Stress, PTSD and Anxiety Therapists in Oak Park, 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.

Understanding the Role Of Stress In Just About Everything ScienceDaily (Jan. 11, 2008) — Stress, to put it bluntly, is bad for you. It can kill you, in fact. A study now reveals that stress causes deterioration in everything from your gums to your heart and can make you more susceptible to everything from the common cold to cancer. Thanks to new research crossing the disciplines of psychology, medicine, neuroscience, and genetics, the mechanisms underlying the connection are rapidly becoming understood. Dr. Sobo uses mindful techniques to teach patients skills for managing stress.

Are you tired of feeling anxious and fearful? Do you have too much stress in your life? I am a psychologist that specializes in helping you decrease feelings of anxiety, fear, and stress. With empathy and compassion, I work collaboratively with you to gain understanding and insight into the situations that cause you anxiety so that you can finally thrive in your life rather than survive it!

I help clients navigate anxiety and stress by creating a grounding, supportive environment where they can slow down, explore the roots of their overwhelm, and reconnect with a sense of control. My approach combines practical tools, like nervous system regulation and mindfulness-based strategies, with deeper exploration of patterns and beliefs that may be fueling anxiety. I work collaboratively to help clients build resilience, set boundaries, and feel more empowered in their day-to-day lives. Relief is possible, and you don’t have to figure it out alone.

Anxiety and stress are nature made, preparing us to step up our efforts for the important and meaningful tasks which come up in our lives. Sometimes this system needlessly overreacts and responds to everyday stressors in the environment in a paralyzing way. When this happens, it feels distressing and uncomfortable. It is hard to stay focused, concentrate, and finish what we need to be doing. Often physical signs such as rapid heartbeat, sweaty palms, and shortness of breath can be present as well. This is the point where many clients come to therapy. I find anxiety and stress symptoms are very well treated with CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) and mindfulness.

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.

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.

It takes an act of courage for sensitive young adults to learn to trust and believe in themselves. It takes self-awareness for them to learn to speak their truth. I help sensitive young adults to develop the self-love necessary to fully accept themselves. Ultimately, the key to living a peaceful life lies in knowing who you are and what you feel. I help young people stand strong in what is true for them. I help my clients learn to not waste their time looking to others for approval. Through our work together, I help young people to discover their authentic self-expression and embark on the journey of the dream for their life.

While most treatment approaches for anxiety and stress are effective on the surface, they don’t treat the real problem. Mantras, deep breathing, and rational dialogues about your fear being irrational rarely work---for most people don’t believe it or you! Imagine if you can trick the brain into changing without you telling your conscious mind that you are changing it? Problem with anxiety and stress is that the brain in this state knows you want to change it and it resists. Contact Kevin@kevinflemingphd.com for the ultimate stress and anxiety solution that will literally change your brain's autonomic nervous system patterns while you sit on your butt. 877-606-6161.

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.

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.

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.

My primary area of expertise is the treatment of Anxiety Disorders. There are different anxiety disorders such as Panic Disorder, Agoraphobia, Social Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Specific Phobia, PTSD and more. My therapeutic approach for the treatment of anxiety consists of: educating my client about their specific anxiety, teaching coping mechanisms to reduce stress/anxious mood, learning to interrupt the development of anxiety that leads to unpleasant physical manifestation and confronting behaviors and thoughts that maintain ongoing anxiety. It is imperative to work on my client's issues that perpetuates anxiety and distress.