When worry stops being useful and starts running the day.

Anxiety is not a personality flaw. For most of the women I work with, it started as something helpful — a way of scanning ahead, of catching problems before they became bigger ones, of protecting people you love. The trouble is what happens when the scanning never turns off.

You know the signs by now. The mind that will not settle at night. The knot behind the ribs before the phone even rings. The list of small worries that stacks up until it feels like one enormous one. You may be sleeping less. You may be eating differently. You may be more irritable with the people you love the most, and then adding that to the pile of things to feel guilty about.

Who this work is for

Women who are functioning — often functioning very well — and are exhausted by what it costs. Women whose worry is tied up with caregiving, with a specific decision that keeps looping in the background, with a change in a relationship, with health, with money, with a past event that never got processed. Teens who are carrying more than a teenager should have to.

You do not have to be in a full-blown panic to be a good fit for this work. Chronic, low-grade anxiety — the kind that quietly wears down your patience and your sleep — is worth taking seriously.

What sessions look like

Sessions are 60 minutes, in English or Spanish, by secure video anywhere in Texas or in person in Laredo. Early sessions are mostly listening. I want to understand the shape of your worry — what it protects, when it turns on, what makes it worse, and what you have already tried.

From there, the work usually threads together a few things. We look at the thoughts that keep looping and how they connect to feelings and to what you do next — that’s the cognitive behavioral piece, used gently, in your own voice, not as a worksheet. We look at the body: breath, sleep, tension, the nervous-system side of anxiety that talking alone doesn’t always reach. We look at the relationships and roles that shape how safe or unsafe your daily life feels. And we make room for the parts of your story that anxiety has been standing on top of.

Between sessions

You will not leave a session with a stack of homework. Sometimes we agree on one small practice to try in the coming week — a few minutes of a particular kind of breathing, a specific boundary to test, a way of noticing when the worry starts to spin up. Everything is optional, everything is discussable, and everything is in service of what you already told me you need.

How long this usually takes

Some women feel meaningful relief within a handful of sessions, particularly when the anxiety is tied to one identifiable stressor. Others do longer, quieter work, especially when the anxiety is old. There is no right pace. Every few weeks we check in about what is helping and what isn’t.

What we won’t do

I won’t promise to make your worry disappear — anyone who does is selling something. I won’t tell you that you should have been in therapy years ago. And I won’t force you to talk about something you’re not ready to talk about, in either language.