Stress, PTSD and Anxiety Therapists in Brentwood, CA.

I begin by understanding how you experience anxiety/stress because how you experience them is unique for you. Then we begin to increase your tolerance for how you experience anxious/stressful thoughts, feelings, memories, and/or situations. This is necessary so the anxiety/stress stops being an overwhelming experience that interferes and gets in the way of your life. It's crucial to be able to become more comfortable when you experience anxiety/stress because they're a part life. The problem is the distressing and limiting to debilitating effect they have on you. As you learn to be able to do this, you will begin to experience more peacefulness, calm, hope, self-confidence and self-esteem.

Free 30 minute zoom call - Anxiety can arise from several places - one is the mind - people can think & imagine scenarios in their minds that create anxiety, when their thoughts and imagination may not even be true. Anxiety is also common in people who did not have a safe & secure experience with caregivers as they were growing up. The brain ends up being wired in a way that reproduces anxiety. Fortunately, due to new research in the field of neuropsychology & neuroplasticity, this can be changed!

I take a practical approach to treating anxiety and stress. I help you identify the sources of anxiety if you do not already know them. I support you in learning skills to regulate your emotions and increase awareness of body sensations and experiences in order to help you be able to control and reduce feelings of anxiety. I also use a combination of exposure therapy, if appropriate, and adjustment to lifestyle to help you reduce or eliminate sources of anxiety or stress. I know that every experience of anxiety or stress is unique and I will work with you to develop a plan of support tailored to your needs. I will provide a safe environment for you to challenge and overcome your fear/stress

With the current times, stress and anxiety may be heightened and affecting various aspects of your life such as: work, relationships, sleep, and every day responsibilities. Anxiety can be overwhelming but it can be treated and you will get better. I will help you learn tools to manage and decrease your anxiety by developing an awareness of your triggers.

Anxiety can feel overwhelming and at times debilitating. Stress can increase this anxiety to even more unmanageable levels. Learning ways to manage stress can help reduce the anxious feelings. I can work with to learn tools and skills to help calm you and ground you when you begin to feel overwhelmed. The goal is for you to feel like you can manage the anxiety that starts rattling you and to have some tools that you can pull out to calm you down enough to be more effective in that moment. Together we can work to find ways for you to feel calmer, more grounded and more like yourself.

Anxiety takes so many forms. The root is basically fear that manifests in so many symptoms. I help adults and children that suffer from this debilitating condition by giving them simple tools to practice as soon as they feel anxiety coming on. As they practice and use the tools to help them in their everyday activities, we work on processing where that anxiety originated from - with that the healing begins.

I am a psychoanalytic therapist with a focus on anxiety and stress. Through my practice, I strive to create an empathetic, non-judgmental space where you can express your thoughts and feelings. I take a unique approach to therapy, exploring the underlying causes of your concerns and developing personalized solutions to help you move forward. My goal is to help my patients gain insight into their struggles and find inner peace.

Anxiety and stress are actually two different things. Where stress usually comes from actual and identifiable challenges, anxiety tends to be more arbitrary in that there isn't necessarily one specific cause. However, both anxiety and stress tend to develop based on one's specific context--that is what one has experienced through their lifetime. While some anxiety and stress is actually good for us (i.e. propels us toward action), excessive amounts can create both emotional and physical challenges. I work with clients from a top-down/bottom-up approach, working to help the brain to better control the bodily effects of stress and anxiety and the body to control the brain.

If you're struggling with anxious thoughts, you may find it hard to focus. The fight or flight alarm is going off in your brain, constantly sending you messages starting with "what if...." If worrying is keeping you trapped in a hamster wheel, tired, but unable to rest, you may find yourself turning to addictive substances or behaviours to cope. As an addiction counsellor, I help clients cope with the anxious thoughts keeping them trapped in addictive behaviours. By uncovering these underlying thoughts, I help you develop coping skills so you can gain a sense of focus, clarity, confidence, and freedom from constantly overthinking. Send me a message and I'll guide you through the next steps.

I work with clients using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, mindfulness, Narrative Therapy, Expressive Arts, and psychoeducation to address anxiety and stress. Many folks are experiencing extreme stress as a result of all we have experienced in the last year. I'm able to work with clients experiencing burnout, increased anxiety, and higher stress relying on neuroscience as the guide.

In addition to being a licensed Marriage Family Therapist, I am also a ceritified Somatic Experiencing Practitioner as developed by Dr. Peter Levine, and a certified Structural Integration Practitioner as developed by Dr. Ida Rolf. Using these body-based technologies in what we call a "bottom up" approach to anxiety and stress is a lot more effective than the "top down" approach of traditional Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. That's because anxiety and stress are artifacts of the reptillian brain and limbic system not the neocortex where CBT works.