Amanda Phillips, LCSW — Anxiety Therapist in New York City and Westchester
You've been holding it together for a long time. You're good at it. And you're exhausted in a way that's getting harder to explain.
Something has shifted. Not dramatically, not in a way that's easy to point to. You're still showing up, still meeting your obligations, still the person everyone counts on. But there's a flatness underneath it that wasn't there before, or a vigilance that never quite turns off, or a body that seems to be registering something your mind keeps trying to override.
You're not in crisis. You're just not okay. And you've been carrying that distinction alone for longer than you'd like.
That's where we start.
A Personal Welcome From Your Anxiety Therapist
In this short video, I talk about the kind of clients I work with and why therapy is a space where you can finally stop holding it all together — and start feeling supported.
Amanda Phillips, LCSW — Founder of MYAP Therapy | IFS-Informed Anxiety Therapist in New York
I don't help people manage their anxiety better. I help them understand it.
There's a meaningful difference between those two things. Managing anxiety better means developing strategies to contain it, work around it, or reduce its immediate impact. That's useful. It's also a ceiling. The people I work with have usually already hit that ceiling.
What I do instead is get curious about the anxiety. Where it came from. What it's protecting. What parts of the internal system have been working overtime to keep it in place. When those parts finally feel understood rather than overridden, something genuinely shifts. Not a coping shift. An actual change in the relationship to the internal experience.
The two frameworks I draw from are Internal Family Systems and trauma-informed therapy. In practice they work together rather than separately.
IFS understands the mind as a system of parts, each carrying its own feelings, protective strategies, and history. The part that overthinks every conversation. The part that pushes through exhaustion rather than stopping. The part that monitors for signs of disapproval or disappointment. In IFS we don't try to quiet these parts or replace them with better ones. We get curious about what they've been carrying. That curiosity is what creates the opening for change.
For clients navigating chronic illness alongside anxiety, the parts that show up are specific and recognizable. The part that tracks every symptom, every sensation, every sign that something might be getting worse. The part that has been delivering updates to the people in their life in a tone that doesn't alarm anyone, while internally carrying something much heavier. The part that is grieving the body that felt reliable, the life that looked different before the diagnosis. These parts aren't obstacles to work around. They are carrying something real. They respond to being understood.
Trauma-informed work means I approach every client with the assumption that anxiety has roots. In early experiences, relational patterns, the accumulated cost of a nervous system that learned it needed to stay alert. For many of the people I work with, those roots intersect with a health experience that was frightening, isolating, or physically and emotionally overwhelming. Understanding those roots doesn't mean dwelling in the past. It means making sense of why the present feels the way it does.
My training and background
I founded My AP Therapy because I wanted to build a practice that goes beyond coping. One grounded in clinical depth, genuine curiosity, and real attunement to the complexity of what people are actually carrying.
Credentials and training:
Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), New York State
Certified Clinical Trauma Professional (CCTP), 2021
Internal Family Systems (IFS), Level 1 Trained
Master of Social Work (MSW), New York University, Valedictorian 2019
I have built particular clinical depth at the intersection of anxiety and chronic illness, working with adults for whom the physical and emotional dimensions of their experience are deeply intertwined, and for whom standard anxiety therapy hasn't reached the full picture of what they're carrying. I also have specific depth working with adults navigating Jewish identity and cultural pressure, and with high-functioning adults whose anxiety is rooted in early responsibility, perfectionism, and chronic self-containment.
My practice is virtual, serving adults across New York City, Westchester County, and throughout New York State.
What changes when this work goes well
Clients don't usually describe the change as dramatic. It's more like: things that used to take all your energy start taking less. Patterns you couldn't interrupt start becoming visible before they run. The body starts to register something closer to ease, even briefly, and then a little more often.
More specifically, over time clients find:
The patterns make sense rather than feeling like character flaws. There's a reason the anxiety developed and understanding that reason changes the relationship to it.
There's more space between what happens and how they respond. Less reactivity, more choice.
They trust themselves more. Their instincts, their limits, their sense of what they actually need.
They feel steadier. Not because life has gotten easier or the health condition has resolved, but because their relationship with their own internal experience has genuinely changed.
That steadiness is what this work is actually for.
Testimonials
Questions people ask before reaching out for Therapy for Anxiety
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Relational and genuinely curious. Sessions aren't structured around worksheets or homework. They're a space to slow down and understand what's actually happening, with someone who is paying close attention. Clients describe me as grounded, engaged, and direct without being clinical.
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Most approaches focus on changing thoughts or behaviors. IFS focuses on understanding the internal system that drives those thoughts and behaviors in the first place. Rather than asking anxious parts to think differently or calm down, we get curious about what they're carrying and what they need. For many people, particularly those whose anxiety has a body-based or chronic illness dimension, this reaches something that other approaches haven't.
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This is some of the most specific work I do. The anxiety and the physical experience are not separate problems. They are part of the same system. I work with the full complexity of that intersection rather than treating the anxiety in isolation from everything else you're managing.
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No. Many clients come in with a general sense that something has been off for a while. That the anxiety has been there so long it feels like background noise. That they're tired of managing and want something to actually change. That is enough to start.
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Yes, and often specifically with people for whom previous therapy helped but didn't go far enough. If you've done some of the work and are ready to go deeper, that's a good place to start from.
Let’s start with a conversation.
Schedule a free 15-minute consultation — a chance for us to talk, ask questions, and see if working together feels like the right fit.