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Build more steadiness by changing how you respond to worry.
You want to make a decision and stop second-guessing it.
You think through every angle before a meeting, replay a conversation on the way home, and try to head off problems before anyone else sees them coming. You might be out on a nice stroll to just disconnect from everything, but your mind might be occupied with a million to-dos.
Anxiety makes you control every outcome to the degree that you must plan every ‘what-if’ scenario, or else the world will fall apart.
It impacts your health, your relationships, and everything that you are working so hard to build a life for. This is where therapy can help you provide the right tools so you can separate the anxiety and not let it take control of your entire life.
Learn what your worry is trying to protect you from.
We look at your anxiety from a few angles: what sets it off, what you do to manage it, and what those habits cost you over time. Understanding why it happens matters, and so does what you do next, so I give you practical tools to try between sessions and bring back what you notice.
In our sessions, that can include:
Insight matters. What you do with it matters too.
I’m Paul Sullivan, M.Ed., LMHC, LCPC, CGP. I work with thoughtful, capable people who are ready to do something real with what they’re going through and make practical changes in how they live and relate. With anxiety, I help you get clear on where you want to go and build the habits and skills to get there, even when worry comes along.
My approach is humanistic and draws from attachment theory, nonviolent communication, mindfulness, and a developmental view of change. I bring warmth, directness, and sometimes humor. Sessions are in person at Scattergood Farm in Brunswick or online across Maine, Massachusetts, and New York.
What I offer:
You can care about what happens without needing to control every outcome.
I choose the approach based on what keeps your anxiety going and what you want to change. Each one below gives us a different way to understand worry, respond with more flexibility, and turn what you learn into changes in your daily life.
ACT helps when anxiety keeps you focused on control, avoidance, or feeling certain before you act. We make room for hard thoughts and feelings while getting clear on the values you want your choices to reflect, so anxiety can be present without deciding your direction.
In sessions, that might mean:
CBT gives us a structured way to look at how your thoughts, feelings, and behavior affect each other. With anxiety, that often means slowing down the predictions and assumptions that make a situation feel more dangerous or urgent than it is, then looking at what you do next and whether it helps you in the long term.
In practice, that means:
Anxiety often gets louder in close relationships, where distance, conflict, or the chance of letting someone down can feel bigger than it is. An attachment-based approach helps us see where those reactions come from, which gives you clearer communication, firmer boundaries, and more choice in how you respond when a relationship feels uncertain.
That can look like:
Some anxiety connects to questions without neat answers, like responsibility, change, meaning, and the risk that comes with any important choice. Existential therapy gives those questions real attention instead of treating them as problems to solve, and together we look at how you want to live with uncertainty and what gives your choices direction.
In our conversations, that includes:
Mindfulness-based work helps when anxiety keeps your attention locked on what might happen next. You practice noticing thoughts as they come up without following each one, which makes it easier to bring your attention back to the present and respond with steadiness instead of urgency.
Sessions can include:
Understand what your anxiety is bringing up and build practical tools to respond.
Anxiety can affect how you think, rest, relate, and make decisions. Where we focus depends on where it gets in your way most and what you want more of in your life.
Worry often starts as a way to stay prepared and slowly turns into a habit of living in the future. You replay decisions, picture several outcomes at once, or keep thinking because stopping feels irresponsible. Therapy helps you see what keeps that cycle going and practice stepping out of it, so you can decide, rest, or turn back to what’s in front of you.
If you’re used to being the capable one, anxiety can attach itself to performance. Mistakes, criticism, and uncertainty start to feel like problems you have to prevent at any cost. Therapy helps you separate healthy ambition from pressure that keeps shrinking your life. If professional demands are at the center of it, executive coaching may also fit what you’re looking for.
In relationships, anxiety can show up as seeking reassurance, second-guessing what someone meant, or trying to head off conflict before it starts. Over time, all that effort to protect the relationship makes it harder to feel close. Individual therapy helps you understand your side of that cycle and say what you need more clearly. When the concern is mainly between partners, couples counseling may be a better fit.
