Anxiety Therapy in Salt Lake City, Utah
Stop Letting Anxiety Decide How You Live
You deserve more than a life spent managing fear. You deserve the freedom to actually live.
Maybe you've spent years overthinking every decision, worrying about what others think, or imagining everything that could go wrong.
You might be successful on the outside but privately exhausted from trying to keep everything under control.
Perhaps anxiety has become so familiar that you barely recognize how much it's influencing your choices, relationships, career, and dreams.
You know there's more to life than this. More freedom. More connection. More possibility.
But every time you try to move forward, fear seems to pull you back.
What if anxiety didn't have to be in charge anymore?
I'm Alex Runolfson, a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor in Salt Lake City, Utah. I help people understand and work through anxiety so they can stop organizing their lives around fear and start creating lives that feel authentic, meaningful, and fulfilling.
Anxiety Doesn't Just Affect How You Feel. It Affects Who You Become.
ANXIETY CAN BE SNEAKY
Sometimes it's obvious: racing thoughts, panic attacks, a pounding heart, or that constant feeling that something terrible is about to happen.
Other times, anxiety disguises itself as responsibility, ambition, perfectionism, or simply being a "high-functioning" person.
You might recognize yourself in these patterns:
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Overthinking: You analyze every possible outcome until making a decision feels impossible.
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Perfectionism: Nothing you accomplish ever feels quite good enough.
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People-pleasing: You prioritize everyone else's comfort while abandoning your own needs.
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Avoidance: You put off difficult conversations, opportunities, or dreams because failure or rejection feels unbearable.
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Constant vigilance: Even when everything is going well, you struggle to relax or trust that things will stay that way.
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Self-doubt: You question your abilities, instincts, and worth, even when there's evidence that you're capable.
Over time, anxiety can quietly shrink your world.
You don't apply for the promotion. You don't start the business. You don't express what you really want. You stay in relationships or situations you've outgrown.
Not because you lack courage, intelligence, or potential.
Because somewhere along the way, your mind and body learned that staying safe was more important than taking risks.
Anxiety may have helped you survive. But it doesn't have to determine your future.
My Approach to Anxiety Therapy:
Beyond Coping, Toward Freedom
I believe anxiety therapy should do more than teach you how to "calm down".
Don't get me wrong. Learning to regulate your nervous system, manage overwhelming thoughts, and feel safer in your body is important.
But I also want to understand what's underneath your anxiety and how it may be keeping you from living the life you want.
Sometimes anxiety is connected to unresolved trauma, old survival patterns, perfectionism, or the belief that you have to earn your worth.
Sometimes it's the fear of being seen, disappointing others, losing control, or stepping into a life that's bigger than the one you've known.
Rather than simply asking, "How do we make this anxiety go away?" We also explore, "What is this anxiety protecting?" "What might become possible if you no longer needed that protection in the same way?", and "What is anxiety trying to teach me?"
My approach integrates several powerful therapeutic methods:
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EMDR Therapy: Helps process distressing experiences and memories that may be contributing to persistent anxiety, fear, and negative beliefs.
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Somatic Therapy: Explores how anxiety shows up in your body while building greater awareness, regulation, and capacity to respond differently.
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Internal Family Systems (IFS)-Informed Parts Work: Helps you understand the protective parts of yourself that worry, criticize, control, or anticipate danger.
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Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): Helps you build psychological flexibility so anxiety doesn't have to prevent you from taking meaningful action.
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Mindfulness and Hypnotherapy-Informed Practices: Support self-awareness, relaxation, and exploration of patterns that may operate outside conscious awareness.
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Shamanic Psychotherapy: Through guided journeys, ritual, and spiritual exploration, we uncover deeper sources of anxiety, reconnect with your inner wisdom, and cultivate a greater sense of safety, belonging, and trust in yourself. These practices can help you move beyond fear and reclaim the confidence to live more authentically.
