Stress, PTSD and Anxiety Therapists in Northridge, CA.

Anxiety is an inability to be fully relaxed. It is mental and physical tension. Many things cause it and many things perpetuate it. Not all anxiety is bad or needs to be extinguished. I work with the client to understand the meaning of their anxiety. I find sometimes people are not consciously aware of the real reasons they cannot feel relaxed. Enlisting the client's sense of curiosity about their own thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations I aim to identify their symptoms of anxiety and the origins of them. I utilize cognitive behavioral and mindfulness strategies to identify and replace unhelpful thoughts with more productive ones.

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.

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.

My approach to the treatment of anxiety is to use the most effective intervention strategies possible. My treatment for anxiety (including panic disorder and OCD) utilizes exposure therapy, which works by helping a person confront a specific fear or memory while in a safe and supportive environment. The main goals of exposure therapy are to help my clients learn that by stopping the avoidance of what they fear, they actually become MORE comfortable and can reduce their anxiety to a substantial degree - all of which opens doors of hope and increases the potential to reach your desired goals with an improved quality of life.

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.

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.