When most people think of anxiety, they picture racing thoughts or constant worrying.

But here’s the surprising truth: your body often reacts before your mind even realizes you’re anxious.

As a Registered Psychologist based in Coquitlam, I see this quite often.

Clients describe pounding hearts, tense shoulders, sweaty palms, stomach issues, and a variety of other physical symptoms often before they can even put words to what’s happening.

This isn’t weakness or “overreacting.” It’s your nervous system doing exactly what it’s designed to do: protect you.

In this post, we’ll explore how the nervous system drives anxiety, why these reactions can sometimes feel “stuck,” and how therapy can help you retrain your system for calm, resilience, and balance.

Understanding Anxiety and the Nervous System

Your nervous system is your body’s communication network. It has two main parts:

• Central Nervous System (CNS): Your brain and spinal cord.
• Peripheral Nervous System (PNS): The nerves that connect your brain to the rest of your body.

Within the PNS is the autonomic nervous system, which runs automatic functions like breathing, digestion, and heart rate. It has two branches:

• Sympathetic Nervous System: Activates when you sense danger — triggering the fight, flight, or freeze response. Your heart races, breathing quickens, and muscles tense to prepare you for action.
• Parasympathetic Nervous System: Helps your body relax, recover, and return to balance once the threat has passed.

Anxiety often shows up when the sympathetic system gets stuck “on.” This can be triggered in a number of ways such as past trauma, a high stress job or financial struggles. 

Instead of your sympathetic nervous system protecting you, it keeps you in constant overdrive — tense, restless, and exhausted.

Why the Body Reacts Before the Mind

Your nervous system is designed to prioritize survival, which means it reacts much faster than your logical brain. In fact, your body can shift into fight, flight, or freeze mode in a fraction of a second — long before you have time to think about what’s happening. This is why many people notice physical symptoms before the mind labels what it is. 

For those who have experienced trauma, the nervous system can also become hypersensitive. Even in situations that are objectively safe, the body may still interpret certain sounds, sensations, or environments as dangerous and respond with an intense stress reaction.

Everyday stressors like traffic, ongoing conflict, or work pressure can also trigger these same survival responses. Over time, the nervous system may begin to overreact to situations that don’t truly require that level of alarm. This isn’t “all in your head.” It’s your body remembering past experiences and preparing for danger.

While this can feel overwhelming, the good news is that there are simple ways to begin calming your nervous system in daily life. These practices can’t solve everything, but they offer a powerful first step toward balance and relief.

Everyday Practices for Nervous System Balance

These are simple self-soothing practices you can try to calm your body and mind:

• Deep breathing: Slows your heart rate and tells your nervous system you’re safe.
• Grounding techniques: Noticing 5 things you see, 4 you feel, 3 you hear, 2 you smell, 1 you taste.
• Gentle movement: Walking, stretching, or yoga to release stored tension.
• Journaling or meditation: Creating space for reflection and inner calm.
• Self-compassion: Speaking to yourself as you would a friend, especially when anxiety flares.

Small daily practices add up, gently teaching your nervous system that it doesn’t always need to stay on high alert.

Sometimes, though, daily strategies aren’t enough — especially if anxiety or trauma has left your nervous system stuck in survival mode. That’s where therapy can help.

When to Consider Anxiety or Trauma Counselling in BC

Sometimes, lifestyle changes aren’t enough. If anxiety is:

• Interfering with your sleep, work, or relationships
• Showing up as panic, racing thoughts, or physical symptoms
• Leaving you feeling disconnected, overwhelmed, or stuck

…it may be time to reach out for professional support. Therapy offers tools, guidance, and a safe space to retrain your nervous system so it doesn’t over-activate your fight-flight-freeze response, helping you bring more calm, balance, and resilience into your life. 

How Anxiety Therapy in Coquitlam Can Support Nervous System Regulation

At my Coquitlam practice, I use a brain-wise, body-wise approach that blends several therapeutic methods:

• Somatic Experiencing (SE) & Self-Regulation Therapy (SRT): Gentle, body-based techniques that help release trauma stored in the nervous system, reduce over-reactivity, and build a steady sense of calm.
• Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT): Helps identify and reframe self-defeating thought patterns (“I’m not safe,” “I can’t handle this”), creating space for healthier emotional responses.
• Spiritual Intelligence Coaching: Alongside traditional therapeutic techniques, I help you reconnect with your values, purpose, and sense of self, so you feel whole again.

