Anxiety and Panic Therapy
At Murad Counseling, our anxiety and panic therapy helps adults identify and change patterns like avoidance, reassurance, safety behaviors, body scanning, rumination, and worry about panic attacks. If you’re unsure whether you’re thinking helpful thoughts or just worrying, our free guide, Worry or Work?, can help you distinguish. You might also like our other anxiety guides. The goal isn’t to eliminate all anxiety but to empower you to respond with more choice when it occurs.
If anxiety is starting to shape your decisions like where you go, what you say, what you avoid, how often you check, and how much you trust your own body it’s a good sign that therapy can do more than just provide temporary relief. It can help you address the underlying loop that’s quietly narrowing your world and lead you toward a richer, more open life.
Who This Page Is For
This page is intended for adults whose anxiety or panic has grown beyond occasional stress. You may still appear to function normally, but internally, your day revolves around prevention, checking, avoidance, or seeking certainty before proceeding.
You avoid situations because you are afraid of panic, embarrassment, losing control, or feeling trapped.
You repeatedly scan your body, research symptoms, seek reassurance, or replay conversations.
You overprepare, overexplain, cancel plans, or rely on safety behaviors to get through the day.
You want therapy that is structured, direct, and focused on the pattern keeping anxiety alive.
Common Anxiety and Panic Patterns
Anxiety can show up in different ways, such as persistent worry, sudden panic attacks, health fears, social or performance-related stress, overthinking, perfectionism, avoidance behaviors, or even a fear of body sensations. It’s a common experience, and understanding these different forms can help you recognize and address them more easily.. Sometimes, panic becomes particularly challenging when the fear of having another attack influences your choices about where to go and what to do. Remember, you’re not alone, and help is available to support you through these feelings. If fear of judgment or scrutiny is the main pattern, you can learn about treatment for social anxiety.
The content can vary, but it often follows a familiar pattern: a trigger sets things in motion, an alarm response kicks in, a safety move provides some relief, and then there’s added pressure to repeat the same move later. This sequence is quite common across different situations.
How Anxiety and Panic Get Maintained
Anxiety can seem convincing because it feels protective. It encourages you to avoid, check, ask, scan, rehearse, or leave so you can feel safer. While these actions might help temporarily, they also signal to your alarm system that the situation, sensation, or thought is dangerous enough to escape from.
That’s why anxiety can sometimes spread easily. A panic attack in one situation might make you hesitant to go back to similar places. One health scare can lead to repeatedly checking your body. And an awkward conversation might cause you to replay it over and over for days. Everything feels a little more overwhelming than it might otherwise be.
How Therapy Helps
Therapy starts by helping you understand your anxiety loop better. We explore what triggers your anxiety, what your mind predicts, how your body reacts, and the safety behaviors you might be using, along with their long-term impacts. From there, we work together to strengthen your tolerance, increase flexibility, and regain confidence in areas where anxiety has limited you.
This might involve gentle exposure exercises, feeling reassured without overdoing it, and finding new ways to relate to body sensations. It’s also about reconnecting with what truly matters, even if anxiety has made that challenging. While support is helpful, remember that overcoming anxiety often requires actively facing what we tend to avoid.
ACT and CBT-Informed Approach
My approach to anxiety is guided by ACT and CBT, depending on what fits the clinical situation. ACT encourages more flexible responses to thoughts, feelings, urges, and uncertainty. CBT focuses on recognizing the patterns of interpretation, avoidance, and behavior that sustain anxiety.
For more in-depth explanations of the methods, see ACT Therapy and CBT Therapy. This page stays focused on anxiety and panic as the presenting concern.
What Sessions May Focus On
Identifying avoidance, reassurance, scanning, checking, and other safety behaviors.
Understanding panic sensations without treating every sensation as an emergency.
Building exposure or practice steps that are clinically appropriate and not reckless.
Reducing rumination, overpreparation, and repeated attempts to get certainty.
Rebuilding ordinary life choices that anxiety has been deciding for you.
How We Know Therapy Is Working
Your experience is the best way to see your progress, and standardized assessments are there to help us stay on track by confirming whether symptoms are improving as we hope.
When assessing anxiety, we typically conduct quick, standardized check-ins using the GAD-7. If panic is a major concern, we use the Panic Disorder Severity Scale (PDSS). We also pay close attention to the key signs that matter most to you—such as places you’ve revisited, safety behaviors you’ve let go of, and decisions you’ve made confidently without overthinking.
Neither replaces the other. Numbers never replace clinical judgment, and clinical judgment never ignores measurable change. Treatment decisions are never based on a score alone. Progress is measured by combining your lived experience, clinical judgment, and validated outcome measures. More on how this works: How We Know Therapy Is Working.
Frequently Asked Questions
Telehealth and Service Area
Murad Counseling PLLC provides telehealth therapy for adults located in Texas, Washington, and New Hampshire, where Felix Murad is licensed, and in Florida through out-of-state telehealth provider registration. If panic attacks are the main concern and you are in South Texas or the Rio Grande Valley, see panic disorder therapy in South Texas.
If you are comparing options, the Services page gives a broader overview of the practice. Fees and private-pay details are outlined on the Pricing page, and the Contact page explains the consultation process.
Related reading: track the short-term relief and longer-term cost of anxiety with the 7-Day Avoidance Ledger, learn how treatment targets social anxiety in Texas, or review the distinct patterns involved in emetophobia and fear of vomiting.