Stress, PTSD and Anxiety Therapists in Oak Park, CA.

Dr. Levine is an expert in treating anxiety and stress-related disorders. Employing cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) he uses what are known as "evidence-based treatments." Dr. Levine received exceptional specialized training in this field by completing a 2-year Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Cognitive-Behavior Therapy (CBT) at Temple University Medical School in Philadelphia. He was also a clinical psychologist for the hit TV series "Hoarders" on the A&E Network. He specializes in anxiety disorders, phobias and OCD and is a clinical member of the OC Foundation. Call or write to him now for the help you deserve.

Do you feel like you live at the intersection of Anxiety Avenue and Stress Street? In the atmosphere that most of us experience in this country, we are likely to reside near or on one of these corners. I can help with your phobias, whether they are external or internal. Stress relief is incredibly important for vitality and health. I know how crucial peace of mind is to a healthy life, and I am dedicated to helping you reach it.

I believe anxiety can be stalled by shame, miscommunication, and hidden thoughts. I will work with you to identify how this happens through your relationships-- and this can be any type of relationship; coworker, friend, boss, sibling, partner, child, and/or spouse. What often helps in this area is to practice mindfulness and a cognitive intervention and other techniques to create self awareness and foster relationships.

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.

it's normal to feel anxious or feel stress out sometimes. Everyone experiences anxiety differently. Some feel it in their bodies where others feel it emotionally (hard time breathing, shortness of breath, feeling overwhelmed, sweaty hands, muscle tension (headache, neck pain, back pain ), racing thoughts, and so on. In therapy, we will work together to find triggers to your worry and find ways to decrease symptoms. ​

It can be hard for people who experience various challenges to have the confidence or desire to approach a professional. Not only we are generally too embarrassed to ask for help in unraveling our feelings, healthy functional people suffer the double stigma. Since they are used to being highly functional in most, if not all aspects of their lives, when they face unfamiliar emotional challenges it can be hard to accept or understand it. In many occasions it is not easy to say: hey, I am dealing with something that I don’t have the tools to resolve! I truly care about them and want the best possible results.

How can therapy help with anxiety and stress? By making sure that your life style does not fuel anxiety… determining necessary changes by implementing relaxation techniques and daily lifestyle habits... exploring past experiences, emotional needs, ways of coping that you developed early on and how they impact everyday reactions (automatic thoughts, feelings, actions)… learning various techniques to take more control of your thoughts and feelings and respond more effectively to emotional triggers.

Everyone can feel some level of anxiety once in a while. But overwhelming, recurring, or "out of nowhere" fear can deeply impact people. Sometimes anxiety can cause fatigue, irritability, difficulty focusing, sleep problems and muscle tension. When anxiety interferes like this, therapy can really help. Together, we will figure out the most troublesome issues, develop a treatment plan, and tackle the goals at a comfortable pace. I utilize cognitive-behavioral therapy, but also incorporate other modalities when helpful (i.e. exposure therapy, systematic desensitization, relaxation).

Everyone experiences stress and anxiety but sometimes it gets to a point where it is hard to manage on our own. My job is to provide you the tools to help you decrease these feelings. Depending on the diagnosis, symptoms and severity, we will come up with a treatment plan that would be most effective for you. All treatment plans will include relaxation techniques and learning ways to manage those "what if" thoughts. Other techniques include exposure therapy, assertive skills and setting limits with others. As a team, we will get you through this together.

Anxiety and stress are like an evil and corrosive thread that work their way through every aspect of a life. It can rob the joy that can make life worth living. I know from both personal and professional experience how anxiety and stress can take the joy out of life and also how to overcome these issues and put them in your past. With the aid of tools like EMDR CBT and guided visualizations I can help you overcome this issue and heal from the issues that drive it. Additionally, I can provide tools, coping skills, and other resources to help you manage this particular issue, and experience increased relief from these symptoms with each session.

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.

Much like depression, anxiety and stress is something we all deal with at some point in our lives. Anxiety, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. In fact, some anxiety is not only healthy, but necessary for us to get things done. Without some anxiety, we lack motivation to take action. However, anxiety can become problematic when it overwhelms and paralyzes us. Therapy helps by giving us a space to learn skills to better manage the anxiety and no longer feel gripped by it. I use a holistic/mindful approach consisting of connecting the mind, body, and the environment (incorporating all 5 senses) to live fully in the present moment with respect and compassion for ourselves.

Experiencing occasional anxiety is a normal part of life. However, anxiety disorders and ongoing chronic stress can appear as repeated episodes of worry & fear, or develop into sudden feelings of intense anxiety with physical sensations, known as panic attacks. Your anxiety may feel related to an event or thought, and other times appear to occur randomly and without cause. Anxiety can develop at any age, when left untreated it may develop into depression. In therapy we will explore how anxiety is affecting your life. You will learn how your physical, emotional and mental health are connected and together create an effective treatment plan specific to your goals to improve your well-being.