Compassionate Counselling in Coquitlam for Anxiety and Trauma

Healing from anxiety isn’t about “just thinking differently.” It’s about understanding your nervous system, retraining it with compassion, and reconnecting with your whole self — mind, body, and spirit.

As a Registered Psychologist in Coquitlam, I offer both in-person anxiety therapy in Coquitlam and virtual counselling across BC. If you’re ready to move from survival mode into resilience, I’d be honoured to walk alongside you.

Book a free consultation today to explore how holistic anxiety therapy can support your nervous system and help you feel balanced again.

If you’ve ever felt like you should be fine by now – but joy, ease and freedom still feel just out of reach – let’s chat.

Maybe you’ve done the “work“.

You’ve read the self-help books, journaled your heart out, tried to “stay positive”… and yet, the same patterns keep resurfacing. That familiar “one step forward, two steps back” dance can feel defeating. Often mislabeled as self-sabotage, these cycles are actually the nervous system doing its best to protect you from pain.

But what if healing didn’t mean forcing yourself to “push through”?

What if real, lasting change begins not with trying harder—but with the safety of the right therapeutic relationship?

As a Registered Psychologist in Coquitlam, I support individuals through a compassionate, integrative approach that honours both brain and body.

This method isn’t about quick fixes, it’s about sustainable transformation rooted in safety, co-regulation, and deep inner alignment.

Why the Therapeutic Relationship Matters

At the core of my work is one foundational truth: “wounded in relationship, healed in relationship“

We are wired for connection and that includes how we heal. My approach is grounded in the psychobiological concept of co-regulation, which simply means: your nervous system finds balance in the presence of another calm, attuned nervous system. In therapy, this connection becomes a safe space to explore, process, and grow.

Through co-regulation in our sessions, you’ll begin to:

• Feel safe enough to face long-held patterns and emotional wounds
• Reconnect with what’s right about you (not just what feels broken)
• Experience more ease, confidence, and resilience in daily life

This isn’t just talk therapy—it’s nervous system healing from the inside out.

My Counselling Style: Brain-Wise, Body-Wise Healing

Every client is different, which is why I draw from a variety of trauma-informed, evidence-based modalities to support healing in a holistic, personalized way. My work blends the latest in neuroscience with somatic (body-based) practices to help you move beyond survival mode and into a life that feels more grounded, vibrant, and free.

Here’s what that looks like in real life:

Helping You Regulate Your Nervous System

Together, we’ll explore simple yet powerful ways to pause and regulate stress responses, especially those linked to anxiety, panic, or overwhelm. You’ll learn tools to calm your system in the moment and build long-term emotional resilience.

Lifting the Fog of Depression

If you often feel stuck in low-energy or low-motivation states, we’ll identify supportive practices and internal resources to gently bring you back into connection and vitality—without pressure or shame.

Expanding Your “Feel-Good” Zone

As you heal, we’ll grow your capacity to experience joy, connection, and emotional flexibility—even in the face of life’s inevitable ups and downs.

Methods I Integrate in Therapy

Somatic Experiencing (SE) + Self-Regulation Therapy (SRT)

These body-based approaches help release trauma that’s stored in the nervous system—not just the mind. Instead of retelling painful stories, we tune into the physical sensations and patterns behind fight, flight, freeze, or shutdown responses.

Somatic therapy can help you:

• Feel less reactive to daily stressors
• Navigate conflict and relationships with more ease
• Reconnect with a felt sense of “I’m okay” in your body

This work is especially helpful if you’ve experienced trauma, chronic stress, or emotional neglect—and haven’t found relief through traditional talk therapy alone.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)

I also incorporate CBT to explore the connection between thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. This helps you identify unhelpful beliefs—like “I’m not enough” or “People always leave”—and gently reshape them into more supportive, empowering narratives.

