Expert support for managing anxiety, reclaiming calm, and building a life that feels more manageable.
Anxiety doesn’t have to control your life. Whether you’re experiencing constant worry, panic attacks, social anxiety, or obsessive thoughts, remember that anxiety is a mental health condition—relief is possible, but it takes the right support and proven strategies.
What to Expect from Anxiety Therapy
Initial Sessions
You'll explore your anxiety’s causes and set treatment goals, with your therapist explaining how therapy helps.
Active Treatment
Focuses on learning coping skills, challenging anxious thoughts, gradual exposure, homework, and tracking progress.
Duration
Weekly sessions are typical, with most improving within 12-20 sessions.
Between Sessions
Practice skills, complete exercises, face fears, and track anxiety to support lasting change.
Meet Our Anxiety Therapists
Our therapists who specialize in anxiety treatment understand both the science of anxiety disorders and the compassionate support needed to help you face your fears and build a calmer life. Our approach is informed by advances in clinical neuroscience, ensuring that our therapy for anxiety is grounded in the latest research on brain function and neural mechanisms.
Jessica K. Inge, M.S.W.
LCsw-c, Licensed social worker
Baltimore, MD
Jessica works with individuals experiencing anxiety in various forms—generalized worry, panic, social anxiety, and anxiety related to trauma or major life changes. She creates a safe, supportive environment where clients can be vulnerable about their struggles while learning practical tools for managing anxiety
Andrea Castelhano, PsyD
Licensed Psychologist
Baltimore, MD
Andrea works with individuals struggling with anxiety—particularly anxiety related to body image, perfectionism, eating disorders, and identity concerns. She understands how anxiety can become intertwined with self-criticism and cultural pressures, creating a cycle that feels impossible to break. Andrea provides both empowering tools and compassionate support to help clients accept themselves while building skills to manage anxiety.
Elise Swanekamp, M. S.
LGPC, Licensed Counselor
Baltimore, mD
Elise works with individuals and couples experiencing anxiety, depression, ADHD, and relationship concerns. She uses a collaborative approach that helps clients make value-driven decisions rather than anxiety-driven ones. Elise understands how anxiety can affect every area of life—work, relationships, health—and helps clients build a more balanced approach.
Cassie Ekstrom, M.S.W.
LCSW-C, Licensed social worker
Baltimore, MD
Cassie works with individuals and couples struggling with anxiety, depression, addiction, trauma, and relationship challenges. She brings a direct, grounded approach that helps clients cut through the noise of anxiety and focus on what actually matters. Cassie is skilled at helping clients understand the connections between anxiety and other aspects of their lives—relationships, substance use, life transitions.
Jennifer McMillan, M.S.
LCPC, Licensed counselor
Baltimore, MD
Jen specializes in working with individuals dealing with anxiety and OCD. She uses evidence-based approaches including CBT and exposure therapy to help clients break free from the grip of obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors. Jen understands how isolating and exhausting OCD and anxiety can feel, and provides both the expertise and empathy needed for effective treatment.
Zak Fusciello, M.S.
LCPC, Licensed Counselor Baltimore, MD
Zak works with individuals and couples coming to him with anxiety, depression, relationship conflict, substance misuse, and stalled creativity or motivation. His warm, genuine style helps clients feel comfortable exploring difficult topics, and he knows when to use humor to help get a point across. Zak understands that anxiety often intersects with other life challenges and helps clients address the whole picture.
Rachel Greenberg Larson, M.A.
LCPC, Licensed counselor
Baltimore, MD
Rachel works with individuals across the developmental spectrum—from children to adults—on anxiety, OCD, and related concerns. She takes a strengths-based approach while helping clients build concrete skills for managing anxiety and living more fully.
Unique Arnold, M.S.W.
LMSW, social Worker
Baltimore, MD
Unique uses a collaborative, strengths-based approach to help clients improve their emotional well-being and make positive changes. She creates a safe space for clients to work through anxiety, life transitions, relationship changes, and other challenges. Unique believes everyone deserves support in healing and building the life they want.
Justina Stokes, M.S.W.
LCSW-C, Licensed SOCIAL WORKER
Baltimore, MD
Justina works with individuals seeking a more joyous and meaningful life despite anxiety's attempts to keep them playing small. She helps clients understand the deeper patterns beneath their anxiety while building practical skills for managing symptoms. Justina's warm, thoughtful approach creates space for clients to explore what's really driving their anxiety and what they truly value.
Ready to begin anxiety treatment?
If you're ready to begin anxiety treatment, we're here to help. Contact the Baltimore Therapy Group to schedule an initial consultation. We'll match you with a therapist who has specific experience treating your type of anxiety and we can help you build the skills you need to reclaim your life. You don't have to live with constant worry and fear—there are proven strategies that can help.
