Feel calmer, clearer, and less consumed by anxiety
Anxiety Therapy for High-Functioning Adults Across Oregon
I’m Stephanie Schaefer, Psy.D., a licensed psychologist who helps high-functioning adults navigate anxiety, overwhelm, perfectionism, and chronic stress. I provide online therapy to clients throughout Portland and across Oregon.
Does it feel like you’re stuck in anxiety mode all the time?
Is your mind constantly running through the mountain of tasks you need to complete, trying to remember what you might be forgetting, or preparing for every possible scenario before it even happens?
You might find yourself:
- Replaying conversations, emails, or interactions and wishing you had handled them differently
- Struggling to fall asleep–or waking up early with anxious thoughts already crowding your mind
- Feeling guilty when you try to rest, but never truly relaxing
- Over-preparing because it feels safer to expect the worst
- Procrastinating tasks that seem overwhelming, only to realize afterward they weren’t as bad as you imagined
- Constantly feeling behind no matter how much you accomplish in a day
From the outside looking in, people see you as organized, capable, and dependable. They think you “have it all together.” Internally, your nervous system feels like it never fully powers down.
Over time, living in a constant state of anxiety and overwhelm can start affecting every part of your life. You might feel more irritable with your family, disconnected from your partner or your friends, or too drained to maintain your relationships the way you want to. Even when you finally have time for yourself, it feels impossible to truly relax or enjoy it.
Your world can start to shrink as more and more of your energy is sapped by managing anxiety, and avoiding overwhelm. Maybe you’ve reached the point where you’re thinking:
I can’t keep living this way.
Anxiety therapy can help you stop out of constant survival mode
Right now, you might feel like your mind never shuts off–even when everything around you seems “fine.” Your brain is constantly scanning for problems, planning ahead, anticipating what could go wrong, organizing, remembering, and preparing.
Anxiety therapy can help you understand why anxiety keeps pulling you into overthinking, urgency, and mental overload.
Together, we’ll work to better understand the patterns driving your anxiety while also building practical tools for responding differently to stress, uncertainty, and mental overload.
Therapy can help you:
- Challenge anxious thought patterns
- Stop treating everyday situations as emergencies
- Respond to stress without spiraling into worst-case scenarios
- Feel more present in your relationships and daily life
- Experience deeper, more restorative rest
- Trust yourself without endless second-guessing
- Create more space for calm, joy, and flexibility
- Feel less consumed by pressure
The goal isn’t to become someone who never experiences stress or anxiety.
The goal is to learn how to move through moments of stress and anxiety with more self-trust, flexibility, and intention.
How We Get There
Many people with anxiety have learned how to put on a mask so the rest of the world doesn’t see how much distress they’re actually carrying.
Because of this mask, people often assume you’re doing just fine.
In therapy, we’ll look beyond the mask and explore the deeper patterns that are keeping you stuck in a constant state of worry, vigilance, and overwhelm.
Some of these patterns might include:
- Perfectionism
- Fear of letting others down
- Worst-case-scenario thinking
- Chronic over-responsibility
- Difficulty slowing down or allowing your body to truly rest
- Unhelpful beliefs and thought patterns
My approach is collaborative, grounded, and practical.
I want therapy to feel like a space where you no longer have to perform competence or hold everything together. A space where you can begin understanding what’s happening underneath the anxiety and overwhelm–and start responding to your thoughts, feelings, and needs with more clarity, compassion, and flexibility.
Therapy for anxiety and overwhelm can help you…
- Identify the patterns that keep you trapped in a cycle of overthinking and overpreparing
- Understand what’s driving your sense of constant urgency or that there’s “never enough time”
- Interrupt your worst-case-scenario thought spirals before they take over your life
- Set realistic expectations for yourself that don’t default to perfectionism
- Improve your relationship with rest while turning down the volume on feelings of guilt and mental noise
- Learn how to be present in the moment rather than constantly anticipating what the future might hold
- Trust your decisions without needing to review or second-guess them over and over again
The goal isn’t to eliminate your superpowers of capacity, ambition, or awareness.
