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Margaret Brittingham-LPC-MHSP

Holistic Counseling

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You are here: Home / Private: Resources / Anxiety and stress

Anxiety and stress

All of us feel anxiety from time to time and it’s a normal and essential part of life. But, too often, it can start to take over your life and leave you feeling unable to do the things that you’d really like to be doing. Below are some resources that I and others have found helpful in understanding anxiety and in changing the way you respond to it to get your life back. If you want a more in-depth written explanation, check out the blog post I wrote about understanding anxiety and how to work with it.

This video talks about what happens in the brain when you avoid situations that provoke anxiety and how you can rewire your brain to reduce anxiety’s interference in your life.

In working with anxiety, it’s important to take a bottom up and a top down approach. The top down approach is examining your thoughts and beliefs that trigger and prolong anxiety. The bottom up approach is getting familiar with the sensations of anxiety and how anxiety lives in your body, doing things to help retrain the nervous system, and to help rewire the amygdala (which learns on the basis of association NOT logic).

Helpful worksheets

Thought Record

This worksheet can help you get familiar with your thoughts and underlying beliefs that may be triggering and prolonging your anxiety response.

Info about Core beliefs

Common core belief examples 

Identifying Core beliefs

This can help you get in touch with some of your underlying belief systems that play a role in prolonging your body’s anxiety response. Often underneath many of our SPECIFIC thoughts, there is an underlying anxiety-provoking BELIEF at play. When you get down to the root of the belief, you can apply it to a lot of different thoughts instead of just examining and replacing each thought one by one.

Exposure ladder worksheet

This can be a more gentle way of approaching exposure, which is a super effective way to teach your amygdala that situations it is interpreting as a threat are NOT dangerous. Your amygdala only learns by experience, not by thought or logic so you have to ride out the discomfort in order to uncouple the thing that has been coupled with danger in your brain, so that it doesn’t keep making you feel super anxious.

Anxiety Meditations:

This 10 minute meditation guides you to not resist your thoughts, but to gently let go of them and redirect your attention elsewhere.

This meditation podcast has more than 50 free meditations, many of which are extremely helpful for anxiety

Yoga for anxiety:

Helpful books:

The Brain That Changes Itself

The Brain That Changes Itself:

Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science

This book is a great resource for understanding how you can change your brain, and in Chapter 6 there is a great description of how obsessive thinking or OCD affects your brain and how you can break that pattern.

Mental and Physical Effects of Anxiety and Stress

Below are two more videos which go more in depth about the different parts of the brain involved in anxiety, and the body’s response to anxiety and stress:

Your Brain on Stress and Anxiety

How Stress Affects Your Body

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Testimonials

able to move through serious trauma

“I had the incredible privilege of working with Margaret this past summer during an hour long brainspotting session. Immediately, I felt at ease and thanks to Margaret’s calm and guiding nature, and years of expertise, I was able to move through some serious trauma that had been holding me back. Healing is a never ending journey, or so I’ve come to discover, but what’s amazing about this experience – and every experience I’ve had with Margaret – is the ability to face your fears and suppressed memories in the comfort of a safe and judgment-free space. Nothing is more important to me than peace of mind these days, and Margaret’s techniques and wisdom have served me a great deal in this area of my life. To this day, I continue to be grateful for the work she promotes and for the healing she has provided me in the process. Looking forward to my next session!”

Brainspotting client

Margaret is an excellent guide through the tough times

“Margaret is an excellent guide through the tough times that I’ve been facing. She is a wonderful listener and I never felt judged with her in any ways, which is what I was most worried about in speaking to a therapist.“

- Client

Made me feel understood and valued

“The shared experience of being mothers made me feel understood and valued. (Margaret) has a calmness and gentleness that really put me at ease. I learned a lot during our sessions. I identified a lot of underlying belief systems that were causing some of my discomfort and showing themselves after having a baby.”

- Client

She’s offered new ideas and approaches

“Margaret has been a major help to me for dealing with anxiety and depression. She’s offered new ideas and approaches that I had never even thought of”

- Client

Margaret was very down to earth

“Margaret was very down to earth, met me where I was, and led me where I wanted to go.”

- Client

Like talking to a very informed friend

“(Working with Margaret) felt like talking to a very informed friend or colleague vs being talked down to. I really appreciated how informed she was at all times”.

- individual therapy client

I continue to benefit from the work we did

“(Brainspotting with Margaret) helped me to process the trauma in a different, more direct and healing way than I had previously. I continue to benefit from the work we did.”

- Brainspotting client

I feel so much better having someone there…working in my favor

“Highly recommend. Margaret is such a good listener, very understanding and insightful. She helped me find different perspectives and solutions to get over mental health hurdles, without being judgmental or harsh. I feel so much better having someone there that understands me and is working in my favor.”

- Client

Clients have a wonderful experience with Margaret

Not only is Margaret a wonderful, skilled therapist, but she continues to explore and learn new ways of showing up with her clients. She is always a student, and that’s the kind of therapist I would want for myself! Clients have a wonderful experience with Margaret and know she is really present with them in the room. Her presence is very gentle, and the clients I have referred have experienced wonderful healing and insight in their work with Margaret.I love her whole body approach to healing and use of Brainspotting in her practice, as well as how she incorporates mindfulness and yoga which is wonderful for clients who already connect to these practice or are integrating it into their process for the first time. I would refer clients to Margaret anytime.

Melanie Reese, LMFT

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Margaret Brittingham, MEd, LPC-MHSP
2200 21st Ave S, Ste 405
Nashville, TN, 37212
Phone: 615.601.0647
Margaret@mindbodytherapynashville.com

Office Hours

2200 21st Ave S, ste 405: Mondays, Tuesdays, Saturdays

South Nashville: Wednesdays, Thursdays

Mondays: 9 AM- 330 PM, last session starts at 230PM

Tuesdays: 9AM-330 PM, last session starts at 230PM

Wednesdays: 9AM-330PM, last session starts at 230PM

Thursdays: Occasional availability

Saturdays: Occasional availability

**I respond to emails and texts during office hours Monday-Wednesday**

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