How do I know if I have anxiety, or if it is just stress?

The simplest difference: stress usually has an end point. Anxiety does not. Stress is a normal response to a specific demand (a deadline, a difficult conversation, a busy week), and it eases when the demand passes. Anxiety persists beyond the trigger. It shows up when there is no obvious threat, lingers when things are calm, and tends to attach itself to whatever is in front of you. The other key signal is what it does to your body. Stress activates you in short bursts. Anxiety keeps your nervous system on alert for long stretches, often showing up as a tight chest, shallow breathing, trouble sleeping, racing thoughts, or a sense of dread you cannot trace. If you cannot relax even when nothing pressing is happening, or if your baseline feels set a few notches above 'fine' all the time, that is anxiety, not stress. Anxiety therapy in Chicago can help you reset that baseline.

How long does anxiety therapy take?

Most people feel meaningful shifts within the first 8 to 12 sessions of anxiety therapy, which works out to about 2 to 3 months of weekly meetings. Significant change at the root level usually takes longer, often 6 to 12 months, especially if your anxiety is tied to long-standing patterns like perfectionism, people-pleasing, or earlier experiences. Some clients come in for shorter-term work focused on a specific stressor and feel ready to wrap up sooner. Others stay for ongoing work because they find it useful as a regular practice rather than a crisis intervention. We typically start with weekly 50-minute sessions to build momentum. Once anxiety symptoms ease and you feel more grounded, sessions can move to every other week and then to monthly check-ins. The goal of anxiety therapy is not to keep you in therapy. It is to help you trust yourself enough to function without it.

What types of therapy work best for anxiety?

Several types of therapy are well-researched for anxiety, and the right one depends on what is driving yours. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is the most studied. It helps you identify and reframe the anxious thought patterns that keep your nervous system activated, and it is effective for shorter-term, situation-specific anxiety. For anxiety tied to deeper patterns (perfectionism, people-pleasing, chronic self-criticism, fear of failure), somatic and body-based approaches tend to work better because anxiety lives in the body as well as the mind. My practice draws on somatic and body-based work through two evidence-based modalities: Internal Family Systems (IFS) and EMDR. IFS helps you understand the protective parts of yourself that produce anxiety in the first place. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation to help your nervous system reprocess earlier experiences that are still driving your reactivity today. Both engage the body directly, which is what makes them more effective for chronic anxiety than approaches that work only through thought.

Is therapy or medication better for anxiety?

Neither is universally better. It depends on your specific situation and the severity of your anxiety. Research shows therapy alone, medication alone, and the two combined can all produce significant improvement. For mild to moderate anxiety, therapy alone is often enough and tends to produce longer-lasting results because it addresses the root rather than the symptoms. For severe anxiety, panic disorder, or anxiety so intense that you cannot engage with therapy effectively, medication can be a useful bridge that brings symptoms down enough for the deeper work to begin. Many of my clients are in therapy alone, some are on medication and in therapy, and a few use medication temporarily and wean off as their nervous system regulates. Medication is prescribed by a psychiatrist or your primary care doctor, not by a therapist. If you want help thinking through whether medication might be worth exploring alongside therapy, that is a conversation we can have. There is no shame in needing both.

What is high-functioning anxiety?

High-functioning anxiety describes a pattern where someone appears to be doing well on the outside while running on chronic internal alarm. You meet your deadlines, your work performance is strong, you remember the birthdays, you keep your relationships running smoothly. The outside picture is one of competence. The inside picture is exhaustion, overthinking, perfectionism, a relentless inner critic, and the sense that if you stopped pushing for a single day, everything would fall apart. High-functioning anxiety is not a clinical diagnosis. It is a descriptive term for an experience that often does not show up on standard anxiety assessments because the outcomes (high achievement, strong performance) look healthy. But the cost is real. People with high-functioning anxiety often experience burnout, chronic physical tension, sleep issues, relationship strain, and the persistent sense of being a fraud. This is the kind of anxiety I work with most often. Many of my clients have spent years using their anxiety as fuel and are tired of paying the price for it.

