You're exhausted because you've been carrying an impossible load.
You're not lazy, and you're not broken. You've been carrying the mental load at home, the pressure to perform at work, the needs of everyone around you — while somehow also holding yourself to a standard of perfection that would exhaust anyone. Your nervous system has been running on high alert for so long that it just feels normal now. This is anxiety. And it makes complete sense given everything you're carrying.
You might not even recognize it as anxiety. You just know you can never fully relax, no matter how hard you try. You lie awake at night running through tomorrow's to-do list. You say yes when you mean no, then resent yourself for it. You wonder why you're so tired when you haven't even "done that much" — meanwhile you're juggling approximately everything, for everyone, all the time.
Here's what I want you to know: you are not broken. You just haven't been taught to honor what you actually need. That's exactly what we work on together.
What Anxiety Can Look Like
Anxiety doesn't always look like panic attacks or obvious worry. In the women I work with, it often looks like:
Chronic exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix, because your nervous system never fully powers down. A relentless inner critic that narrates your every move. Overfunctioning — doing more, planning more, controlling more — because staying busy feels safer than slowing down. Physical symptoms like tension headaches, a tight chest, or a stomach that's constantly in knots. The feeling that if you just got more organized, more disciplined, more on top of things, you'd finally feel okay.
You won't. Not from the outside in. That's why talk therapy alone often isn't enough.
How I Can Help
As a trauma-informed anxiety therapist in St. Louis, Missouri, I use Somatic Experiencing (somatic therapy) to help you work with your nervous system rather than against it. Because anxiety isn't just a thought pattern — it lives in your body. In the tension you carry in your shoulders. In the breath you've been holding for years. In the way your whole system braces for what comes next.
Together we'll use Somatic Experiencing, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), mindfulness, and parts work (Internal Family Systems) to help you:
Understand what your anxiety is actually trying to tell you — and learn to respond to it instead of white-knuckling through it. Release the physical patterns of tension and hypervigilance stored in your nervous system. Get off the treadmill of overfunctioning and people-pleasing that keeps the anxiety cycle spinning. Reconnect with your own needs, your own voice, your own sense of what actually matters to you. Finally feel safe enough in your own body to slow down.
This isn't about managing your anxiety so you can keep carrying the same impossible load. It's about understanding why your system got here — and helping it find its way back to ease.
This might be the right fit if:
You're a high-functioning woman who looks fine on the outside but is running on empty. You've tried to think your way out of anxiety and it hasn't worked. Your body feels like it's always bracing for something. You're done white-knuckling through and ready to actually feel different.
Investment:
50–55 minute in-person (St. Louis, MO) or virtual appointments available throughout Missouri
$175/session
Aetna insurance accepted