Stress, PTSD and Anxiety Therapists in Redwood City, CA.

While most treatment approaches for anxiety and stress are effective on the surface, they don’t treat the real problem. Mantras, deep breathing, and rational dialogues about your fear being irrational rarely work---for most people don’t believe it or you! Imagine if you can trick the brain into changing without you telling your conscious mind that you are changing it? Problem with anxiety and stress is that the brain in this state knows you want to change it and it resists. Contact Kevin@kevinfleminphd.com for the ultimate stress and anxiety solution that will literally change your brain's autonomic nervous system patterns while you sit on your butt. 877-606-6161.

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.

Experiencing occasional anxiety is a normal part of life. However, anxiety disorders and ongoing chronic stress can appear as repeated episodes of worry & fear, or develop into sudden feelings of intense anxiety with physical sensations, known as panic attacks. Your anxiety may feel related to an event or thought, and other times appear to occur randomly and without cause. Anxiety can develop at any age, when left untreated it may develop into depression. In therapy we will explore how anxiety is affecting your life. You will learn how your physical, emotional and mental health are connected and together create an effective treatment plan specific to your goals to improve your well-being.

My clients work with me to learn coping strategies and techniques to manage anxiety and stress in their daily lives. This might include relaxation techniques, deep breathing exercises, mindfulness, and progressive muscle relaxation. I utilize tapping to reduce anxiety, and use EMDR to work on the root causes of anxiety with my clients. The goal of anxiety therapy is to help clients learn to live in the present moment and to build emotional resilience and self-regulation skills. Mindfulness, CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), and ACT (Acceptance Commitment Therapy) are particularly useful tools for for working to improve anxiety.

You don't have to go at this alone. Anxiety is difficult to manage because sometimes our mind and body do not appear to agree. When you are dealing with the physical symptoms of anxiety or stress, your heart rate may increase, you may sweat, you may breathe a little more shallow, or you might find yourself holding your breath altogether, while your mind may be confused as to what and why you feel as you do. As your therapist, I will offer you exercises/tools, somatic perspectives and grounding to help you regulate your nervous system. I will hold space with you and I will approach your anxiety with compassion and curiosity, honoring the defenses that keep us going.

Anxiety in my experience works similarly to depression. If depression is caused by unexpressed feelings, anxiety is caused by unexpressed fear. It may be a therapist cliche to talk about creating safety and trust, but this is especially true of helping to heal anxiety. It really is about helping the client feel safe to express their fears and worries and to learn to feel safe to have the full range of our emotional expression.

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.

Your stress may be triggered by job loss, illness, relationships or by "positive" stressors like a new job or a baby. I provide a solution-oriented and healing environment for people who are suffering from the stress of living a "real" life. I provide a place to change the way you talk to yourself so you will stop beating yourself up and start predicting and creating positive results in your, or your family's, future. We will join together to increase your ability to cope with stress and appreciate your strengths as a human being. You can increase your tolerance for making important changes, learn to accept uncertainty, and cope with the things in life that can't be changed.

Anxiety in all of its forms (social, panic attacks, fears and phobias, PTSD, health-related anxiety, and performance anxiety) are concerns that I have helped adults and children overcome for over 22 years. It is a specialized area of therapy I work with using approaches that bring somatic awareness and resolve the underlying trauma that has led to activation in the body and worried mind. My aim is to help you learn tools to help you cope better and empower you to understand the causes of anxiety leading to resolution and lasting change.

Anxiety is a debilitating disorder that deprives people of their happiness and sense of well-being. I work with children and adults to help alleviate their suffering. Together we explore their anxiety "triggers" e.g. what brings on their anxiety, and work with question those assumptions. Next I help my clients learn how to use tools to combat the thoughts that can paralyze and torment them and bring their negative thoughts back under their control, helping them to feel happy and confident once more.

There is an almost infinite list of causes for anxiety and stress, probably a few more if you live in a metropolitan area. Maybe your anxiety is decades old from trauma, family of origin, or chemically related. Perhaps it's situational and can be attributed to a recently suffered trauma, is work related, or relationship related. When you are stressed out or anxious, your brain doesn't function optimally. Instead, it functions in crisis mode and impairs your decision making ability and leaves you feeling too drained for the rest of your life. I will help you to regain your control by giving you concrete strategies and tools to manage them.

I prioritize creating a supportive and understanding environment where clients can openly explore their sources of anxiety and stress. By employing evidence-based techniques such as EDMR, ACT, IFS, Ketamine Therapy and relaxation exercises, I help clients identify and challenge maladaptive thought patterns while developing practical coping strategies. My approach is tailored to each individual's unique experiences and stressors, ensuring that interventions are relevant and effective. Through collaborative goal-setting and skill-building, clients learn to manage their anxiety and stress more effectively.