What is the difference between a panic attack and an anxiety attack, and can therapy help?

They sound similar but they are not the same thing. A panic attack is a sudden, intense surge of physical and emotional alarm that often arrives out of nowhere, peaks within about 10 minutes, and includes specific symptoms like a racing heart, shortness of breath, dizziness, chest tightness, and the sense that something terrible is about to happen. Panic attacks are a recognized clinical category. An anxiety attack is not an official clinical term. It usually describes a buildup of anxiety that is intense but more gradual, more tied to a specific worry or trigger, and less acute than a panic attack. People often use the two terms interchangeably, but the experience is distinct. Yes, therapy can help with both. Most clients learn concrete tools to interrupt a panic attack in the moment within the first few sessions, and reduce frequency and intensity significantly within 8 to 12 sessions. Anxiety attacks respond well to the same approach, with the work focused on the underlying patterns and triggers that build into them.

What can I expect in our first session?

In your first anxiety therapy session, the focus is on getting your story on the table. You will tell me what brought you in, what your anxiety has looked like, when it started, what triggers it, and how it shows up in your body and your relationships. You will not be put on the spot or expected to perform. The goal of session one is for me to understand the shape of what you are carrying so I can offer a clear sense of how I can help and what the work would look like. You will leave with a better understanding of your own anxiety pattern and a plan for next steps. We will not jump into deep processing work in the first session. The first few weeks are about building the foundation so the deeper work has somewhere safe to land.

What does anxiety therapy cost, and do you take insurance?

Anxiety therapy at Still Oak Counseling is private pay. Our fee for a 50-minute individual anxiety therapy session is $250. We do not bill insurance directly. Most insurance plans cover individual therapy as out-of-network, which means you pay at the time of session and submit a superbill to your insurance for partial reimbursement. We provide a superbill at the end of each month with the diagnosis and procedure codes your insurance will need (CPT code 90834 for individual therapy). Your reimbursement rate depends on your specific plan and your out-of-network mental health benefits, so we recommend calling your insurance and asking what those benefits look like. We have also partnered with a third party who will submit the superbill on your behalf if you do not want to handle it yourself. If cost is a concern, we are happy to talk through it on a consultation call.

What is somatic therapy, and how does it help with anxiety?

Somatic therapy is an approach to mental health treatment that works through the body, not just the mind. The word 'somatic' comes from the Greek 'soma,' meaning body. Where traditional talk therapy works primarily through conversation and insight, somatic therapy adds awareness of physical sensation, breath, posture, and your body's stress responses as core parts of the work. This matters for anxiety because anxiety lives in the body as much as the mind. The racing heart, the tight chest, the shallow breathing, the jaw you cannot stop clenching, these are not just symptoms to manage. They are how your nervous system holds and expresses what it is carrying. Somatic therapy helps you read those signals, work with them, and gradually shift the patterns that keep your body locked in alarm. Both IFS and EMDR, the two approaches I am trained in, are body-based modalities that engage the nervous system directly rather than working only through cognition. Anxiety therapy that does not involve the body tends to give people insight without change. Somatic anxiety therapy in Chicago is the work of teaching your body what your mind already understands.

How do I know if your practice is the right fit?

You are likely a good fit if you are tired of high-functioning your way through anxiety, if you want a therapist who will be direct with you rather than just nod sympathetically, and if you are ready to go to the root of your anxiety rather than just manage the symptoms. I work especially well with high-achievers, perfectionists, and people-pleasers, often the people who appear successful from the outside but are running on internal fumes. If you have already tried CBT or coping skills training and want to go deeper, I can take you there. If you appreciate a therapist who takes the work seriously but does not require you to take yourself too seriously, we will probably get along. The best way to find out is to schedule a free 15-minute consultation call. We will talk about what is going on for you and whether working together feels right for both of us.

