Do I have Anxiety?

It can be really hard to know if we have anxiety or if our anxiety is bad enough to get help. Anxiety can at times be helpful to us when it is not becoming overwhelming, time consuming, or causing problems at work, home, and in our relationships. Anxiety can help us to come up with plans, prepare for big events or projects, and to avoid re-experiencing painful experiences. At the same time, anxiety can make doing anything very challenging.

To determine if you have anxiety, reflect on the symptoms of anxiety and whether they are present. The following is a list of symptoms that are often anxiety related, but will not necessarily indicate that you have “clinically significant anxiety” nor the type of anxiety you may have. There are many types of anxieties and other diagnoses that are anxiety related.

Symptoms of Anxiety can include: 

  • Avoiding people, places, or situations

  • Breathing difficulties

  • Becoming easily annoyed or irritable

  • Chest pain

  • Difficulty concentrating or with focus

  • Difficulty separating from a person or place

  • Dizziness

  • Doom and gloom

  • Easily startled

  • Excessive worry

  • Fear of judgement from others

  • Fear of public embarrassment

  • Fears of being trapped

  • Feeling on edge

  • Feeling as though something awful might happen

  • Find that you tire easily or are tired all the time

  • Hypervigilant

  • Have to use the bathroom frequently

  • Intense worry that panic attacks will occur

  • Mind seems to go blank when communicating

  • Nausea

  • Nervousness

  • Nightmares

  • Not being able to control our thoughts or worry

  • Numbness or tingling in limbs or body

  • Often feel self-conscious in front of others or feel awkward/embarrassed 

  • Panic attacks

  • Physical tension in the body or body aches

  • Restlessness

  • Sense of choking

  • Shaking/trembling

  • Sleep difficulties

  • Sudden overwhelming fear

  • Sweating or feeling light headed

  • Trouble relaxing

  • Worry over many different areas of life

I think I have anxiety, but do I need therapy or medication? 

If you find yourself checking off more than a couple of those symptoms, it is possible that you struggle with an anxiety disorder, other physical health problems, or non-clinical anxiety.

When thinking about whether we need treatment, it is important to think about how your quality of life is affected by your symptoms and their severity. The following are examples that show how quality of life may be affected by anxiety.

Example situations

Example 1: I have been working for months on a project and presentation that I need to give at my work. I have plenty of time to prepare this presentation and don’t feel particularly overwhelmed by it. I plan out time to work on this presentation and while finding myself feeling unsure of how it will go, I am feeling somewhat prepared to handle outcomes as I have done a lot of work on it. The day of the presentation, I notice that my palms are sweaty and I begin to worry more and more about how the presentation will go. I notice that this is happening so I take some time before my presentation to calm myself down and review my material. 

In this instance, this individual has some anxiety and it does at times cause them distress. This person may not feel like they are often overwhelmed or unable to tolerate their anxiety. This individual would likely benefit from mental health treatment, but may not “need” it. 

Example 2: I have been working for months on a project and presentation that I need to give at my work. I am finding myself worrying about whether or not I have enough time to complete the presentation. Every time I think about the presentation, I experience dread. I attempt to plan out my time, but find that I am not able to focus on the presentation during my planned times. I find it hard to focus on completing my usual work because my anxious thoughts distract me. Sometimes my anxiety gets so intense that I experience hyperventilation, chest pain, and headaches. At times my anxiety is so bad that I wonder if I can continue to live like this. I don’t feel prepared for the presentation. The day of the presentation, I panic and keep thinking that I will mess up and lose my job. Moments before the presentation, I feel that I am on the verge of a panic attack. 

In this instance, this individual has anxiety that drastically impairs their ability to complete tasks in their life. This individual seems to get overwhelmed, and is not able to cope with their stress, or get the necessary tasks completed. This individual’s anxiety causes them to struggle in many areas of their life. This individual would likely find treatment helpful in alleviating anxiety. This individual would likely benefit from counseling and medication, either separately or concurrently. Research has shown that therapy and medication are effective on their own for many anxiety related conditions, but that the best results occur when therapy and medication are used together. This person could expect that therapy would help them understand their anxiety and situations that trigger anxiety, how to cope with the feeling of anxiety, what works to help them calm down, and ways they can face their fears if that is what is needed. Medication often makes therapy more effective by taking the edge off of their symptoms or by reducing the severity of them. Effective treatment can be challenging to find even in places like Ann Arbor, Michigan where there are a large number of therapists.

What kind of treatment helps with anxiety?

There are a number of treatments that can be effective in helping someone manage their anxiety symptoms. There are a number of therapy styles with research supporting their use. Two of the most researched are the family of therapies known as cognitive behavioral therapy and the family of therapies known as psychodynamic therapy. Both of these ways of thinking about how a person navigates, understands, and copes with the world have a significant amount of research supporting their use. While there is a lot of research aimed at labelling one of them as more effective than the other, this post will focus on what one can expect from these types of therapies. Additionally, a type of treatment that can be helpful for people struggling with anxiety is taking medication and having a psychiatrist monitor those medications over time. 

