For women who take care of everyone, hold it all together, and feel alone in the middle of it.
Therapy for High-Functioning Anxiety in Bellevue, Washington
Specialized Online Therapy in Bellevue and the Eastside, and Throughout Washington
For Women Whose Anxiety Doesn’t Look Like ANxiety
You’re the person who holds things together: the friend who reads the temperature of the room at the holiday party before anyone’s finished saying hello, the colleague who has the response email drafted before the executive has finished asking the question, and the partner who keeps a mental list of which appointments need to be moved, which forms need to be signed, and which conversations need to happen this week with which family member.
What nobody sees is what it costs you to be that person. You compose an email at 7pm and don’t send it until 11pm because you’ve been editing it all evening. You add a question mark to a text message to make it less assertive, then take it out, then put it back. By the time you’ve brushed your teeth, you’re running through tomorrow’s meeting agenda, the conversation you need to have with your mother, and what you need to bring to school for picture day.
Friday night arrives, and instead of meeting your friends for the dinner downtown that’s been on the calendar for three weeks, you’re texting at 5pm that something came up. You order takeout at 7pm. By 9pm you’re in bed with your phone face-down, because the thought of being “on” was more than you could deliver tonight.
You don’t think of yourself as struggling. The word doesn’t fit because nothing terrible is happening. You have a job you’re good at and a partner who loves you and a healthy kid and a lovely home.
What you have is a low-grade worry and stress you can’t trace to anything specific, and you’ve been telling yourself for two years that it’ll get better after the next deadline passes.
Why self-awareness Hasn’t made you less anxious
This started before you had words for it.
You were the easy kid because the alternative was being a problem, and you understood early that being a problem made the household harder for everyone. You learned how to read your dad’s mood from the way he sat down at the table, how to pre-empt your mom by clearing your plate before she asked, and how to keep the peace by becoming the person nobody needed to worry about.
And that’s still your job. Your boss schedules a one-on-one and labels it “sync,” and you spend the afternoon mentally drafting the conversation in a dozen directions. Your partner says “we should talk later” and you can’t focus on anything until you’ve thought through every possibility. Your kid comes home from school and slams the door, and you spend a half hour trying to figure out what happened before you ask. You see yourself doing it and you can’t make it stop.
That’s the limit of traditional talk therapy. You can name the feeling, articulate where it came from, and walk out of a session more clear than when you walked in. And yet, none of that understanding has stopped an afternoon meeting from putting a knot in your stomach.
Understanding is happening in your mind, and the reaction is happening in your body. That’s why we work directly with your body.
Learn more about how I treat high-functioning anxiety.
How specialized therapy for high-functioning anxiety Can Help
You can speak up in a meeting without paying for it for hours afterward.
You can push back on a deadline without losing two hours of your evening rehearsing it afterward. You can disagree with your boss in real time, not in a polished follow-up email at 11pm. You stop trying to perfect every comment before you make it, because being slightly wrong no longer costs you your evening. The mental energy you used to spend reviewing yourself starts going into your work, and into the evening hours you used to spend recovering from the day.
Being around your family stops feeling like a second job.
You can walk into your kitchen and not scan your partner’s face within ten seconds of seeing them. Dinner stops being a project where you make sure everyone had a good day and feels heard before you eat. You can sit at a friend’s birthday and not run silent commentary on whether she’s having fun, whether her husband’s annoyed, or whether the woman to your left thinks you’re talking too much. The energy that used to go into reading every room comes back, and you start wanting to see people on a Friday instead of recovering from them on a Saturday.
You can take a day off without needing to be sick first.
You stop needing an emergency to take a break. You take Wednesday off and you don’t text your boss a paragraph explaining why. You go to bed at 8 and you don’t list to your partner the reasons it’s a reasonable choice. The fantasy of getting sick enough to be allowed to stop comes less often. You start using your sick days for being tired, not just for being contagious.
How I work with high-functioning anxiety
I use somatic therapy and art therapy with my clients because your mind doesn’t calm through more thinking.
The way your jaw locks up when you sleep, the way your shoulders climb when your partner texts “we should talk,” and the way you forget to breathe during a quarterly review are reactions your body has had by the time you’re aware of them.
We work with your body and nervous system because that’s where the anxious reactions come from.
Serving Bellevue and all of the Eastside
I work with women across the Seattle Eastside, including Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Sammamish, Issaquah, Mercer Island, Newcastle, Bothell, Woodinville, and Renton.
All sessions are online by secure video, so wherever you are in Washington, you can meet with me from home.
Online therapy for high-functioning anxiety in Bellevue, Washington
Sessions are online via secure video. You’ll need a private space and a device with a camera. Most of my clients do sessions from their home office, bedroom, or car.
We meet weekly to start. The kind of anxiety you’re experiencing has been there for years, and it needs consistent work to change. Weekly sessions give us momentum. Most clients move to biweekly after a few months as they start feeling better.
Sessions are $250 for 55 minutes. I also offer 90-minute sessions ($375) and longer therapy intensives for deeper, more concentrated work. I don’t bill insurance directly, but I provide Superbills you can submit for potential out-of-network reimbursement. (Many PPO plans reimburse 50–80% of out-of-network therapy costs. I recommending checking your specific plan to verify.)
Jeniffer Duncan, LPC, LMHC, LAT, ATR
I’ve been a therapist for 18 years. I’m a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in Washington and a Licensed and Registered Art Therapist.
Working with art and with your body skips past the part of you that’s been managing every interaction. It works directly with your body’s and nervous system’s reactions, and that’s where long-term change and healing happen.
Jeniffer Duncan, Washington LMHC (License #MHC.LH.61685622)
You’ve been holding it together for everyone else long enough.
If you’re ready to start, you can book your first session through the scheduling link below. Clicking the link will take you to my HIPAA-compliant calendar where you can request a date and time for your intake session. Once I approve the intake session, I will send you your new client forms via email for you to review and digitally sign.
If you have questions first, please contact me using the contact form below, and I’ll be in touch within 1-2 business days.
Let’s Get Started
Contact Me
Complete this form and I’ll be back in touch via email, text, or phone within 1-2 business days.
Call or Text
503-974-4140
jduncanlpc@gmail.com
MAILING ADDRESS (Services are conducted 100% online)
4207 SE Woodstock Blvd. #398 Portland, OR 97206
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You need to be physically located in Oregon or Washington at the time of our session. I’m licensed in both states, so if you travel between them for work, we can still meet.
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For the kind of work I do, yes. Research consistently shows that online therapy produces comparable outcomes to in-person sessions for anxiety treatment. And there’s an advantage specific to somatic and art therapy: you’re in your own space, which means we’re working with your body in the environment where your anxiety actually shows up, not in a clinical office where you might unconsciously shift into “therapy mode.”
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I’m not in-network with any insurance company, but I provide Superbills that you can submit for out-of-network reimbursement. Many Oregon plans offer meaningful reimbursement for out-of-network mental health services. It’s worth a five-minute call to your insurance company to ask about your out-of-network mental health benefits.
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I use somatic therapy and art therapy with my clients.
If your previous therapy was primarily talk-based, you probably did what you do in every other room: explained the problem clearly, analyzed it thoroughly, and left understanding yourself better without the physical experience of anxiety changing at all. I work differently. We go deeper than the understanding.