The goal is to help you stop turning them into nervous system kryptonite.
You don’t have to keep living in constant anxiety mode.
Online Therapy for Anxiety Throughout Oregon
I provide online therapy for adults across Oregon who are struggling with anxiety, chronic overthinking, overwhelm, and the constant pressure of feeling like they can never fully relax or catch up. Whether you’re dealing with racing thoughts, difficulty sleeping, or a nervous system that never fully powers down, therapy can help you understand what’s driving your anxiety and build practical tools for responding differently. Sessions are conducted online, allowing adults throughout Portland and across Oregon to access support from wherever they are.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Am I overthinking, or is there actually something to worry about?
A: This is one of the most common experiences with anxiety–feeling unsure whether your thoughts are “valid enough” to act on.
If you’re asking this question a lot, you’re likely dealing with overthinking.
What matters most isn’t whether the worry is logical–it’s whether it’s affecting your life.
If your anxiety is impacting:
- Your daily functioning
- How you feel in your body and mind
- Your willingness to try things or move forward
Then it’s worth addressing it–regardless of whether the worry “makes sense” on paper.
Often, your brain is trying to protect you by problem-solving endlessly. The problem is that it keeps you stuck in the process instead of the solution.
Q: Will therapy help if my life is actually objectively overwhelming?
A: Absolutely.
Therapy won’t remove the demands in your life, but it can change how you carry them.
Instead of trying to hold everything alone, therapy helps you:
- Prioritize what needs your energy and attention most
- Shift how you respond to moments of overwhelm
- Feel more grounded and in control, even when life is genuinely demanding
The goal isn’t to make your life smaller–it’s to make it more manageable.
Q: What does therapy for anxiety and overwhelm actually look like?
A: This is a collaborative process where we look closely at how anxiety operates in your life–what triggers it, what patterns keep it going, and what beliefs fuel it.
We’ll identify specific thoughts and behaviors that are feeding your anxiety, and I’ll teach you practical coping strategies tailored to your real life–not just ideas that sound good in theory.
Therapy will be a warm, supportive, judgment-free space, and it’s also active work.
You’ll learn how to:
- Notice and shift unhelpful thinking patterns
- Stay more present instead of getting pulled into worry loops
- Build a toolkit you can actually use when anxiety shows up
Over time, many people notice real shifts in how much space anxiety takes up in their day-to-day life.
Q: I don’t have time for therapy–isn’t that ironic?
A: I hear you! You have a full and busy life, and time is limited.
Here’s the reality: anxiety is already stealing more of your time than you realize.
Hours spent spiraling replaying conversations, losing sleep, or trying to mentally solve things you can’t control add up quickly.
Therapy helps you get some of that time and energy back by working through your anxiety and overwhelm in a more efficient and effective manner.
Over time, you may notice:
- Less time spent on rumination and mental loops
- Fewer physical stress effects
- More time and space for what matters most to you
Q: Can anxiety get better, or is this just who I am?
A: You’ve received the message–directly or indirectly–that you’re “just an anxious person.”
That doesn’t have to define you.
With the right support, you can learn how to:
- Understand what drives your anxiety
- Regulate your nervous system when it spikes
- Step out of constant fight-or-flight mode
- Experience more peace of mind
Anxiety may show up sometimes–and it doesn’t have to run the show.
Q: Will I have to give up being a high-achiever to manage my anxiety?
A: Definitely not, though it’s a common fear. You might need to shift how you achieve.
In fact, many high-achievers find that when their anxiety decreases, their performance actually improves.
You don’t lose ambition–you gain more clarity, focus, and sustainability.
Over time, you may also start to notice which parts of your definition of success are actually yours–and which versions of success you’ve been chasing that were never actually yours to begin with.
You get to:
- Keep your drive and ambition
- Feel less internal pressure
- Pursue your ambitions in a way that feels more sustainable