Anxiety can range from mild stress that is manageable to overwhelming stress that turns into traumatic activation. Through our somatic and relational therapies, you can feel whole again. Together, we look for what strengths and abilities you have that can be built on. Somatic resources generate an awareness of the sensations in the body that feel pleasant and grounding for the client and help them mediate the debilitating symptoms of trauma. Often clients don’t recognize the symptoms of trauma and are dealing with anxiety, fear and depression on their own. Many trauma clients do not seek therapeutic assistance right away, either because they don’t take the traumatic experience seriously or they think that “time will heal” or because of shame and...(view profile to read more)

I can teach you specific tools to help with anxiety and stress reduction on the physical level. We may also explore the deeper causes of anxiety, your history, and how to find ground in the midst of uncertainty. It is easy to become anxious when our minds are consumed with thoughts of the past or future speculations. By guiding awareness, I will help you to return to the present moment even as we talk, to feel your body and senses in the here and now. Building your capacity to be aware in the present moment greatly reduces anxiety.

Everyone experiences anxiety at some point, but for some the anxiety is so frequent or intense that it interferes with their lives or even triggers panic attacks. I use Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) to help my clients get a sense of control over their own anxiety. We collaborate to learn skills to reduce the frequency or intensity of the anxious feelings, to tolerate the anxiety when it does occur so they can still function through it, and to practice habits that reduce stress and improve general mental health.

Anxiety and stress are the symptoms I treat most often in my practice. Some people are not aware, but trauma is deep-rooted anxiety that is held within our body. We can feel anxious about work, children, relationships, or family. We can feel stressed about work or relationships and friendships. A highly effective tool for treating these symptoms is mindfulness. Mindfulness is a way that you can learn to relax the anxiety that is held within your body and your mind. I love this technique because it is not only highly effective, but it is very easy to learn. You can walk away from your first therapy session with a start to your mindfulness journey and have real tools at your disposal.

Working through anxiety in therapy involves developing and using coping tools such as mindfulness, grounding, deep breathing, meditation, creative self-expression, relaxation techniques, and emotional regulation skills. Therapy can help you create a healthy work life balance to buffer stress and understand what triggers your anxiety. Relief from anxiety will allow you to navigate life’s ups and downs without becoming overwhelmed. Working through anxiety leads to feeling calm, confident, centered, and present.

The modern world we live in is full of amazing technological advancements and organizational wonders, but it is also more complex and demanding than ever before. The myriad competing demands of our lives, how busy we are, the continual pressure to do and be more creates enormous stress for all of us. This stress can escalate into anxiety and the added strain of these issues easily begins to short-circuit our ability to function at our best, to feel good, to maintain relationships and responsibilities. I can help you understand the internal and external forces creating these negative feelings, and together we can find strategies for minimizing stress and anxiety so you can feel better.

Is the weight of the world on your shoulders? Is it difficult to get up in the morning and face the day, even though it was difficult to fall asleep and turn off your mind the night before? Are your relationships suffering because you feel stressed and worried most of the time? A little anxiety can be a positive push toward action, but too much anxiety and stress are unhealthy and unhelpful. I can help you learn to de-stress with relaxation techniques and anxiety management. It doesn’t have to be this hard.

Anxiety and stress are not just clinical diagnoses. They are pervasive to the human condition. If you are alive, you are feeling them. They play a role in relationships, work, eating, sleeping... everything! However, it is not enough to simply "manage" them. We need to understand what scares us, what keeps us awake at night, what it is that matters to us. Because anxiety is experienced to some degree whenever something matters, it also points us to our desire and helps us to learn about what we want. Therapy can help us make use of our anxiety to give us a better sense of what we want from our lives and how to confront the fears that are on the way.

Recent studies show that moderate stress can actually make us more productive and successful. But when stress and anxiety become too much to handle, they can make life miserable. I use mindfulness-based therapy to help you increase your own innate ability to decrease anxiety and keep stress manageable. If your symptoms are related to past experiences such as painful or difficult childhood experiences, abuse or trauma, I offer Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy. EMDR therapy is a highly effective for relieving symptoms of PTSD and improving performance. Come experience it for yourself!

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

Anxiety is an internal alarm system that gives us information about our internal state as well as possible danger in the external world. Often, anxiety is a signal of deeper, more intense emotions such as sadness, anger, and fear. It can also be a consequence of not living authentically. Once these deeper feelings are identified and expressed, they can be readily released. For example, when we say "Yes" when we really mean "No," we will often experience anxiety. In this case, the anxiety is providing us with a warning that we are not being honest (living authentically) with ourself and/or another. Therapy is the perfect place to explore this common emotion.

I assist hardworking professionals in managing anxiety and stress while upholding their commitment to excellence in both their careers and personal lives. My clients place significant value on their work, relationships, and family. Worries about disappointing others in their work and personal life contribute to exhaustion from negative thoughts while juggling various responsibilities. I believe that attaining a sense of engagement in life, striving for excellence in work, feeling loved and supported, and experiencing reduced anxiety and stress is achievable for you. I offer a complimentary 15-minute consultation for you to judge if we would be a good fit. You don't have to suffer alone.

I create a transformative experience that emphasizes your personal growth and well-being. My approach to anxiety recovery prioritizes the unique needs and goals of each client, fostering a safe and supportive environment where you can explore and overcome anxiety-related challenges. By focusing on practical strategies and personalized interventions, clients will gain the tools and insights needed to manage anxiety and stress more effectively. This tailored approach of somatic, emotion-focused, and attachment-focused therapeutic techniques will empower you to build resilience, enhance quality of life, and achieve a more balanced and fulfilling existence free from painful anxiety.