How much does anxiety therapy cost in Chicago?

Anxiety therapy at Still Oak Counseling is $250 for a 50-minute session. We are a private-pay practice and do not bill insurance directly, but we provide a monthly superbill you can submit for out-of-network reimbursement, and we have a third-party partner who can submit it on your behalf. Your reimbursement depends on your plan's out-of-network mental health benefits, so it is worth calling your insurer to ask. If cost is a concern, we are happy to talk it through on a free consultation call.

Why do I wake up at 3am with anxiety?

Waking at 3am with a racing heart or spinning thoughts is one of the most common ways anxiety shows up in the body. When you sleep, your prefrontal cortex quiets down and your nervous system's threat-detection runs with less regulation, so unprocessed stress and hypervigilance surface as early-morning waking. It is especially common in high-functioning people who stay busy enough during the day to outrun the anxiety, only for it to catch up in the quiet of the night. Somatic anxiety therapy works with the nervous system directly, not just the thoughts, which is why it tends to help this pattern when sleep hygiene alone has not.

How do I know if I have anxiety, or if it is just stress?

The simplest difference: stress usually has an end point, and anxiety does not. Stress is a normal response to a specific demand and eases when the demand passes, while anxiety persists beyond the trigger, shows up when there is no obvious threat, and lingers when things are calm. The other key signal is what it does to your body; stress activates you in short bursts, while anxiety keeps your nervous system on alert for long stretches, often as a tight chest, shallow breathing, trouble sleeping, or a sense of dread you cannot trace. If you cannot relax even when nothing pressing is happening, that is anxiety, not stress.

How long does anxiety therapy take?

Most people feel meaningful shifts within the first 8 to 12 sessions, which works out to about 2 to 3 months of weekly meetings. Significant change at the root level usually takes longer, often 6 to 12 months, especially when anxiety is tied to long-standing patterns like perfectionism or people-pleasing. We typically start with weekly 50-minute sessions to build momentum, then move to every other week and eventually monthly check-ins as symptoms ease. The goal is not to keep you in therapy; it is to help you trust yourself enough to function without it.

What types of therapy work best for anxiety?

Several approaches are well-researched, and the right one depends on what is driving yours. CBT is the most studied and works well for shorter-term, situation-specific anxiety. For anxiety tied to deeper patterns like perfectionism, people-pleasing, and chronic self-criticism, somatic and body-based approaches tend to work better because anxiety lives in the body as well as the mind. Our practice focuses on somatic anxiety therapy through two evidence-based modalities, IFS and EMDR, both of which engage the body directly, which is what makes them effective for chronic anxiety.

What is high-functioning anxiety?

High-functioning anxiety describes a pattern where someone appears to be doing well on the outside while running on chronic internal alarm. You meet deadlines, perform well, and keep everything running smoothly, while inside you experience exhaustion, overthinking, perfectionism, a relentless inner critic, and the sense that if you stopped pushing everything would fall apart. It is not a clinical diagnosis but a descriptive term for an experience that often does not show up on standard assessments because the outcomes look healthy. The cost is real, and this is the kind of anxiety we work with most often.

Can therapy help with panic attacks?

Yes. Panic attacks are one of the most responsive anxiety symptoms to therapy. Therapy helps in two ways: first, by giving you concrete tools to interrupt a panic attack in the moment and bring your nervous system back down, which most clients learn within the first few sessions; and second, by helping you understand what is driving the panic in the first place. Panic attacks rarely come from nowhere, and working with both the in-the-moment skills and the underlying patterns tends to produce lasting change, with most people seeing significant reduction within 8 to 12 sessions.

What is somatic therapy, and how does it help with anxiety?

