Stress, PTSD and Anxiety Therapists in Los Alamitos, CA.

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.

Stress and anxiety can be extremely uncomfortable but at the same time these are actually areas that therapy is the most able to help relieve. An important step is to help my clients learn how to transition the nervous system out of the fight/flight/freeze response into a state of relaxation. That alarm state is good for helping the individual respond to an emergency but it greatly reduces flexibility. Once out the reactive sympathetic nervous system state my clients can then find new ways of thinking and responding. In order to help them to get out of the alarm mode, I teach a variety of skills both directly and indirectly.

Anxiety and stress are among the most common symptoms people experience in their everyday lives. When these start to feel uncontrollable, it may be time to seek assistance. I will start where you are, learning from you what issues are contributing to your anxiety and stress, how long these issues have been contributing to your stress level, what you have tried to do so far, what you may have thought about but haven't yet attempted, and barriers you have that maintain these stressors in your life. Together, we will practice ways to prioritize your issues, allow you to tackle them individually, and develop relaxation techniques to help you through this process.

I provide counseling for anxiety and stress at the Narrative Couples Center. Through collaborative conversations, we discover alternatives that can replace the oppression of anxiety. Are you wanting peacefulness, more balance, less overwhelm? I look at how problems interfere with people’s hopes, and use a strength-based approach that supports resourcefulness.

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.