Stress, PTSD and Anxiety Therapists in Emeryville, CA.

Anxiety can take over almost everything: a racing mind, a knot in your stomach, broken sleep, the feeling that you have to stay braced for something you can't even name. Persistent stress wears down your body and your patience until you barely feel like yourself. The good news is that this state is treatable, and you don't have to manage it alone. We'll begin by taking the edge off, then turn to the deeper question: what is your anxiety actually responding to? Worry rarely appears for no reason; it usually points to something underneath that deserves to be understood. I work in a depth-oriented way, helping you trace the unease back to its source so the relief holds permanently.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 don't just affect your mood — they can show up in your body as chronic pain, tension, fatigue, and symptoms that never fully resolve. If you've wondered why you feel physically worse when life gets hard, there's a reason: your nervous system is trying to protect you, and it's gotten stuck in overdrive. I help people understand the brain-body connection driving these experiences and use evidence-based approaches to calm the nervous system, process underlying emotions, and create lasting relief.

Many persons seek the support of psychotherapy or counseling at some point in their lives. Some come for relief from troubling anxiety, stress or depression, while others come to understand reoccurring anger or conflicts with loved ones, or the lingering influences of childhood experiences that still impact their lives. Others come with fears of expressing themselves authentically or trusting others, desperate to liberate themselves from the constraints impeding their lives, but unsure if such freedom is even possible. If you are struggling with anxiety and stress, psychotherapy can help. To learn how, please consider calling me for an introductory conversation at 415-533-9724.

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.

Anxiety often follows frequent mental emotional reviews of images or replay of past fears or dangers, related to traumatic reminders and injuries. I will assist the person in identifying the areas of emotional conflict contributing to symptoms of stress and anxiety and and means to redirect to healthy positive perspectives . We will work together at verbalizing, externalizing, relevant thoughts and feelings in an effort to express internal fears, attached to the anxiety. I will provide psycho-education, normalization and reactions to traumatic memories of events. Relaxation, calming and breathing techniques, exercise, healthy eating, are also part of the therapeutic procedure.

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.

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.

Anxiety and stress are most common conditions that result in physical ailments, disease and impairment in living. I show you how to use the whole body to both contain stress responses and to find a more solid, stable foundation with which to process anxious and stressed places. These are usually aspects of ourselves that do not feel safe or supported- so grounding in the whole body, breathing, letting the body unwind tension allows for a way to not get caught up in these stress patterns. Rather we then learn how to enter into the places of anxiety/stress- so that these parts of ourselves feel safe to experience, express and release what they have been carrying- including unresolved traumas.