Somatic therapy is an approach that works through the body, not just the mind. Where traditional talk therapy works primarily through conversation and insight, somatic therapy adds awareness of physical sensation, breath, posture, and your body's stress responses as core parts of the work. This matters because anxiety lives in the body as much as the mind, and the racing heart, tight chest, and clenched jaw are how your nervous system holds what it is carrying. Both IFS and EMDR are body-based modalities that engage the nervous system directly, which is why somatic anxiety therapy tends to produce change where insight alone does not.

What does anxiety therapy cost, and do you take insurance?

Anxiety therapy at Still Oak Counseling is private pay at $250 for a 50-minute session, and we do not bill insurance directly. Most insurance plans cover individual therapy as out-of-network, which means you pay at the time of session and submit a superbill for partial reimbursement. We provide a monthly superbill with the diagnosis and procedure codes your insurance needs, and we have partnered with a third party who can submit it on your behalf. Your reimbursement rate depends on your out-of-network mental health benefits, so we recommend calling your insurance to ask.

Somatic Therapy in Chicago

You have talked about it. You understand it. You can explain exactly why you are the way you are, trace it back to the childhood, name the pattern, cite the book. And still your shoulders live up by your ears, your chest goes tight before you have even registered a thought, and your body braces for something your mind knows is not coming. Insight has taken you as far as it can, and your nervous system did not get the memo. Somatic therapy in Chicago works at the level where all of that actually lives, in the body, not just the story you tell about it. We help your nervous system finish what talking alone could not. We specialize in somatic, body-based therapy for high-achievers whose bodies have been holding the tension their minds keep trying to think their way out of.

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A woman with blonde hair in an updo, wearing a white dress and a necklace, standing outdoors among trees with green leaves, smiling softly at the camera.

What is Somatic Therapy?

Somatic therapy is an approach to mental health treatment that works through the body, not just the mind. The word "somatic" comes from the Greek "soma," meaning body. Where traditional talk therapy works primarily through conversation and insight, somatic therapy treats physical sensation, breath, posture, and your body's stress responses as core parts of the work rather than side effects to manage.

This matters because so much of what we carry does not live in language. A racing heart, a clenched jaw, a stomach that drops before you have consciously registered a threat, shoulders that will not come down even when nothing is wrong, these are not just symptoms. They are how your nervous system holds and expresses what it has not been able to release. You can understand exactly why you feel the way you do and still feel it in your body, because the body keeps its own record, and that record does not respond to logic. Somatic therapy helps you read those signals, work with them directly, and gradually shift the patterns that keep your body locked in alarm

At Still Oak, we practice somatic therapy through two evidence-based, body-based approaches: IFS and EMDR. Both engage the nervous system directly rather than working only through thought. Elizabeth, a Level 2 IFS trained and EMDRIA trained therapist in Chicago, and Meg, an EMDRIA trained therapist in Chicago, both work from this body-based approach with high-achieving adults whose stress, anxiety, and old patterns have stopped responding to insight and willpower alone.

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Somatic Therapy for High-Achieving Adults in Chicago

Does this sound like you?

Still Oak's somatic therapists in Chicago work with high-achieving adults who have done the thinking and are ready to finally involve the body.

You might be the person who lives almost entirely from the neck up. You are articulate, self-aware, good at analyzing your own patterns, and you have used that intelligence to get through a lot. But you notice you are strangely disconnected from your body, you forget to eat, you cannot tell you are exhausted until you crash, and you realize you have not felt genuinely relaxed in longer than you can remember. You have optimized your mind and quietly abandoned everything below it.

Or you might be the person whose body has started sending louder signals. The tension headaches, the jaw pain, the gut issues no doctor can fully explain, the way your heart races for no reason. You have started to suspect that the stress you keep overriding is showing up somewhere, and that pushing through it is not working the way it used to. Your body is done being ignored, and it is getting your attention the only way it can.

You are our people. Between Elizabeth and Meg, we work with high-achieving adults who are brilliant in their heads and strangers in their bodies, using IFS and EMDR to bring the two back into the same room.

This Is Me!

How IFS and EMDR Treat Anxiety

A silhouette of a dog's face with pointy ears and a short snout.

