Relieve Anxiety and Stress

HonnolDCounseling helps overburdened professionals manage the anxiety and stress of their intense personal and professional lives:

• High Intensity: Smart, ambitious, and highly trained professionals come to Washington, D.C. to undertake work that is important, challenging and intense.  Many thrive on this intensity.  Others suffer from it.
• Great Demands:  Professional life in Washington, D.C. makes intense demands on those in politics, government and the private sector.
• Long Hours:  Members of Congress, congressional staff, judges and law clerks, senior Executive Branch officers, lawyers, lobbyists, journalists, non-profit advocates, and others active in public life in Washington often work long hours under great pressure and intense public scrutiny.
• No Room to Err:  There is no time to spare, no margin for error, no small decisions, and no forgiveness in making mistakes.

HonnolDCounseling knows that the demands of your work may cause serious distress in your personal life, your state of mind, and your behavior.  Many clients report:

• “I’m constantly overwhelmed with work.”
• “I can never do enough, and I am always falling behind.”
• “I’m terrified of making mistakes.”
• “The pressure is never-ending, even on weekends.”
• “I live and die by my BlackBerry, 24/7.”
• “I don’t have time to exercise.”
• “I don’t even know what my personal interests are any more.”
• “I have no energy or time for life outside work.”
• “I have fantasies of crawling away somewhere to hide, maybe in bed.”
• “I can’t make social plans, because I always have to cancel them.”
• “My wife has withdrawn from me.  I never see my kids.”
• “When I go home, the only thing I look forward to is taking that first drink.”
• “I seriously think of running away.”
• “My life is not my own.  I have lost all sense of meaning or purpose.”

Overburdened professionals resort to desperate measures to cope with stress:

• Curtailing personal relationships;
• Fantasizing means of “escape”;
• Releasing tension through angry outbursts;
• Procrastinating and “avoiding”;
• Surfing the Internet and playing computer games;
• Drinking, smoking, using drugs, and over-eating;
• Cheating on wives, husbands and partners;
• Over-spending;
• On-line gambling or pornography;
• Getting depressed.

Others get physically sick, in a desperate, perhaps unconscious effort to escape overwhelming demands or unresolved internal conflicts in the only way they “know.”  

HonnolDCounseling can help you to:

• Understand the source of your anxiety and stress;
• Appreciate that physical distress may be caused by emotional factors;
• Decide if you can achieve a balanced life while continuing your current work;
• Address unhappy personal relationships (for example, a failing marriage);
• Increase your exercise and improve your diet;
• Increase time spent outdoors in relieving stress;
• Develop coping skills to relieve anxiety; and
• Improve your emotional health and resilience, so that exposure to stressful demands and events become less overwhelming to you.

In a safe, respectful and confidential setting, HonnolDCounseling can help you to find the resources, strength and wisdom you need in order to live your life fully while also performing well at work.