Take the first step toward a calmer life—reach out to us today.
Therapy for Anxiety Disorders in Baltimore
Living with anxiety can feel like carrying a weight that never lifts. The constant worrying, the racing thoughts that won’t slow down, the physical tension that makes it hard to relax—it all adds up to a life that feels smaller and more exhausting than it should be. You might find yourself avoiding situations that trigger your anxiety, canceling plans at the last minute, or lying awake at night replaying conversations or worrying about what could go wrong tomorrow.
Anxiety disorders are classified as mental health conditions and mental disorders, according to the American Psychiatric Association, and are among the most common mental health issues people face.
At the Baltimore Therapy Group, we specialize in helping people break free from the grip of anxiety. Our therapists are mental health professionals who use evidence-based approaches that have been proven to help people manage anxiety effectively and reclaim their lives.
We want you to know: anxiety is treatable. There are a variety of effective treatments available to treat anxiety disorders, including cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and exposure therapy. You don’t have to feel this way forever. With the right support and strategies, most people see significant improvement in their symptoms and quality of life.
Most people with anxiety disorders see significant improvement within 12-20 therapy sessions — With evidence-based treatment approaches like CBT and exposure therapy, anxiety becomes manageable, allowing you to live more fully.
What Anxiety Looks Like
Anxiety isn’t just “worrying too much.” It’s a complex experience that affects your thoughts, your body, your emotions, and your behavior. Anxiety symptoms can include a wide range of experiences, from persistent worry and fear to physical tension and avoidance behaviors. For many people, anxiety has become so constant that they’ve forgotten what it feels like to truly relax. Cognitive distortions—unhelpful thinking patterns that reinforce anxiety—are also a common feature.
Mental and Emotional Symptoms:
Persistent worry or fear
Racing thoughts or difficulty concentrating
Negative thoughts and negative emotions, such as feeling overwhelmed, sad, or hopeless; negative thinking patterns can contribute to and intensify anxiety
Irritability or restlessness
Feeling on edge or easily startled
Behavioral Patterns:
Avoiding situations that trigger anxiety
Difficulty making decisions or taking action
The behavioral component of anxiety can include engaging in certain behaviors (like avoidance or reassurance-seeking) that unintentionally reinforce and maintain anxiety
Common Experiences with Anxiety
If you're struggling with anxiety, you may recognize some of these experiences:
Mental and Emotional Symptoms:
Constant worry that feels impossible to control or shut off
Racing thoughts that jump from one concern to another
Catastrophizing—always imagining the worst-case scenario
Difficulty concentrating or making decisions because your mind is so busy
Feeling on edge, irritable, or easily overwhelmed
Persistent sense of dread or feeling like something bad is about to happen
Rumination—replaying conversations or events over and over
Physical Symptoms:
Muscle tension, especially in your neck, shoulders, and jaw
Headaches or stomachaches with no clear medical cause
Racing heart, shortness of breath, or chest tightness
Difficulty sleeping—trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking up exhausted
Fatigue despite not doing anything particularly strenuous
Restlessness or feeling unable to sit still
Sweating, trembling, or feeling shaky
Behavioral Patterns:
Avoiding situations, people, or places that trigger your anxiety
Procrastinating on important tasks because they feel overwhelming
Seeking constant reassurance from others
Checking behaviors—repeatedly checking locks, messages, or that you did something correctly
Difficulty saying no or setting boundaries because you worry about others' reactions
Canceling plans or backing out of commitments at the last minute
Types of Anxiety We Treat
Anxiety isn’t a single condition—it shows up in different forms:
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD): Persistent, excessive worry about everyday things—work, health, family, finances—that feels impossible to control. The worry is often out of proportion to the actual situation and interferes with daily life.
Panic Disorder and Panic Attacks: Sudden, intense episodes of fear accompanied by physical symptoms like rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, dizziness, and a sense of losing control or dying. Many people with panic disorder develop anxiety about having another panic attack, which can lead to avoiding places or situations where attacks have occurred.
Social Anxiety Disorder: The clinical term for intense fear of social situations where you might be judged, embarrassed, or humiliated. This goes beyond typical shyness—it can make everyday interactions like speaking in meetings, eating in public, or making small talk feel terrifying. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques, such as cognitive restructuring and exposure, are especially effective in treating social anxiety disorder.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD): Intrusive, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) that create intense anxiety, and repetitive behaviors or mental rituals (compulsions) performed to reduce that anxiety. Common OCD themes include contamination fears, doubts about safety, unwanted aggressive or sexual thoughts, and need for symmetry or order.
