FEATURED IN:
//Where calm becomes possible again//
When Your Mind Never Rests, Even When You’re Doing Well
You get things done. You hold it together. Maybe you’re the reliable one, the high achiever, the person others count on.
But even when everything looks fine, your mind doesn’t quiet down. You replay conversations. You worry something will go wrong. Your body stays tense, your chest feels heavy, and rest never feels fully earned.
Even when no one else notices, it can still feel overwhelming inside.
How Anxiety Can Show Up
-
You replay what you said and worry you sounded wrong
-
Your body feels tense, wired, or unable to settle
-
You struggle to relax unless everything is done perfectly
-
You lie in bed thinking about unfinished tasks or future problems
-
You’re afraid of falling behind or letting people down
-
You compare yourself often and still feel behind
-
You function well but still feel anxious most of the time
You might also notice it in your body:
-
A constant sense of tension or tightness
-
Feeling wired, restless, or unable to fully relax
-
Trouble falling or staying asleep
-
Sweating, racing heart or shallow breathing
-
Muscle tension, especially in your shoulders, jaw, or chest
-
Digestive issues or a “knotted” feeling in your stomach
-
Feeling on edge even when nothing is wrong
Why Anxiety Feels This Way and How Therapy Helps
Anxiety often begins as protection. Maybe being responsible kept things calm. Maybe staying quiet avoided conflict. Maybe being perfect felt safer than making mistakes. Over time, your mind and body learned to stay on alert, even when nothing is going wrong. That constant state can feel familiar, but it is also tiring.
Therapy helps you understand where that pressure comes from and how it shows up in your body and thoughts. Together we focus on helping your nervous system settle, easing the inner critic, and working through the experiences that taught you to stay in survival mode.
The goal is to feel more steady, more connected to yourself, and able to move forward without anxiety running everything in the background.
When Anxiety Turns into Panic
-
Panic can feel sudden and intensely physical. Your heart races, your breathing changes, your chest tightens, or you feel dizzy, disconnected, or afraid that something is seriously wrong. Afterward, you may begin worrying about when the next panic attack will happen or avoiding places and situations where you fear feeling trapped or overwhelmed.
-
Therapy for panic focuses on understanding your body's alarm response, reducing fear around the sensations themselves, identifying patterns that keep the panic cycle going, and addressing experiences or triggers that may be contributing to it.
Step Into Healing
What Makes This Approach Different
-
Our work looks at the patterns underneath your anxiety, including what happens in your thoughts, emotions, body, relationships, and expectations of yourself.
-
I integrate EMDR, art therapy, somatic therapy, and insight-based psychotherapy based on your needs, history, and goals.
-
Sessions are active, individualized, and focused on helping you build greater emotional regulation, flexibility, self-trust, and confidence in your everyday life.
What We Work On Together
✔ Understanding the patterns that keep anxiety going
✔ Softening the inner critic and building self-compassion
✔ Regulating the nervous system so your body can settle
✔ Using EMDR to process past experiences that fuel anxiety
✔ Using art therapy when words are not enough
✔ Learning rest, boundaries, and emotional awareness without guilt
✔ Defining success in a way that includes your well-being
What Becomes Possible
You stop avoiding the situations, conversations, or decisions that used to feel too overwhelming.
You show up with more confidence in your day to day, without second-guessing everything after.
You’re able to stay present instead of getting pulled into spiraling thoughts or shutting down.
Your body feels calmer, not constantly on edge or bracing for what’s next.
You move toward challenges instead of trying to manage or work around them.
You start to experience more clarity in your decisions and more direction in your life.
Your relationships feel more grounded, and you’re able to show up more fully in them.
Work, pressure, and responsibility feel more manageable without the same level of tension behind it.
And at some point, you realize you know what it feels like to be calm, not just in moments, but more consistently.
Therapy that helps you process, heal, and move forward.”
Hi! I'm Attiya Awadallah, LCAT, ATR-BC, founder of Lenora: Art Therapy and Counseling. I'm a licensed and board-certified psychotherapist providing virtual therapy for adults throughout New York, specializing in anxiety, panic, trauma, complex trauma, EMDR therapy, somatic therapy, and art therapy. Many of the people I work with feel emotionally overwhelmed, burned out, stuck in survival mode, disconnected from themselves, or frustrated that years of talk therapy haven't created the lasting change they were hoping for.
My approach is active, personalized, and grounded in evidence-based and experiential psychotherapy. I integrate EMDR, somatic therapy, art therapy, mindfulness-based approaches, and other evidence-based therapies to help clients process difficult experiences, shift long-standing emotional patterns, strengthen emotional regulation, and create meaningful, lasting change that extends beyond the therapy session.
With more than 10 years of clinical experience across inpatient, outpatient, addiction treatment, and community mental health settings, I bring a broad understanding of anxiety, trauma, and nervous system healing to my work. In addition to weekly therapy, I also offer EMDR intensives and virtual psychotherapy services for adults throughout New York.