Big changes, like a loss, a move, or a shift in your career or family, can make the future feel harder to predict. Anxiety may show up as constant planning and control, as a way to get your footing back. Therapy helps you make sense of what’s changing and decide where you want to go next. If a loss is at the center of it, grief therapy can give you a more focused place to start.
When self-reliance is part of how you’ve succeeded, anxiety can be hard to name. You keep functioning and solving problems quickly while feeling more and more cut off from how you’re doing. Therapy gives you a direct, practical place to look at that pressure without treating it as a personal failure. Men’s mental health counseling can also help when expectations around independence, control, or showing emotion are part of it.
Worry can make you pull away from people, even though connection is part of what would make life feel fuller. You spend more time managing what’s going on in your head and less time letting others know you. Individual therapy helps you see what makes connection hard and what you want to practice differently. If you’d like to practice alongside others, group therapy gives you a place to try new ways of relating in real time.
Anxiety gets easier to handle once you understand what it’s doing in your life, and it helps to see it as something you experience rather than who you are.
Worry usually has a logic to it, even when it has become exhausting. It may be trying to prevent regret, rejection, failure, conflict, or the feeling of being unprepared.
Anxiety often attaches to the need to know what will happen, whatever the topic happens to be. The more important something feels, the stronger that need gets.
A calmer day is welcome, and progress also shows up in how you live. You notice it in your choices, your relationships, where your attention goes, and how connected you stay to what matters.
We’ll use the first session to understand what is happening, what you want to change, and where it makes sense to begin.
If you’re tired of managing anxiety the same way, it may be time to try something different.
Everyone experiences anxiety from time to time. An anxiety disorder is different in that fear, worry, or avoidance becomes persistent enough to create significant distress or interfere with daily functioning. Anxiety disorders are common mental health conditions, and the way they show up varies from person to person. Genetics, learned habits, stressful experiences, health concerns, relationships, and temperament can all contribute to anxiety, and there’s rarely one single cause.
Common terms include generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder, separation anxiety disorder, and specific phobias. Performance anxiety can also become significant even when it does not describe a separate diagnosis. A mental health professional can help you understand what type of anxiety may fit your experience without reducing you to a label.
Symptoms of anxiety can be cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and physical. Some people notice excessive worry and anxious thoughts first. Others experience anxiety more clearly through the body or through avoidance.
A single symptom does not tell you whether you have an anxiety disorder. The bigger question is how persistent the anxiety is and how much it is affecting your life.
It’s worth reaching out when worry is persistent, hard to manage, or starting to shape your decisions, relationships, sleep, job, school, or daily functioning. Regular panic attacks, growing avoidance, intense fear, or a sense that your coping strategies keep getting narrower are also good reasons to talk with a mental health professional.
People with anxiety disorders often spend a long time trying to manage on their own. Getting support earlier gives you more room to understand what’s happening before anxiety starts shaping most of your choices.
When you search for an anxiety therapist near me, distance matters, and fit matters more. Look for someone whose approach makes sense to you, whose schedule and session format work for your life, and who is licensed where you live. You may see the service described as anxiety counseling, psychotherapy for anxiety, mental health therapy for anxiety, or support for anxiety, and the provider described as an anxiety counselor, psychotherapist for anxiety, or therapist specializing in anxiety.
If you want anxiety therapy with a licensed mental health counselor or licensed clinical professional counselor, check the clinician’s license for your state. Paul Sullivan is licensed as an LMHC in Massachusetts and New York and as an LCPC in Maine, and sees people in person at Scattergood Farm in Brunswick and online.
Therapy for anxiety usually starts by understanding how anxiety works in your particular life rather than applying one explanation to everyone. A therapist may look with you at thought habits, avoidance, reassurance, stress, relationship dynamics, physical activation, and the situations that make anxiety louder.
From there, anxiety treatment can include practical coping skills, new ways of responding to anxious thoughts, clearer boundaries, values-based choices, and experiments with different behaviors. At Success & Wellbeing, you practice new responses outside the session too, so managing your anxiety becomes a matter of living with more choice instead of controlling every feeling.
There are several therapy options for anxiety, and the right form of therapy depends on the person, the type of anxiety, and what keeps it going. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can focus on the relationship between thoughts, emotions, and behavior. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy can focus on psychological flexibility, present-moment awareness, and values-based action.
