Anxiety Therapy in Los Angeles

Does this sound like you?

• Your thoughts won’t slow down

• Small decisions feel bigger than they should

• It’s hard to relax, or you feel guilty when you do

• You second-guess yourself

• You feel responsible for making sure things don’t go wrong

• You’re often bracing for what might happen next

If this feels familiar, you’re not the only one who experiences it this way. It can feel like a lot to carry. Learn how to put anxiety in its place, and take back a sense of control.

What’s driving it.

Anxiety isn’t random. It’s a system that learned something important. At some point, there was an experience that felt overwhelming. Anxiety develops as a way to prevent that from happening again. It scans ahead, predicts, and tries to keep you out of that same place. In that sense, anxiety is protective. And it makes sense that it would work this way.

Sometimes anxiety starts to overgeneralize. More and more situations start to feel like a lion lurking in the woods, when most things are actually closer to a mouse. So the system stays on alert. Always preparing. Always high-stakes It’s not just what’s happening. It’s what might happen, or what something could turn into. And underneath that is often a deeper fear.
Not just that something will go wrong, but that it might be all your fault and you won’t be able to handle what comes next. But, the good news is, this is just a perspective. One that has perhaps narrowed over time, and if we can begin to allow ourselves to let in other facts, feelings and sensations that aren’t ominous, we can begin to turn the tide of anxiety.

How we work with it.

We start by helping you find a different footing when anxiety shows up. Not by trying to shut it down, but by learning how to stay with it without getting pulled in. From there, we begin to retrain the system. Not everything is a lion. Over time, you start to notice what actually needs your attention and what doesn’t. We also work on something just as important Learning that if something difficult does happen, it doesn’t mean it should have been prevented. And maybe, just maybe, you can handle more than anxiety would have you believe. You’ve already made it through hard things. This is about helping your system recognize that. Less about controlling everything. More about trusting your ability to move through what comes.

A place to start.

If your mind feels like it’s always working overtime, or like everything carries more weight than it should, that’s worth paying attention to. And it can be the beginning of understanding what’s actually going on. I work with clients to help them overcome anxiety in the Los Feliz and Atwater Village areas of Los Angeles, and also offer online therapy for clients anywhere in the state of California. Sessions are typically 50 minutes.

If you’re not sure whether therapy is the right next step, that’s completely okay—that’s often part of what we sort out together. You can reach out for a brief consultation to get a sense of how I work and whether it feels like a fit.