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 Portland, Oregon
Online in Portland, Oregon
For Women Whose anxiety Doesn’t Look Like Anxiety on the Outside
You’re the friend who shows up the day after surgery with soup and a folder of paperwork, the colleague who catches the typo in the proposal before it goes to the client, and the partner who has booked the appointment, packed the lunches, and noticed something’s off with your kid before anyone else has said a word.
What nobody sees is what it costs you to be that person. You re-read your reply to your boss after you’ve hit send, checking whether “will do” sounded too curt. You draft and redraft a Slack message to a coworker for twelve minutes before sending it, and then you re-read it after she’s seen it. Your jaw is tight by the time you’ve poured your second coffee, and you’re rehearsing the 10am meeting before it’s started.
Saturday night arrives, and instead of meeting friends for dinner and drinks in downtown Portland, you’re in your sweatpants at 8pm with a bowl of cereal, because the thought of being “on” for two more hours is more than you can handle.
Your partner asks how you’re feeling, and you say “fine,” because explaining the real answer would mean explaining the past six months, and you don’t have the words for it.
You’ve stopped telling people you’re struggling because you can’t say it without sounding ungrateful. Everyone tells you they don’t know how you do it. The truth is you’re barely holding it together and saying that out loud would turn a compliment into something your loved ones would have to manage.
Why self-awareness Hasn’t made you less anxious
This goes back to before you can remember it being a choice. By the time you were eight, you could tell from the way the front door closed what kind of evening it would be. You learned that the safest position in the family was the helpful one, that being needed kept things from escalating, and that anticipating a problem was easier than weathering it. By the time you got to high school it wasn’t a strategy anymore, it was just who you were.
You still do this.
Your boss schedules a one-on-one and gives no agenda, and you spend the next eighteen hours running through everything you might have done wrong in the last month.
A colleague stops responding to your Slack thread, and you start rehearsing the apology you’ll send if she’s annoyed.
Your mother texts “we need to talk” and your stomach is in your throat before you’ve thought about what it might be about.
You know exactly what’s happening when it’s happening, and yet knowing doesn’t help.
That’s the limit of traditional talk therapy. You can know the anxiety cycle by heart, and you can name where it came from, what triggers it, and how it plays out in your week. Still, none of that has stopped your hands from going sweaty before you’ve finished reading the email or your shoulders from going up before the meeting has started.
Understanding happens in your mind, but the reaction happens in your body. That’s why we work with your body.
Learn more about my approach to treating high-functioning anxiety here.
How specialized therapy for high-functioning anxiety Can Help
You can stop working without feeling like you’re getting away with something.
Resting stops feeling indulgent. You can sit on the couch on a Saturday afternoon and not list everything you should be doing instead, you can let the kitchen be messy, and you can let the emails wait until Monday. You start falling asleep without running through Monday in your head. Monday morning doesn’t start with the feeling that you should have done more on Sunday.
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 feel proud of what you did before chasing what’s next.
You finish a project and you let yourself be proud of it for the rest of the week, not just for the fifteen minutes it takes to update your resume. You stop needing the next promotion or the next contract or the next title to remind yourself you’re good at your work. The accomplishments that used to evaporate the second they happened start to accumulate into evidence you can lean on when something hard comes up next.
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 headache that arrives by 2pm, the way your breath catches when your boss’s name shows up in your inbox, and the knot in your stomach before every parent-teacher conference are responses your body makes before you can think your way out of them.
We work with your body and nervous system because that’s where the anxious reactions come from.
Serving the broader Portland area
I work with women across the Portland metro, including Portland, Tigard, Hillsboro, West Linn, Lake Oswego, Beaverton, Gresham, Milwaukie, Tualatin, and Sherwood.
All sessions are online by secure video, so wherever you are in Oregon, you can meet with me from home.
Online therapy for high-functioning anxiety in Portland, Oregon
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 Oregon PPO plans, including Providence, Moda, and PacificSource, often 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 Professional Counselor in Oregon 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, and that’s where long-term healing and change happen.
I’m based in Portland and see clients throughout Oregon online.
Jeniffer Duncan, Oregon Licensed Professional Counselor (License #C3022)
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.