Wave Wellbeing Success Stories: Jeremy
Jeremy wanted specific skills to help him turn down the dial on his anxiety.
Jeremy* (27, he/him) works in business development and lives in Georgia. When Jeremy came to Wave, his anxiety was ruling his life. His first assessment showed symptoms of severe anxiety.
Jeremy shared more about how anxiety was impacting his life.
In his intro session with his coach, Julie, Jeremy shared that his anxiety was getting in the way of focusing at work and even sleeping at night. It felt like his mind was just serving him up stressful thoughts all the time: worst-case scenarios, things he should have done differently, and negative things other people might be thinking about him.
He told his coach that he tried sharing a lot of these stressful thoughts with his girlfriend, but it started to impact their relationship — he felt like she didn’t really understand what he was going through and she felt like she didn’t know how to help (and like his stress was starting to feel a bit contagious).
His Wave Coach helped him create an anxiety action plan.
Jeremy and Julie determined together that his main Wave domains would be: awareness and flexibility. Jeremy needed awareness of his thought patterns and the flexibility to shift them.
Because so much of Jeremy’s anxiety was focused on stressful thoughts, Julie started their work together with a few key cognitive skills: mindfulness, reframing, and defusion. Julie helped Jeremy understand how emotions are created and how to understand the connection between thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. Julie helped Jeremy identify what anxiety felt like in his body, which was a new experience for him. Together, they identified thinking traps (like catastrophizing and black and white thinking) that were leading to unhelpful thought spirals.
His anxiety reduced after just 8 sessions.
After about 4 sessions, Jeremy repeated the assessment and his severe anxiety symptoms had shifted to moderate anxiety symptoms. He told Julie that the success he was having managing his anxiety was giving him so much relief. He also shared feeling more confident and open to exploring how coaching could help in other areas of his life.
Coach Julie shares, “When Jeremy came to Wave, he was really keen to reduce the discomfort his anxiety was causing. It made him really motivated to learn and make changes. Jeremy likes to know the ‘why’ behind different cognitive skills and what makes them work. He approaches this work like a mechanic or engineer and he’s really shifting his whole relationship to thoughts. Now that he’s made strides with anxiety, I think our work together can go to new places.”
Want to get a handle on your anxious thoughts today? Wave coaches are here to help: https://www.wavelife.io/online-mental-health-coaching
*Name and other key details have been changed to protect the identity of Wave clients.