Stress, PTSD and Anxiety Therapists in Bellflower, CA.

Most of us have some relationship with stress and anxiety, and it's no wonder: our society offers us daily opportunities to deepen our anxiety or increase our stress level. One or more sources of anxiety is often quite manageable, but life has a way of throwing multiple stressors at us at once. When several problems work together to conspire against us, it is often overwhelming.

Some stress and anxiety are normal. It helps us get things done, like starting a new job or school, moving or getting married.. It becomes a problem when we feel overwhelmed and exhibit physical and emotional symptoms. Physical symptons could include a racing heart, rapid breathing, sweating, trembling and dizzyness. Traumatic events can trigger these responses as well. This is accompanied by negative thoughts such as catastrophizing, overgeneralizing and "shoulds". By providing a safe, peaceful place and proven strategies that work, I can help you sort things out to end the self-perpetuating cycle of harmful stress and anxiwty.

Anxiety and Stress are two of the main reasons people come to therapy. Our therapists at La Vie are specially trained to get at the root problems in these areas. We know that stress is a byproduct of a busy life, but if not dealt with correctly it can lead to distress which has disastrous consequences. We are trained to get beneath the symptoms of stress and anxiety in your life and help you get healed at the root of your pain. We can help you learn to respond to your busy life in a healthy and more peaceful way.

Anxiety and stress must be tended to on multiple fronts. If you are seeking help with anxiety and stress today, you are looking for immediate relief. I will work with you to identify immediate lifestyle changes, coping skills, and tools that may make anxiety more manageable. There is no quick fix or immediate cure, but some changes truly help. Anxiety often has deep sources and is an adaptive response to conscious and unconscious beliefs about yourself and the world. This type of therapeutic work moves more slowly as we work together to fully understand who you are, your unexplored ideas of who you are, and arrive at new places of understanding that can be freeing and calming.

Are your worries and fears overwhelming, preventing you from living your best life? Do you feel paralyzed by panic and doubts? If this sounds like you, and you want to make some changes, I’d like to help. The good news is that excessive worrying is a habit you can learn to break. We can work together to teach your brain to stay calm and collected and to look at life from a more realistic and positive perspective. Together we will decrease your preoccupation with ‘what ifs’ and ‘worse case scenarios.’ Through tailored relaxation techniques, and VERY SLOWLY exposing you to your fears, we can reduce your anxiety to a manageable level, so your fears are no longer interfering with your life.

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.

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!

In treating anxiety, the most impotant issues is interupting the cycle of worry, obessing over worry, fearing the return of worry, and allowing worry to spread to every aspect of your life. Discriminating realistic reasons to worry from irrational reasons can help clients with excessive stress to cope. Interupting and redirecting thoughts of anxiety to more productive thoughts and activities will interupt the cycle that creates habitual anxiety. We will look at times you may over-react to triggers (be it an upcoming social situation, or a stumbling block that creates more stress and predictions of failure). We will take this path together. You are not alone.

I specialize in helping people who struggle with never feeling quite “enough" and want freedom from shame and anxiety. The torment of living with an inner critical voice is exhausting. Achieving more is not the answer. Looking better and trying harder are not the solutions. You deserve to trust yourself and feel comfortable in your own skin. I would like to help you discover self-acceptance and find liberation from anxiety.

Are you worried about things going out of your control? Do you experience overwhelming anxiety and panic attacks? Are you obsessed about someone or something that is driving you crazy? I can help you find the roots of your fears, worries and anxieties, identify destructive patterns, work through inner conflicts, and move on to peace, and a calm state of mind that you deserve.

Is anxiety taking over life? Does it feel like there is no control no matter how hard you try? If this sounds like you, I’m confident I can help. My practice offers effective forms of treatment to get the relief you deserve. When it comes to treating anxiety disorders, research shows that therapy is the most effective option. That’s because therapy as opposed to anxiety medication treats more than just symptoms of the problem. Therapy can help uncover the underlying causes of your worries and fears, so you can learn how to relax, look at situations in a new, less frightening way, and develop better ways to live joyfully.

How does anxiety and stress play out in your life? It is a vital aspect of our lives, important at very specific times. Yet when anxiety is the ruler and someone is helpless it becomes a life limiting function. Anxiety might also be an avenue to avoid more intense emotional feelings and thoughts. A valuable goal might be to respect and manage one's anxiety and stress in order to live a more free and productive life.

Anxiety usually comes from two main sources....anger or fear. Talking with a therapist will help you uncover what is going on in your life now or where you might have unresolved anger about...or what you might fear. Talking through these issues can help difuse your anxiety, and a therapist can be beneficial in offering tools, skills, or simply a new way of thinking about a situaltion. Oftentimes, too, anxiety comes from a negative belief that is sometimes not accurate. You may gain insight and awareness as you challenge some of your belief systems which might be in your way. Looking at the stressors in your life with a therapist will reveal how your liife may by out of balance.