind experience. The racing heart, the tight chest, the shallow breathing, the stomach that will not settle. These are not metaphors. They are the nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do when it perceives a threat.
This is why thinking your way out of anxiety often does not work. You can know logically that something is not dangerous and still feel terrified. The thinking brain and the survival brain are different systems. Therapy that only works with the thinking brain has limits.
At Embodied Therapy, we work with both.
Anxiety therapy here starts with curiosity about what the anxiety is trying to do. Not an immediate attempt to eliminate it, but a genuine exploration of where it came from, what it has been protecting, and what it costs.
For many people, anxiety developed in response to something real. An environment that was unpredictable. A history of not being allowed to make mistakes. A nervous system that learned early that things could fall apart without warning. Understanding that history does not excuse the anxiety from the work of changing, but it makes that work more honest.
We use a combination of body-based approaches, cognitive work, and skill-building that recognizes anxiety lives in the nervous system, not just in the thought patterns.
People who do this work often find they are able to:
Approaches are chosen together based on what actually fits each person’s brain, nervous system, and life. There is no single method that works for everyone.
Addresses the thought patterns that drive and maintain anxiety. Builds more accurate, flexible ways of assessing risk and tolerating uncertainty.
Helps clients move toward what matters to them even in the presence of anxiety, rather than waiting until anxiety is gone to start living.
Works directly with anxiety as a body experience. Nervous system regulation, breath, and movement are part of the treatment, not afterthoughts.
Practical distress tolerance and emotion regulation tools. Useful when anxiety is acute and feels unmanageable in the moment.
When anxiety is rooted in past experiences, EMDR can help process those experiences so they stop driving present-day alarm.
Explores anxious parts with curiosity rather than trying to silence or override them. Often reveals the protective logic underneath and makes lasting change more possible.
This may be a good fit if you are a teen or adult who:
We see clients virtually. Our therapist is licensed in New Mexico, Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Oregon, Texas, and Washington.
Our founder, Allison VanGordon (they/she), works with anxiety at the intersection of processing differences, identity, and systemic stress. Their clinical training includes EMDR, somatic approaches, and DBT, alongside a genuine understanding of how minority stress, neurodivergence, and systemic harm amplify anxiety in ways that are often missed by providers who treat anxiety as solely an individual problem.
Their PhD research focuses on marginalized communities, including the specific ways anxiety presents and persists differently for LGBTQIA+ individuals and neurodivergent people navigating a world not designed for them.
Read more about Embodied Therapy here and read more about Allison here.
Chronic anxiety is very common. Common does not mean it has to be permanent. If anxiety is interfering with your daily life, your sleep, your relationships, or your sense of who you are, that is worth addressing.
Yes. Therapy, particularly CBT, ACT, and somatic approaches, has strong evidence for anxiety treatment. Whether medication is part of the picture is a separate conversation with a prescribing provider. We do not prescribe medication but can work alongside that relationship.
This varies significantly depending on the person, the type of anxiety, and how long it has been present. Many people notice real shifts within a few months. Deeper change, particularly when anxiety is rooted in past experiences, may take longer. We talk honestly about pacing and progress throughout.
Teen anxiety often presents as irritability, avoidance, or physical complaints rather than the worry a parent might expect to see. If your teen is struggling, teen therapy sessions or parent support sessions are both good places to start that conversation.
The intake session is $250.
Ongoing individual therapy sessions range from $85 to $155, depending on need and availability.
Family and parent support sessions range from $105 to $175.
Sliding scale options are available. You can check your eligibility instantly below — no phone calls, no hassle.
Reaching out is the hardest part for most people. Whether you are a teen trying to find words for something that has never felt speakable, an adult who has carried this quietly for years, or a parent who has been quietly terrified for months — you do not need to have it figured out before you contact us.
A free consultation is just a conversation. You ask questions. We ask questions. Together we figure out whether this feels like the right fit before anyone commits to anything.