Health Anxiety: Excessive worry about having or developing a serious illness, often despite medical reassurance. This can involve frequent checking of your body for signs of illness, excessive medical appointments, or avoiding doctors altogether out of fear of what they might find.
Life Transition Anxiety: Heightened anxiety triggered by major changes—moving, starting a new job, relationship changes, becoming a parent, or other significant life shifts. Even positive changes can trigger intense worry about the unknown.
Specific Phobias: Intense, irrational fear of a specific object or situation (such as flying, heights, animals, or injections). Exposure therapy—including in vivo, flooding, and systematic exposure—is the treatment of choice for specific phobias, with strong empirical support for its effectiveness.
Separation Anxiety Disorder: Most common in children, separation anxiety disorder involves excessive fear or anxiety about being apart from attachment figures. Symptoms can include nightmares, physical complaints, and reluctance to go to school or be alone. Age-appropriate cognitive-behavioral therapy is recommended for young children experiencing separation fears.
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: PTSD can develop after experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event. Symptoms include intrusive memories, avoidance, negative changes in mood and thinking, and heightened arousal. Evidence-based treatments for PTSD include cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), prolonged exposure therapy (PE), cognitive processing therapy (CPT), and cognitive therapy (CT), which use exposure-based techniques and cognitive restructuring to address PTSD symptoms.
Anxiety can also co-occur with other mental health conditions, such as depression, acute stress disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, as outlined in the DSM-5. This overlap can affect diagnosis and treatment planning.
How Anxiety Therapy Helps
Effective anxiety treatment isn’t about eliminating anxiety entirely—some anxiety is normal and even helpful. The goal is to reduce your anxiety to manageable levels so it no longer controls your decisions or limits your life.
Research suggests these treatments work, as demonstrated by systematic reviews, network meta-analyses, and randomized controlled trials that evaluate the effectiveness of various therapy approaches for anxiety.
For some individuals, pharmacological interventions may also be used alongside therapy as part of a comprehensive treatment plan.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for Anxiety
CBT is one of the most well-researched and effective treatments for anxiety disorders. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is the most widely-used therapy for anxiety disorders. The approach is based on the understanding that anxiety is maintained by patterns of thinking and behavior that can be changed.
How CBT Works:
CBT helps you identify the specific thoughts that fuel your anxiety—often thoughts that catastrophize, overestimate danger, or underestimate your ability to cope. These thought patterns feel automatic and true, but they’re often distorted in predictable ways. Cognitive therapy is a core component of CBT, focusing on helping patients learn to identify and challenge maladaptive thoughts and beliefs that contribute to anxiety.
Once you can recognize these patterns, your therapist will help you:
Question the evidence for and against anxious thoughts
Consider alternative, more balanced perspectives
Test your predictions in real-world situations
Develop more realistic, helpful ways of thinking through cognitive restructuring (also known as thought challenging), which replaces negative thinking patterns with more positive, realistic thoughts
CBT also uses self monitoring techniques, where you track your thoughts and emotions to better understand your anxiety triggers and progress during treatment.
CBT also addresses the behavioral patterns that maintain anxiety—particularly avoidance. When you avoid situations that make you anxious, your anxiety actually strengthens over time. CBT involves gradually facing feared situations in a controlled, supportive way (called exposure), which helps your brain learn that these situations are actually safe.
CBT can be delivered one-on-one with a professional, in groups, or online.
Exposure Therapy for Anxiety and OCD
For certain types of anxiety—particularly phobias, panic disorder, social anxiety, and OCD—exposure therapy, a form of behavior therapy, is especially effective. Exposure therapy emphasizes the behavioral component of treatment by actively engaging clients in confronting feared situations, thoughts, or sensations in a safe, controlled environment. This approach is particularly effective for specific phobias, where exposure-based methods have strong empirical support.
How Exposure Works:
Exposure is based on the principle of habituation: when you stay in an anxiety-provoking situation long enough without escaping or using safety behaviors, your anxiety naturally decreases. Over time and with repeated exposure, the situation loses its power to trigger intense anxiety symptoms.
For OCD specifically, exposure with response prevention (ERP) is considered the gold standard treatment. This involves:
Deliberately triggering obsessive thoughts or fears
Resisting the urge to perform compulsions or rituals
Allowing the anxiety to naturally decrease without “fixing” it
Learning that the feared outcome doesn’t actually happen
Exposure therapy is done gradually, working from less anxiety-provoking situations to more difficult ones. Your therapist will work with you to create a hierarchy and move at a pace that feels challenging but manageable. Exposure therapy typically involves a limited duration, often completed in about 10 sessions.