Other clinicians may use exposure-based treatment, psychodynamic therapy, relaxation techniques, or other approaches. Success & Wellbeing draws from CBT, ACT, attachment-based therapy, existential therapy, and mindfulness-based approaches. Treatment may happen in individual therapy, and some people also find group therapy useful when shared practice and connection fit their goals.
The best treatment for anxiety depends on the person. Effective therapy for anxiety fits the specific type of anxiety, its severity, your goals, the relationship with your therapist, and what keeps the anxiety going.
CBT may be useful when recurring interpretations and behaviors are intensifying worry. ACT may be useful when the struggle for certainty or control is narrowing your life. Exposure-based work is commonly considered for specific phobias and other fear-based concerns. A thoughtful course of treatment should be individualized rather than chosen from a label alone.
Therapy can be useful for many people dealing with anxiety, though no single success rate of anxiety treatment predicts what one person will experience. Outcomes vary with the type of anxiety disorder, therapist fit, consistency, life circumstances, and whether the treatment plan addresses what is keeping anxiety active.
At Success & Wellbeing, treating anxiety means building flexibility, clearer choices, stronger self-trust, and less interference from worry, even if some anxious feelings stick around. If therapy has not helped before, it can be worth looking at fit, approach, and goals, and what may need to be done differently this time.
The 3-3-3 rule is a simple grounding exercise people sometimes use during a spike in anxiety. A common version is to name three things you can see, identify three things you can hear, and move three parts of your body. The point is to bring attention back to your immediate surroundings when the mind is pulled into threat or worst-case scenarios.
It works best as one coping skill among several for managing anxiety in the moment. If anxiety keeps coming back, therapy can help you look at what sets off the flare-ups as well as the tools that help you settle.
What helps depends on the person and the situation. Some strategies can reduce anxiety symptoms in the moment, while longer-term therapy focuses on why the anxiety keeps returning.
For people struggling with anxiety over time, coping skills tend to help most when they are paired with a clearer understanding of the thought habits, avoidance, and pressures that contribute to anxiety.
Sometimes therapy is used on its own, and sometimes medication for anxiety is part of a broader plan. The right treatment option depends on factors such as symptoms, severity, medical history, preferences, and how anxiety is affecting daily life. A combination of therapy and medication may make sense for some people, while others may choose psychotherapy without medication.
We do not prescribe medication. If medication is part of your care, we can work alongside your medical prescriber while you address the thoughts, behaviors, relationships, and patterns connected to your anxiety. Medication decisions should be made with your qualified medical prescriber.
People sometimes look at supplements, herbal products, or other complementary approaches while dealing with anxiety. The evidence, quality, dosage, and safety of these products vary, and some can interact with medications or health conditions, which makes individualized medical guidance important.
A physician or pharmacist who knows your health history is the right person to discuss supplements or alternative medicines with. In therapy, the focus can stay on what psychotherapy can address, including coping skills, avoidance, anxious thinking, stress and anxiety, relationships, and how you want to respond when difficult thoughts and emotions show up.
The number of sessions varies from person to person. The course of treatment depends on the type of anxiety, how long it has been present, how much it affects daily life, what else is happening at the same time, and what you want therapy to help you change.
Session frequency is also individualized. Some people benefit from meeting more regularly at the beginning, while others need a different rhythm because of their goals or schedule. Progress is something to review openly with your therapist, and a useful treatment plan gives you a clear sense of what you are working on and whether it is still moving in a meaningful direction.
Yes. Online therapy is available to people located in Maine, Massachusetts, and New York. Sessions use the same collaborative approach as in-person therapy, with the practical advantage of meeting from a private place that works for your schedule.
Online anxiety counseling can be especially useful when travel, job demands, family responsibilities, or distance make in-person appointments harder to keep. In-person anxiety therapy is also available in Brunswick, Maine at Scattergood Farm.
If you’re ready for something to change, the first step is starting the conversation.
If you’re wondering whether working together would help, a free 20-minute consultation gives us a chance to talk about what’s been going on and what you want to change. Sessions are in person in Brunswick and online across Maine, Massachusetts, and New York.
Be successful in your career and present for the people and experiences that matter to you.