Not all somatic work looks the same, and you do not have to do anything strange or exposing for it to be effective. At Still Oak, somatic therapy happens through two structured, evidence-based approaches that keep the body central without asking you to perform anything.

EMDR is somatic at its core. It uses bilateral stimulation, usually side-to-side eye movements, to help your brain and nervous system reprocess experiences that got stuck in the body. You do not talk a memory to death; you let your nervous system finish moving it through, so it stops firing in the present as tension, reactivity, or dread. A 2020 meta-analysis in the Journal of Psychiatric Research reviewed 17 randomized controlled trials and found EMDR produced real reductions in anxiety, panic, and phobia symptoms. The body is not incidental to EMDR; it is where the work happens.

IFS works somatically too, through sensation rather than just thought. Internal Family Systems helps you notice the parts of you that carry tension, bracing, and protection, and it almost always starts in the body: a tightness in the chest, a knot in the stomach, a heaviness you can locate before you can name. A 2023 meta-analysis in Psychotherapy Research found IFS produced meaningful gains in emotional regulation, the capacity that collapses when your nervous system is running the show. Rather than analyzing a feeling from a distance, IFS has you turn toward where it lives in your body and work with it there.

In practice, we use both, often with the same client. If what you are carrying is tied to a specific experience your body is still holding, EMDR tends to move it faster. If it shows up as chronic bracing, a pattern of tension, or a protective response you cannot think your way out of, IFS gives you a way to work with your body's signals instead of overriding them. Neither approach asks you to just understand yourself better. Both work with the part of you that has been holding on this whole time.

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What to Expect in Somatic Therapy Sessions in Chicago

We start by getting curious about what your body is already doing.

1

We begin by noticing where and how stress, anxiety, or old patterns show up physically for you, the tension you carry, when it shows up, and what your body does when it feels threatened or overwhelmed. You do not need to already be "in touch with your body" for this to work. Most of our clients start out feeling fairly disconnected from theirs. That is exactly where we begin.

You are never asked to do anything that feels exposing or strange.

2

Somatic therapy at Still Oak happens through IFS and EMDR, both structured, evidence-based approaches. There is no pressure to move in ways that feel uncomfortable or perform emotion on command. We work at a pace your nervous system can actually tolerate, because pushing past that pace is the opposite of the point.

Then we work directly with what your body is holding.

3

Using IFS and EMDR, we work with the sensations, protective patterns, and stuck experiences your nervous system is still carrying, rather than analyzing them from a safe distance. This is where the bracing starts to soften and your body begins to register that the threat it has been guarding against is not actually here anymore.

We track what changes in your body and your daily life.

4

Progress in somatic therapy shows up as much in the body as in the mind. Sleeping more deeply. Noticing your shoulders drop. Catching tension earlier and being able to release it. Feeling present in a moment instead of watching it from your head. We check in on those markers regularly, because they are often where change appears first, before it ever feels like a conclusion.

Most clients at Still Oak notice meaningful shifts within the first few months. Somatic therapy in Chicago with Elizabeth and Meg is structured to help your body catch up to everything your mind already knows.

Elizabeth Bodett Dresser, LCPC

Hi, I'm Elizabeth. I know what it's like to live in your head and treat your body like a vehicle for carrying your brain around. To be able to explain your patterns in detail and still feel them running on a loop underneath everything. I've done my own work learning to actually inhabit my body rather than just think about it, and I know firsthand that insight alone does not release what the body is holding.

That's what drives my work with high-achievers. Not more analysis, but helping you get underneath the thinking to what your nervous system is actually carrying. As a Level 2 IFS trained and EMDR trained therapist in Chicago, I work with adults who are tired of being hijacked by their own bodies and ready to do something about it.

If your stress shows up as anxiety, perfectionism, burnout, or physical tension you cannot think your way out of, you're exactly who I work with.