Mindfulness and Acceptance-Based Approaches
Some therapists at Baltimore Therapy Group integrate mindfulness and acceptance-based strategies into anxiety treatment. These approaches teach you to change your relationship with anxious thoughts and feelings rather than trying to eliminate them.
Key Skills Include:
Observing anxious thoughts without getting caught up in them
Noticing physical sensations of anxiety without reacting to them
Staying present in the moment rather than getting lost in worry about the future
Accepting that some discomfort is part of life rather than something to be avoided at all costs
Values-based living—making choices based on what matters to you rather than what anxiety dictates
Emotion Regulation Skills
Many people with anxiety struggle with intense emotions that feel overwhelming or out of control. Emotion regulation training helps you:
Identify and name what you're feeling
Understand what triggers certain emotional responses
Tolerate distressing emotions without making them worse
Use specific strategies to reduce emotional intensity when needed
Build positive experiences that improve your baseline emotional state
Frequently Asked Questions About Anxiety Therapy
How long does it take for anxiety therapy to work?
Most people begin noticing some improvement within 4-6 sessions, though significant, lasting change typically takes 12-20 sessions of consistent work. The timeline depends on the severity and type of anxiety, how long you've been experiencing symptoms, and how actively you engage in practicing skills between sessions. Remember that progress isn't always linear—some weeks will feel better than others—but the overall trajectory should be toward improvement.
What's the difference between normal anxiety and an anxiety disorder?
Everyone experiences anxiety sometimes—it's a normal human emotion that helps us respond to real threats. Anxiety becomes a disorder when it's excessive, persistent, difficult to control, and interferes with your daily life. If your anxiety is out of proportion to the actual situation, lasts for months, causes significant distress, or leads you to avoid important activities, it may be time to seek professional help.
Will I need medication for my anxiety?
Therapy—particularly CBT and exposure therapy—is highly effective for anxiety disorders and many people don’t need medication. However, some people benefit from a combination of therapy and pharmacological interventions, such as medications, especially if anxiety is severe or has been present for a long time. Pharmacological interventions can help correct chemical imbalances in the brain, such as those involving neurotransmitters like serotonin, noradrenaline, and dopamine, that contribute to anxiety symptoms. Your therapist can help you think through this decision and can refer you to a psychiatrist if medication might be helpful. The choice is ultimately yours.
What if I'm too anxious to even start therapy?
It's common to feel anxious about starting therapy—especially if you struggle with social anxiety or fear being judged. Our therapists understand this and will work at a pace that feels manageable to you. You can start with teletherapy if in-person sessions feel too overwhelming. Remember that therapists are trained to help people with anxiety—they've seen it all and won't judge you for your symptoms.
Can therapy really help with physical symptoms of anxiety?
Yes. While anxiety feels very physical—racing heart, muscle tension, stomach problems—these symptoms are driven by your nervous system’s response to perceived threat. As you learn to manage anxious thoughts and gradually face feared situations, your nervous system learns to stay calmer. Many people find their physical symptoms decrease significantly as their anxiety improves. Some therapists also teach specific relaxation techniques for managing physical symptoms, such as progressive muscle relaxation, mindfulness meditation, or breathing exercises. Biofeedback, which uses sensors to measure physiological functions, can also help you gain control over anxiety responses and reduce physical symptoms.
What's the difference between anxiety and depression?
Anxiety and depression often occur together and share some symptoms (difficulty sleeping, trouble concentrating, fatigue). Anxiety is primarily characterized by excessive worry, fear, and physical tension, while depression involves persistent sadness, loss of interest or pleasure, and feelings of hopelessness. Many people experience both, and effective therapy addresses both conditions. Your therapist will help you understand which symptoms you're experiencing and tailor treatment accordingly.
How do I know if I have OCD or just regular anxiety?
OCD involves specific patterns: intrusive, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) that create intense anxiety, and repetitive behaviors or mental rituals (compulsions) that temporarily relieve that anxiety. The key distinction is the presence of compulsions—behaviors you feel compelled to do to prevent something bad from happening or to reduce anxiety. If you find yourself checking, washing, counting, seeking reassurance, or performing mental rituals repeatedly, OCD may be present. A trained therapist can help you determine if OCD-specific treatment like ERP would be helpful.
What if I've tried therapy before and it didn't help?
Not all therapy is equally effective for anxiety. If you’ve tried therapy before without improvement, it may be that the approach wasn’t evidence-based for anxiety disorders or that the therapist didn’t specialize in anxiety treatment. CBT and exposure therapy have decades of research supporting their effectiveness for anxiety. Working with a therapist who specializes in these approaches and has specific training in treating anxiety can make a significant difference. Future directions in research are focused on improving and personalizing anxiety treatments, including identifying effective components, exploring common mechanisms across therapies, and advancing transdiagnostic approaches.