Therapy for Family and Relationship Anxiety
For Brown Girls who are afraid to disappoint their parents.
Who are afraid to get closer to mom because they know the questions will follow. “When are you getting married?”, “When are you having kids?”, “Will you try for another?”. The questions never stop!
Your anxiety is proof of how much you care about your parents, but you deserve to live a life motivated by desire, not fear. You don’t have to perform roles to keep yourself safe.
For Brown Girls who get anxious around their parents.
What is relationship anxiety?
Relationship anxiety is the fear, nervousness, panic, and tension that come from your interactions with people. These people might be your parents, family, or cultural community, and can even extend to colleagues, romantic partners, and friends.
Relationship anxiety can indicate your attachment style. Perhaps you’re anxiously attached, and fear losing people. Perhaps you’re avoidant, and protect yourself from getting too close to be hurt. Perhaps you’re a mix of both. Cultural expectations around career, marriage, and children can impact how you approach problems with your parents and family. But you don’t have to earn your place in the family to be worthy of love.
Who I am
Hi, I’m Tracy and I’m The Bad Indian Therapist.
I’m a licensed therapist in New York, New Jersey, and California.
I work with Brown women like you who struggle with anxiety and self-abandonment in their relationships! Through culturally competent and evidence-based therapy, I help you stop letting your relationship anxiety keep your from embracing your desires!
What Makes me Different
Unlike most Brown therapists, I have experience providing family therapy to immigrant parents and their children. I helped immigrant families resolve conflict in real time, in their homes! While I no longer practice family therapy, I use these skills to help you go deeper and navigate relationship anxiety with your family. I won’t tell you to, “Just talk to your parents” or “Cut your parents off” either.
Relationship anxiety is so much more than just you and your relationships. It’s about how you feel about yourself, your worthiness, and the love you deserve.
What I offer
For Brown women, relationship anxiety stems from performing tired roles to stay safe, but are they really keeping you safe? Here’s my process for approaching relationship anxiety:
Joining: I meet you where you’re at to help cultivate safety in our therapeutic relationship and build trust.
Narrate your story: Here, we get a good, no-holds-back, nonjudgemental understanding of your perspective on your relationships.
Identify toxic scripts: Then, we highlight and challenge underlying beliefs about roles you performed to feel worthy of love.
Ground and observe: We gently observe when anxiety arises and practice mindfulness skills to help your ground yourself during triggers.
Gently confront, not avoid: This is where we do things differently, and learn the tools to approach your family relationships in a new way.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions about how I approach family and relationship anxiety:
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There’s a difference between your anxiety and your intuition. Your anxiety is the fear of the worst outcome and may not always be right. Your intuition is that part of you that knows what’s going to happen and is usually right. For Brown women, anxiety and intuition are blurred and it’s hard to know where anxiety begins and intuition ends. Together, we can sparse out both.
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Relationship anxiety doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Together, you and I will identify common themes in your relationships, and then we’ll work on those themes together. We’ll challenge self-defeating beliefs in relationships, and gently observe and confront uncomfortable truths. I use a combination of CBT, ACT, and Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) therapy to help you find what works for you.
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Not necessarily, though that may be the conclusion you draw towards the end of our work together. Not everyone’s relationship with their parents is the same. I understand that talking to your parents doesn’t always solve your problems, and it’s so much deeper than that. We’ll get to the root first before we tackle these problems. Talking to your parents isn’t always the goal.
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Anxiety is a normal emotional state to have. I can’t promise that anxiety will “go away” entirely, but together, we can lessen its intensity and how much it rules your life.
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Together, we’ll determine how much of your relationship anxiety is just anxiety, and how much of it stems from abandonment and betrayal trauma. We’ll explore your attachment style and how these wounds impact your beliefs about yourself in relationship to others. I also offer trauma-informed therapy. Learn more.
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While I have experience in family therapy, I do not offer family therapy at this time. Currently, I offer individual therapy for Brown women working through relationship anxiety, but I may refer you to couples counseling or family therapists if needed.
Stop hiding yourself to be loved!
Start embracing the nuances of your relationships. Book a call to get started today.