Cognitive behavioral therapy

This can be a little bit confusing, but there is not actually “‘one’ cognitive behavioral therapy.” Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or “CBT” as it is sometimes called, is a family of therapies that has many different ways of helping people. It focuses on looking at and sitting with thoughts, feelings, and behaviors so that we can try to make changes in how we cope with stress, communicate, and react when situations arise. Some of the most researched and effective types of cognitive behavior therapy include Cognitive Therapy (one of the original cognitive behavioral therapies and often what people mean when they talk about “CBT”), Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Exposure and Response Prevention, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Each of these therapies aim to help someone learn to tolerate those feelings, realize what brings those feelings up, and find a way to build a life that feels worth living.

Psychodynamic and psychoanalytic therapy

Psychodynamic therapy is a family of therapies that come from the “original” psychotherapy practice which was known as Psychoanalysis. As a relative of Psychoanalysis, which is still practiced today and can be very effective, it utilizes many of the same important concepts that are discussed in traditional psychoanalysis, but can be a much briefer and less rigorous form of psychotherapy. The most effective psychodynamic treatments for anxiety are psychoanalytic treatment and psychodynamic therapy. These therapies focus predominantly on helping you to understand how you relate to yourself and others, and the historical reasons that you may do this. These therapies aim to ultimately help you build insight into your experiences. 

Medication management

Medication Management can make a significant difference in the intensity of a person’s symptoms. Whether those medications need to be used long-term or short-term, oftentimes medications can help decrease the severity of symptoms or help reach a place where therapy is more effective. Sometimes doctors will recommend medications to be used as you need them, or daily as a regularly scheduled prescription. At times, people may worry about the side effects of medications or feel like they don’t want to take something regularly. It is relatively normal to feel this way, and this is something you can discuss in therapy or with your prescriber. Sometimes, medication is the only thing that can help us get to a point where we can begin to function again or achieve our goals.

Finding a therapist for anxiety in Ann Arbor

There are many ways to find a Psychotherapy provider that can help you with your anxiety. One way that you can do this is by searching through some therapy databases like Psychology Today, Good Therapy, and Therapy Den. These databases may help you find a provider with experience working with people with your struggles. Once you have a couple of providers that you feel could be helpful, the process will likely become a bit simpler and could also become a bit more challenging. In this day and age, it is common to contact a therapist that one would like to see and find that they don’t have any openings right away, especially if we have public health insurance or need to use in-network insurance benefits. There is a limited number of providers who are allowed on insurance networks and often those providers have long waitlists that they need to serve. At times, it can be helpful to try and reach out to providers that do not take your insurance as some providers may work on a sliding fee scale, or have a few “pro bono” or low to no cost therapy spots. Depending on your insurance company, they may also pay for you to see a therapist that is not covered by your insurance if you cannot get in to a therapist that is on their panel fast enough.

If you find a therapist without a waitlist, there are some questions that can be helpful to ask to make sure that therapist will be helpful for you. It is also important that one reflects on the answer that was provided by the therapist. Many times when seeking therapy, we may be eager to start and want to find answers, and have not considered asking questions that may be important to how this person provides therapy services.

The most important items that can usually affect the therapeutic process are:

  • The cost of services. (Do I need to use in-network insurance benefits, do I have out of network benefits, how does billing work with this therapist?)

  • Does this therapist have experience working with people on the topics I am struggling with? (If I need to discuss childhood abuse, does this person have training or experience in helping people work through memories of abuse?)

  • What type of therapy does this therapist provide and what should I expect sessions to look like? (Do I feel like how they helped others address similar concerns is what would work best for me?)

  • Are services going to be in person or in a virtual setting? (Some people are very interested in telehealth while others are very interested in office visits.)

  • How direct is my therapist going to be? Will they be more of a problem-solver with me? Will they be more of a compassionate listener? What do I want them to be? (Some people want someone to say XYZ is the problem and you need to focus on it. Some people want to determine that something is a problem on their own and learn the process of identifying problems in their life.)

  • How long do they expect services could last? Do I want to be in therapy for a longer period of time or do I want to do more time-limited work? (Some people are interested in very short services and some providers do not practice in a way that is conducive to short term therapy.)

Having to get on a waitlist, determining if someone is the right therapist for you, and making sure that services will be affordable and helpful is a lot to figure out while also struggling. 

If searching for a local anxiety treatment provider feels overwhelming, then you are in luck. At Connecting Heals, LLC we have ample experience working with individuals that struggle with anxiety. We are also prepared to answer any and all questions that you have about our practice and services so that you can make an informed decision about your care. At Connecting Heals, LLC you can expect that your therapist will be direct with you about what is going on to the best of their knowledge. You can also expect that if we do not know something about mental health, we will either help you to find an answer or provide you the information to someone that can best help you explore that question. 

When it comes specifically to the treatment of anxiety, the providers at Connecting Heals, LLC utilize the most up-to-date treatment methods and will employ the theories and interventions that you feel most directly apply to what you are needing. Our providers are able to use insight focused therapy styles and more structured and direct styles of therapy based on what you feel will work best for you. If you are interested in exploring therapy with Connecting Heals, LLC please contact us. We do our best to respond to all inquiries within 48-72 hours of you reaching out to us. Additionally, if we are not able to meet your needs then we will do our best to provide you contact information for practices that can.

Thank you for your time and feel free to contact us with questions!


Steven Gilpin, LMSW

Clinical Director and Therapist

Connecting Heals, LLC

1 (734) 224-3544