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 Seattle, Washington
Specialized Online Therapy in Seattle and Throughout Washington
The anxiety nobody around you can see
You’re the one everyone leans on. The friend who organizes the dinner reservation and keeps track of who’s vegan, who’s pregnant, and who’s not speaking to whom, the colleague who spots the error in the spreadsheet before it goes to the executive review, and the partner who scheduled the pediatrician, signed the school forms, and noticed your kid was too quiet at breakfast before anyone said a word.
What nobody sees is what it costs you to be that person. You add “just to confirm” and a smiley face to a Slack message before sending so it doesn’t read as cold. You send a “just circling back” email at 4pm because she hasn’t responded to your morning message, and then spend the next hour wondering if that came across as nagging.
By the time you close your laptop, your shoulders are higher than they were when you sat down, and you’re running through tomorrow’s project review before you’ve made it to the kitchen.
Friday night arrives, and instead of going to the work happy hour at the place in Ballard that everyone said you should try, you’re at home with takeout, half-watching Law and Order, because the thought of being interesting and conversational for two more hours is not something you can produce.
Your partner asks how you are, and you say “tired,” because explaining the rest would mean unpacking a laundry list of complaints, and you’ve decided to do that later.
You stopped telling your friends what was hard months ago, because their lives looked harder than yours and you didn’t want to be the friend who couldn’t handle her ideal life.
Now the not-telling gets heavier every month you don’t tell anyone.
Why self-awareness Hasn’t made you less anxious
This started before you knew it was a thing. You were the kid who could tell from across the room when your mom was about to lose her patience, and you’d find a way to redirect things before it happened. By age 11 you were the person your friends called when their parents were fighting. You got better at it, and it took more out of you, and at some point, you stopped thinking of it as a skill at all.
You’ve never stopped doing it. Your boss gives feedback on a project, and you spend three days running through whether it meant what you think it meant. A friend leaves your text on read for six hours and you cycle through every word you sent her, looking for the one that came across wrong. Your partner sighs once at dinner and you spend the rest of the night running back through the day to figure out what you did to cause it.
You can see all of it happening, but seeing doesn’t slow it down.
That’s the limit of talk therapy. You can go to therapy, read the books, and work through what your parents did or didn’t do, and how it all explains why you do what you do. And yet, none of it has stopped the next 9pm phone buzz from your boss from putting your stomach in your throat.
Understanding doesn’t change what your body is doing without your permission. That’s why we work with your body directly.
Learn more about how I treat high-functioning anxiety.
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.
You can disappoint someone without spending the rest of the day fixing it.
Saying no stops triggering the next-day spiral. You can decline a project at 2pm and not send a follow-up email at 11pm offering to do half of it anyway. You disappoint your sister and don’t spend Sunday afternoon writing her a long apology in your head. The yeses you say start being honest because they aren’t covering for the noes you couldn’t say. Your week stops being a list of half-commitments you’re running behind on.
You finish the workday with energy left for your own life.
The monitoring of your tone, the scanning of the room, and the talking yourself down from a spike used to take as much out of you as the job itself. Now you can be in a meeting and not run a parallel commentary on how you sound the whole time. You leave work at 5 with the energy you had at 9. The hours that used to go into managing yourself go into the people in your house, the friends you’ve been canceling on, and the book that’s been on your nightstand for four months.
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 chest goes tight when your boss’s calendar invite shows up, the way your stomach knots before every performance review, and the tension that’s been in your shoulders since Sunday night are responses your body makes before you can think them through.
We work with your body and nervous system because that’s where the anxious reactions come from.
Serving the broader Seattle Area
I work with women throughout the Seattle area, including Seattle, Capitol Hill, Queen Anne, Ballard, Fremont, West Seattle, Wallingford, Shoreline, Edmonds, and Burien.
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 Seattle, 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.