When meaningful to you, we can also incorporate spiritual exploration, personal ritual, and practices that reconnect you with your values, intuition, and sense of belonging.
This isn't about forcing yourself to think positively or eliminating every uncomfortable emotion.
It's about changing your relationship with anxiety, addressing deeper patterns when appropriate, and discovering that you have more choices than fear would have you believe.
I don't just want to just help you worry less. I want to help you trust yourself more.
Imagine What Could Change When Anxiety Stops Running Your Life
What would happen if you didn't have to consult your fear before every important decision?
Imagine:
Making decisions with confidence. Instead of endlessly analyzing possibilities, you learn to trust yourself and move forward even when the outcome is uncertain.
Building healthier relationships. You express your needs, establish boundaries, and allow yourself to be seen without constantly fearing rejection.
Pursuing opportunities you've been avoiding. You begin taking meaningful steps toward the career, creative project, business, or life you've been imagining.
Feeling more at home in your body. You develop a greater capacity to recognize stress, respond to anxiety, and experience moments of genuine rest.
Letting go of impossible standards. You discover that your worth isn't dependent on productivity, perfection, or keeping everyone happy.
Living more authentically. You make choices based on your values, desires, and personal wisdom rather than constantly trying to prevent something bad from happening.
These changes don't happen overnight, and everyone's healing process looks different.
Therapy can help you move toward a life where anxiety is something you experience, not something that defines you.
You don't need to become fearless. You need the freedom to live even when fear occasionally shows up.
Anxiety, Trauma, and the Patterns That Keep You Stuck
Not all anxiety comes from trauma. But for many people, past experiences play an important role in how they respond to the present.
Growing up around criticism, unpredictability, conflict, emotional neglect, or unrealistic expectations can teach you that the world isn't entirely safe.
You may have learned to anticipate everyone's needs, avoid mistakes, stay invisible, or achieve constantly to feel accepted.
Those strategies may once have helped you navigate difficult situations.
Today, they might be keeping you exhausted, disconnected, or afraid to take up space.
Through trauma-informed anxiety therapy, we can explore these experiences without assuming that every anxious response has a hidden traumatic origin.
The goal isn't to spend forever analyzing your past.
It's to understand what you've carried forward, work through what remains unresolved, and create more freedom in your present and future.
Anxiety Therapy That Honors ALL of Who You Are
I don't see you as a diagnosis or a collection of symptoms.
You're a whole person with a history, a body, relationships, values, dreams, and a unique way of experiencing the world.
As a therapist who integrates evidence-based psychology with somatic and psychospiritual approaches, I make room for all of those dimensions.
Whether you're a creative, entrepreneur, healer, professional, or someone simply tired of living in survival mode, our work is centered on helping you reconnect with yourself.
My philosophy is simple: You have something valuable to bring into this world.
Anxiety shouldn't be the reason you never get to share it.
Frequently Asked Questions About Anxiety Therapy
Yes. Long-standing anxiety patterns can change. Even if you've always considered yourself an anxious person, approaches such as EMDR, ACT, and somatic therapy may help you develop new ways of responding to fear, uncertainty, and stress.
I combine practical coping skills with deeper exploration of trauma, protective patterns, nervous-system responses, identity, and personal meaning. Rather than focusing exclusively on reducing symptoms, we also explore how anxiety has limited your life and help you move toward what matters most.
Yes. I offer in-person anxiety therapy in Salt Lake City and secure online therapy for clients located throughout Utah.
Your Life Is Too Important to Let Anxiety Make All the Decisions
You've spent enough time wondering what might go wrong.
What about everything that could go right?
What about the relationships you could deepen, the opportunities you could pursue, the boundaries you could establish, and the dreams you could finally begin bringing to life?
You don't have to eliminate anxiety before taking those steps.
And you don't have to figure everything out alone.
Let's work toward a life guided by your values, your wisdom, and your possibilities—not just your fears.
In-person anxiety therapy in Salt Lake City, Utah, and online throughout Utah.