Offers somatic therapy ✓
Credentials: Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor, IFS Level 2, EMDR Trained
IFS Training: Level 2
EMDR Training: EMDRIA
Specialties: trauma, anxiety, burnou
Clientele: Adults
Location: Chicago, IL
Virtual therapy: Yes

Private pay. Superbills provided for out-of-network insurance reimbursement.

Work with me

Meg Doster, LMFT

Hi, I'm Meg. I know what it's like to carry stress in your body long after your mind has moved on. The braced shoulders, the shallow breath, the sense of being on guard even when everything is objectively fine. I've done my own work around those patterns and learned that the body does not let go because you told it to. It lets go when it finally feels safe enough to.

As an EMDRIA trained therapist in Chicago, I use body-based approaches to help the nervous system process what it's still holding, especially when that tension is tied to relational patterns, people-pleasing, or experiences you've never quite named as the source. My approach is warm and direct. I take your nervous system seriously and I believe in its capacity to settle, not just cope.

For clients whose tension is rooted in trauma or past experiences, I use EMDR therapy to help the body finish processing what it's still carrying.

Offers somatic therapy ✓
Credentials: Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, EMDR Trained
EMDR training: EMDRIA
Specialties: trauma, anxiety, people-pleasing, boundaries
Clientele: Adults
Location: Chicago, IL
Virtual therapy: Yes

Private pay. Superbills provided for out-of-network insurance reimbursement.

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Common Reasons Why People Seek Somatic Therapy

You have done years of talk therapy and understand your patterns completely, but your body has not changed
You carry visible tension, tight shoulders, a clenched jaw, a knot in your stomach, that never fully goes away
You feel disconnected from your body, like you live in your head and only notice your body when it hurts
You experience physical symptoms of stress that no medical explanation fully accounts for
Your nervous system feels stuck in overdrive, and you cannot remember the last time you felt genuinely relaxed
You know your stress is affecting your health, your sleep, and your energy, but you keep overriding it
You go numb or shut down when things get overwhelming, and then cannot access what you are feeling
You want a kind of therapy that is not just talking about your problems from a distance
You are ready to feel more present and grounded rather than watching your own life from inside your head
Insight has taken you far, and you can tell the next step is not more understanding, but something your body has to do

How Anxiety Treatment Can Help

Get underneath what talking cannot reach

Most people come to somatic therapy after talk therapy took them as far as it could. Insight is valuable, but the body keeps its own record, and that record does not respond to explanation. Together, we work with what your nervous system is actually holding, so change happens at the level where the pattern lives, not just where you can describe it.

Come back into your body safely

If you have spent years disconnected from your body, or bracing against what it is holding, reconnecting can feel daunting. Through IFS and EMDR, we go at a pace your nervous system can tolerate, helping you turn toward physical sensation without becoming overwhelmed by it. The goal is to make your body feel like a safe place to be again.

Release chronic tension and stress responses

The tightness, the bracing, the constant low-grade alarm, these are your nervous system doing its job long after the threat has passed. Somatic therapy helps your body recognize that it is safe now, so it can finally let go of patterns it has been holding for years. Many clients are surprised by how much physical tension they had simply gotten used to.

Feel present, grounded, and actually here

Stress and old patterns have a way of pulling you up into your head and out of the moment. Through this work, you will learn to settle your nervous system, notice when you are bracing, and come back into your body and the present. The goal is not to think your way to calm; it is to help your body know what your mind already understands.

