Therapy vs. Self-Help: Why Reading About Anxiety Hasn’t Fixed Yours
- Kate Winkler
- Feb 3, 2025
- 2 min read
Your anxiety isn’t going to read its way out of your body.
If it could, you’d be cured by now—PhD-level, summa cum laude, never-overthinks-another-text cured.
Instead, here you are, standing in the office kitchen, coffee in hand, stomach doing Olympic-level flips, bracing yourself for the staff meeting.
You remind yourself: You’re fine. It’s just a meeting. No one notices if your voice shakes.
But your body isn’t listening.
Your body is getting ready to run away.
You’ve probably tried everything—the books, the podcasts, the Instagram carousel posts that promise five tips to implement in under 60 seconds.
You’ve underlined the hell out of self-help books. You are enough. Set boundaries and don’t apologize. Anxiety isn’t you—it’s just a feeling.
You’ve followed influencers who swear by morning routines and positive affirmations.
But here you are, still feeling like your anxiety is a squatter you can’t evict.
Why Self-Help Doesn’t Work the Way You Hoped
It makes sense in the moment.
You feel lighter.
More in control.
And then…you hear yourself saying “Sure, no problem!” to something you don’t want to do and overanalyze what you said hours after a conversation.
And you wonder—why do I still feel like this?
Because information doesn’t rewire anxiety. Experience does.
Self-help can explain what’s happening, but it doesn’t reach the places where anxiety really lives—in your body, in your relationships, in those automatic reactions that hijack your day before you even know what’s happening.
Why Anxiety Therapy is Different
Therapy with me is about tuning into the way your mind works and the early signals of anxiety in your body.
You learn how to notice it sooner, shift your reactions, and slowly stop letting it steer the wheel.
When you're ready and tired of reading about the life you want and ready to live it—let’s talk.
Step Into Your Own Story.
What’s a moment recently where you “knew better” but still felt stuck?
If reading, journaling, and learning about anxiety haven’t changed how it shows up in your life, what do you think is missing?