This blend of body-based and cognitive work creates a fuller picture of healing—addressing both your inner wiring and the stories that keep you stuck.

Therapy That Honours Mind, Body, and Spirit

Healing isn’t linear and it’s not just about symptom relief.

While techniques are powerful tools, the deeper goal of therapy is helping you reconnect with your authentic self—that inner wisdom that’s been there all along. It’s about moving beyond survival and into alignment… where your mind, body, and spirit are finally on the same team.

This inner alignment often looks like:

• Trusting yourself more deeply
• Making choices that reflect your true needs and desires
• Releasing old patterns of people-pleasing or perfectionism
• Feeling safe in your own body and relationships

If you’re ready to reclaim that version of yourself, I’m here.

Who This Work Is For

My approach supports adults navigating:

• Anxiety or chronic worry
• Depression or burnout
• Relationship challenges or attachment wounds
• Childhood trauma or complex trauma (C-PTSD)
• Nervous system dysregulation (overwhelm, shutdown, hypervigilance)

Whether you’re an experienced therapy-goer or completely new to the process, our work together will meet you where you’re at—with compassion, curiosity, and care.

Local Care Rooted in Connection

If you’re searching for trauma-informed therapy in Coquitlam, Port Moody, or the Tri-Cities, I invite you to explore this integrative path.

Many of my clients are high-functioning adults who are great at taking care of others—but are now ready to turn that care inward. Others come into therapy feeling disconnected or “numb,” unsure why life feels so hard despite having so much to be grateful for.

In either case, the common thread is this: You’re ready for something deeper.

Not just coping, but healing.

Not just understanding your past, but shaping your future from a place of inner knowingness.

Ready to Begin?

Therapy is not about “fixing” you—it’s about helping you reconnect with the wholeness that’s already within you.

If you’re curious about working together or wondering if this approach is right for you, I invite you to reach out here or book a free 15-minute consultation call. We’ll explore your needs, answer your questions, and see if it’s a good fit—no pressure.

One of the most common questions people ask when considering therapy is:

“Do I need a referral to see a psychologist in British Columbia?”

The Short Answer: No Referral Needed!

You do not need a referral from a doctor to book an appointment with a registered psychologist in BC — including right here in Coquitlam.

Whether you’re dealing with:

• Anxiety

• Stress or burnout

• Relationship challenges

• Trauma or PTSD

…getting started with therapy can be as simple as reaching out.

Self-Referral Is Absolutely Allowed (and Encouraged)

In BC, you can self-refer to a psychologist. That means:

• No need to visit your family doctor first

• No referral paperwork required

• You have the power to take control of your mental health — on your timeline

At my office in Coquitlam, I welcome direct inquiries and offer a supportive, confidential intake process to help you get started.

Are Psychologists Covered by MSP in BC?

This is where things can get a little confusing.

While BC’s Medical Services Plan (MSP) does cover some mental health services, it typically does not cover sessions with a private psychologist.

However, many individuals have other options for coverage:

• Extended Health Benefits – If you’re covered through your employer, private insurance, or an Employee Assistance Program (EAP), these often include psychologist services. Be sure to check your specific plan.

Why Book a Psychologist Directly?

There are some real advantages to reaching out without a referral:

• No delays — skip the wait and book when you’re ready

• Full confidentiality — your sessions are private and self-directed

• Immediate support — when life feels overwhelming, there’s no need to wait for permission to get help

Finding the Right Psychologist in Coquitlam

While looking for a psychologist can feel overwhelming, I’m here to make it easy.

Whether you prefer in-person therapy in Coquitlam or virtual sessions across BC, my practice offers support in:

• Anxiety therapy

• Depression treatment

• Counselling for relationship issues

• Trauma and PTSD support

Learn more about what to expect during your first therapy session in my recent blog post.

💬 Final Thoughts

You don’t need anyone’s permission to start feeling better.

No referral required.

If you’re ready to prioritize your mental health, feel free to contact Dr. Carole today. I’m here to support your growth, healing, and overall wellbeing.

Ready to Take the First Step?

Contact my Coquitlam office today to book your initial session:

📞 (604) 612-7710

Let’s take the next step toward your wellbeing — together.