Expert Anxiety Therapy in Silver Spring, MD
For high-achieving adults when the drive becomes harder to live with than it is to keep up.
Virtual sessions in NY, MD & all PsyPact states · In-person in Silver Spring, MD
It's Sunday evening. The week hasn't even started and you're already running through everything that could go wrong. An email you should have sent differently. A decision that might have been a mistake. A version of tomorrow that goes badly in ways you're quietly preparing for. Your mind doesn't stop — not when you're working, not when you're supposed to be resting, not even when things are going well. Especially not then.
High-achievers tend to experience anxiety this way: not as panic, but as a permanent background hum that keeps you functional and exhausted at the same time. The standards are high because they have to be. The worry is the price you pay for caring this much.
Signs you might benefit from anxiety therapy in Silver Spring
you might be here because...Your mind doesn't turn off — not when you're resting, not on weekends, not even when things are going well.
You procrastinate not because you don't care, but because you care so much it feels overwhelming to start.
You replay mistakes and conversations long after they've happened, looking for what you could have done differently.
You hold yourself to standards you'd never apply to anyone else, and falling short feels like more than disappointment.
Anxiety shows up as overdoing — overpreparing, overexplaining, overdelivering — rather than shutting down.
You're exhausted by the effort of holding everything together and not sure how much longer you can keep doing it this way.
You don't want to slow down. You just want the pressure inside to feel less relentless.
How CBT, psychodynamic work, and ACT address anxiety in high-achievers
Anxiety in high-achievers is rarely just a thinking problem. The overthinking, the perfectionism, the difficulty resting — these aren't habits you can simply decide to stop. They're patterns that developed for reasons, and they're often tied to a deep sense that your worth depends on your performance, your productivity, or how well you manage everything around you. Understanding that isn't an intellectual exercise. It changes how you relate to the anxiety itself.
How the three frameworks work together
In our sessions we draw on three frameworks that work well together for this kind of anxiety. CBT helps us identify the specific thought patterns sustaining the anxiety — the catastrophizing, the all-or-nothing standards, the ways the inner critic frames every imperfection as evidence of inadequacy. Psychodynamic work helps us understand where those patterns came from — the early experiences and relational histories that made vigilance and high standards feel necessary. And ACT helps you build a different relationship to the anxiety in real time: noticing it, naming it, and making choices based on what actually matters to you rather than what you're afraid will happen if you let your guard down.
What therapy for anxiety in Silver Spring can help you work toward
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A quieter relationship with the inner critic.
Not eliminating self-criticism — that's not realistic — but changing your relationship to it. Learning to notice when the critical voice is running the show, understanding what it's protecting, and choosing a response that doesn't require you to earn your own worth. Over time, the inner critic starts to feel less like a fact and more like a signal.
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More space between anxiety and action.
Anxiety drives a lot of behavior — overpreparation, avoidance, people-pleasing, the need to control outcomes. One of the most significant shifts in this work is building the capacity to feel anxious without immediately acting on it. That gap is where real decision-making lives.
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A life that feels less driven by fear.
The goal isn't to care less or to lower your standards. It's to stop fear from being the primary engine. Most clients find that as the anxiety eases, they actually become more effective — not less — because they're not spending so much energy managing the internal pressure.
Who seeks anxiety therapy at this practice
Many of the people I work with for anxiety are high-achieving adults who look composed from the outside and are privately exhausted. They're professionals, academics, graduate students, or people in demanding creative and relational fields. Many are also navigating perfectionism, body image concerns, or a complicated relationship with food alongside the anxiety — concerns that share the same underlying thread and that this practice is specifically equipped to hold together. You don't need to have it categorized before you reach out. Bring whatever is true.
Questions people ask about anxiety therapy late at night
things you might be wondering...
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Yes — and this is one of the most common presentations I see. Functioning well doesn't mean anxiety isn't taking a real toll. It often means the anxiety is what's running the functioning: the overdoing, the overpreparing, the inability to rest without guilt. The fact that it's working doesn't mean it's sustainable, and it doesn't mean you have to keep paying the cost.
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This comes up often, especially for high-achievers who've built a lot on their anxiety. The short answer is no — therapy doesn't flatten drive. What tends to change is the relationship to the fear underneath it. Most clients find they become more effective, not less, when they're not spending so much energy managing the inner pressure. The ambition stays. The exhaustion doesn't have to.
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Usually, yes. Coping strategies — breathing exercises, mindfulness, journaling — address the surface. They can provide real relief. But they don't change the underlying patterns that generate the anxiety in the first place. Therapy goes underneath: understanding where the patterns came from, what they're protecting, and what it would mean to relate to them differently. That's a different level of change.
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Sometimes it's genuinely both — a demanding life and an anxious nervous system that amplifies the stress. The signal worth paying attention to is whether the anxiety lifts when circumstances improve, or whether it just finds new material. If the worry moves from one thing to the next and never fully settles, that's usually something worth exploring.
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It often is. Anxiety, perfectionism, and body image concerns tend to travel along the same thread — the inner critic, the need for control, the relentlessness. You don't need to separate them out before reaching out. This practice is specifically built to hold all of it.
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A few possibilities worth considering. Not every approach is suited to high-achieving adults with anxiety — some therapies stay too surface-level or focus on coping skills without addressing what's driving the anxiety. My work goes deeper: understanding the patterns, where they came from, and what they're protecting. It might be different. The consultation is the right place to figure out whether the fit is there.
Ready to start anxiety therapy? Schedule a free consultation in Silver Spring or virtually
You don't have to keep managing anxiety alone. You just have to be willing to look at what's underneath it.
Anxiety doesn't have to keep running the show. If you're ready to feel less driven by worry and more grounded in what actually matters, I'd love to talk.
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Therapy for depression
Anxiety and depression frequently travel together — the overdoing and the flatness, the exhaustion that comes from both. If you recognize elements of both, this practice holds them together.
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Eating disorder therapy
For many people, anxiety and a complicated relationship with food share the same roots — the need for control, the relentlessness, the impossibly high standards. If that resonates, this work addresses both.
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Body image therapy
Anxiety often shows up most intensely around the body — how it looks, how it measures up, whether it's enough. Body image therapy and anxiety therapy overlap more than you might expect.