Anxiety Therapy
When your mind will not slow down, even when nothing is wrong.
Anxiety often looks like competence from the outside. You plan ahead, you catch problems early, you keep everyone else steady — and inside there is a hum that rarely stops.
Therapy is not about talking you out of the worry. It is about understanding what the worry is protecting and giving your nervous system a different option.
Meet your therapist
Hi, I'm Robert.
I work with people whose minds do not slow down, even when everything looks fine from the outside.
I'm Robert Russell, AMFT — an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist in Murfreesboro and the founder of Kind Therapy. My training is relational: distress usually lives in the patterns between people, not inside one person who is broken.
Sessions are conversations, paced by you. No script to follow, no version of yourself to perform. We start with what is actually happening, and go from there.
Robert Russell, AMFT — pre-licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, practicing under the supervision of Dr. Sara Hopkins, LMFT (TN license #928).
In person in Murfreesboro and online across Tennessee · Endorsed by 13 fellow clinicians on Psychology Today
01 — Recognition
What anxiety often looks like day to day
Most people who come in are functioning. The difficulty is what it costs to keep functioning.
- Thoughts that loop at night, or start before your eyes are fully open.
- Rehearsing conversations in advance and reviewing them afterward.
- Physical tension — jaw, shoulders, stomach — that does not resolve with rest.
- Difficulty relaxing without a task, or guilt when nothing is being accomplished.
- Avoiding decisions, messages or appointments until the pressure builds.
- A sense of responsibility for other people's comfort and reactions.
Some people recognize all of this, some one line of it. It is a starting point, not a diagnosis.
02 — Perspective
Anxiety is usually doing a job
Vigilance is rarely random. It tends to develop where something once had to be anticipated — an unpredictable household, a demanding role, a season when being prepared was the only protection available.
The aim is not to remove your carefulness. It is to give it a smaller share of your day, so that the same situation does not always produce the same alarm.
03 — What it costs
Where the pattern usually shows up
Anxiety is expensive in the places it is least visible.
- Sleep: falling asleep late, waking early, or waking already braced.
- Relationships: reassurance-seeking, irritability, or withdrawing to manage overload.
- Work: overpreparing, difficulty delegating, and trouble calling anything finished.
- Body: headaches, digestive trouble, and fatigue that rest does not touch.
04 — The work
What therapy actually looks like
Sessions start with what is actually happening in your week rather than a worksheet.
- Track when the anxiety rises and what it is anticipating.
- Work with the body as well as the thoughts, since the alarm is physical before it is verbal.
- Practice tolerating uncertainty in small, chosen doses instead of all at once.
- Adjust the demands and expectations that keep the alarm justified.
05 — Why Robert
Who you would be working with
Robert Russell is an Associate Marriage & Family Therapist (AMFT) in Murfreesboro, pre-licensed and practicing under the supervision of Dr. Sara Hopkins, LMFT (TN license #928). He completed graduate training in marriage and family therapy at Trevecca Nazarene University after more than fifteen years in pastoral counseling and helping work.
His training is relational. Distress is usually understood as living in the patterns between people rather than inside one person who is broken. Sessions are conversations — paced by you, without a script you are expected to follow.
06 — Approach
How the work is done
The work draws on a few frameworks, matched to what you want out of it rather than applied by formula.
Attachment-based therapy
Looks at what closeness, dependence and safety have meant for you, and how those early lessons still shape the present.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
Maps the cycle between you and the people closest to you so the conflict stops being about who is right.
Parts-informed work
Separates the protective parts — the critic, the fixer, the one who goes quiet — from the person underneath them.
Practical relational understanding
Language and responses you can actually use in the moment, not only insight about why something happens.
07 — Logistics
Fees, length and location
- $150 per 50-minute session
- In person in Murfreesboro at River Tree Center, 212 Heritage Park Drive
- Online across Tennessee
- Free 15-minute consultation before you commit to anything
08 — Common questions
Questions people ask first
- Do I need a diagnosis to start?
- No. You do not need a label or a referral. Describing what has been happening is enough to begin.
- Will you tell me to just stop worrying?
- No. Worry that could be dropped on request would already be gone. The work looks at what keeps it necessary.
- Do I need medication?
- That is a decision made with a physician or psychiatric provider, not here. Some people work with both; some work with therapy alone. Either is reasonable.
- Is it still worth coming if I am functioning fine?
- Yes. Many people who come in are managing well by any outside measure and are tired of what managing well requires.
- How long does it take?
- It varies with what you are working on. Many people notice something shifting within the first several sessions, and length is decided together rather than set in advance.
09 — Read more
Related Kind Therapy guides
If you would rather read before you talk to anyone, these guides go deeper into the patterns above.
- AnxietyHow anxiety works, what maintains it, and what tends to help.
- Shame and Self-EsteemThe inner critic that often sits underneath chronic worry.
- People-PleasingWhen keeping others comfortable becomes a full-time job.
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10 — Next step
Start with a short conversation
A free 15-minute call is a chance to describe what is going on and ask whether therapy seems worth trying. No commitment, no intake paperwork, no pressure.
Kind Therapy · Murfreesboro, Tennessee and online across Tennessee. If you are experiencing a mental health emergency, call or text 988, or dial 911.