FAQs About Somatic Therapy

The simplest difference: stress usually has an end point. Anxiety does not. Stress is a normal response to a specific demand (a deadline, a difficult conversation, a busy week), and it eases when the demand passes. Anxiety persists beyond the trigger. It shows up when there is no obvious threat, lingers when things are calm, and tends to attach itself to whatever is in front of you. The other key signal is what it does to your body. Stress activates you in short bursts. Anxiety keeps your nervous system on alert for long stretches, often showing up as a tight chest, shallow breathing, trouble sleeping, racing thoughts, or a sense of dread you cannot trace. If you cannot relax even when nothing pressing is happening, or if your baseline feels set a few notches above "fine" all the time, that is anxiety, not stress. Anxiety therapy in Chicago can help you reset that baseline.
Most people feel meaningful shifts within the first 8 to 12 sessions of anxiety therapy, which works out to about 2 to 3 months of weekly meetings. Significant change at the root level usually takes longer, often 6 to 12 months, especially if your anxiety is tied to long-standing patterns like perfectionism, people-pleasing, or earlier experiences. Some clients come in for shorter-term work focused on a specific stressor and feel ready to wrap up sooner. Others stay for ongoing work because they find it useful as a regular practice rather than a crisis intervention. We typically start with weekly 50-minute sessions to build momentum. Once anxiety symptoms ease and you feel more grounded, sessions can move to every other week and then to monthly check-ins. The goal of anxiety therapy is not to keep you in therapy. It is to help you trust yourself enough to function without it.
Several types of therapy are well-researched for anxiety, and the right one depends on what is driving yours. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is the most studied. It helps you identify and reframe the anxious thought patterns that keep your nervous system activated, and it is effective for shorter-term, situation-specific anxiety. For anxiety tied to deeper patterns (perfectionism, people-pleasing, chronic self-criticism, fear of failure), somatic and body-based approaches tend to work better because anxiety lives in the body as well as the mind. My practice focuses on somatic anxiety therapy through two evidence-based modalities: Internal Family Systems (IFS) and EMDR. IFS helps you understand the protective parts of yourself that produce anxiety in the first place. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation to help your nervous system reprocess earlier experiences that are still driving your reactivity today. Both engage the body directly, which is what makes them more effective for chronic anxiety than approaches that work only through thought.
Neither is universally better. It depends on your specific situation and the severity of your anxiety. Research shows therapy alone, medication alone, and the two combined can all produce significant improvement. For mild to moderate anxiety, therapy alone is often enough and tends to produce longer-lasting results because it addresses the root rather than the symptoms. For severe anxiety, panic disorder, or anxiety so intense that you cannot engage with therapy effectively, medication can be a useful bridge that brings symptoms down enough for the deeper work to begin. Many of my clients are in therapy alone, some are on medication and in therapy, and a few use medication temporarily and wean off as their nervous system regulates. Medication is prescribed by a psychiatrist or your primary care doctor, not by a therapist. If you want help thinking through whether medication might be worth exploring alongside therapy, that is a conversation we can have. There is no shame in needing both.
High-functioning anxiety describes a pattern where someone appears to be doing well on the outside while running on chronic internal alarm. You meet your deadlines, your work performance is strong, you remember the birthdays, you keep your relationships running smoothly. The outside picture is one of competence. The inside picture is exhaustion, overthinking, perfectionism, a relentless inner critic, and the sense that if you stopped pushing for a single day, everything would fall apart. High-functioning anxiety is not a clinical diagnosis. It is a descriptive term for an experience that often does not show up on standard anxiety assessments because the outcomes (high achievement, strong performance) look healthy. But the cost is real. People with high-functioning anxiety often experience burnout, chronic physical tension, sleep issues, relationship strain, and the persistent sense of being a fraud. This is the kind of anxiety I work with most often. Many of my clients have spent years using their anxiety as fuel and are tired of paying the price for it.
Waking at 3am with a racing heart or spinning thoughts is one of the most common ways anxiety shows up in the body. When you sleep, your prefrontal cortex quiets down and your nervous system's threat-detection runs with less regulation, so unprocessed stress and hypervigilance surface as early-morning waking. It is especially common in high-functioning people who stay busy enough during the day to outrun the anxiety, only for it to catch up in the quiet of the night. Somatic anxiety therapy works with the nervous system directly, not just the thoughts, which is why it tends to help this pattern when sleep hygiene alone has not.

Yes. Panic attacks are one of the most responsive anxiety symptoms to therapy. A panic attack is an intense, time-limited surge of physical and emotional alarm (racing heart, shortness of breath, dizziness, the sense that something terrible is about to happen) that often feels like it comes out of nowhere. Therapy helps in two ways. First, by giving you concrete tools to interrupt a panic attack in the moment and bring your nervous system back down. Most clients learn to do this within the first few sessions. Second, by helping you understand what is driving the panic in the first place. Panic attacks rarely come from nowhere. They are usually the surface symptom of a deeper anxiety pattern or unresolved experience your nervous system is still trying to manage. Working with both layers, the in-the-moment skills and the underlying patterns, tends to produce lasting change. Most people see significant reduction in panic attack frequency and intensity within 8 to 12 sessions.
In your first anxiety therapy session, the focus is on getting your story on the table. You will tell me what brought you in, what your anxiety has looked like, when it started, what triggers it, and how it shows up in your body and your relationships. You will not be put on the spot or expected to perform. The goal of session one is for me to understand the shape of what you are carrying so I can offer a clear sense of how I can help and what the work would look like. You will leave with a better understanding of your own anxiety pattern and a plan for next steps. We will not jump into deep processing work in the first session. The first few weeks are about building the foundation so the deeper work has somewhere safe to land.
Anxiety therapy at Still Oak Counseling is private pay. Our fee for a 50-minute individual anxiety therapy session is $250. We do not bill insurance directly. Most insurance plans cover individual therapy as out-of-network, which means you pay at the time of session and submit a superbill to your insurance for partial reimbursement. We provide a superbill at the end of each month with the diagnosis and procedure codes your insurance will need (CPT code 90834 for individual therapy). Your reimbursement rate depends on your specific plan and your out-of-network mental health benefits, so we recommend calling your insurance and asking what those benefits look like. We have also partnered with a third party who will submit the superbill on your behalf if you do not want to handle it yourself. If cost is a concern, we are happy to talk through it on a consultation call.
Somatic therapy is an approach to mental health treatment that works through the body, not just the mind. The word "somatic" comes from the Greek "soma," meaning body. Where traditional talk therapy works primarily through conversation and insight, somatic therapy adds awareness of physical sensation, breath, posture, and your body's stress responses as core parts of the work. This matters for anxiety because anxiety lives in the body as much as the mind. The racing heart, the tight chest, the shallow breathing, the jaw you cannot stop clenching, these are not just symptoms to manage. They are how your nervous system holds and expresses what it is carrying. Somatic therapy helps you read those signals, work with them, and gradually shift the patterns that keep your body locked in alarm. Both IFS and EMDR, the two approaches we are trained in, are body-based modalities that engage the nervous system directly rather than working only through cognition. Anxiety therapy that does not involve the body tends to give people insight without change. Somatic anxiety therapy in Chicago is the work of teaching your body what your mind already understands.
You are likely a good fit if you are tired of high-functioning your way through anxiety, if you want a therapist who will be direct with you rather than just nod sympathetically, and if you are ready to go to the root of your anxiety rather than just manage the symptoms. I work especially well with high-achievers, perfectionists, and people-pleasers, often the people who appear successful from the outside but are running on internal fumes. If you have already tried CBT or coping skills training and want to go deeper, I can take you there. If you appreciate a therapist who takes the work seriously but does not require you to take yourself too seriously, we will probably get along. The best way to find out is to schedule a free 15-minute consultation call. We will talk about what is going on for you and whether working together feels right for both of us.
Anxiety therapy at Still Oak Counseling is $250 for a 50-minute session. We are a private-pay practice and do not bill insurance directly, but we provide a monthly superbill you can submit for out-of-network reimbursement, and we have a third-party partner who can submit it on your behalf. Your reimbursement depends on your plan's out-of-network mental health benefits, so it is worth calling your insurer to ask. If cost is a concern, we are happy to talk it through on a free consultation call.

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