Stress, PTSD and Anxiety Therapists in San Anselmo, CA.

If you are experiencing symptoms of stress and anxiety such as numbness or tingling, wobbliness in your legs, heart pounding, difficulty breathing and you have a fear of losing control, counseling can help you. I will work with you to give you tools that will help to calm you and help you to deal with the anxiety and stress you are feeling. I will also work with you to help you identify the thoughts that are leading you to feel anxious and help you to change them.

Often, anxiety comes up because of a narrative of negative or repetitive thoughts. These thoughts are usually related to an idea about the past or the future. Once you are aware of your thoughts patterns you can develop tools to manage these thoughts to reduce and even eliminate anxiety. I will teach you Cognitive Behavioral Techniques and Stress Management Exercises to help with this process. Some clients also benefit from having an Emotional Support Animal as part of their treatment plan. I structure each treatment plan according to each client's individual needs.

Over the course of time, a client may start to experience increased anxiety and find themselves beginning to become more and more tentative as they approach their relationships and personal and professional goals. I provide a comprehensive assessment, that takes into account biopsychosocial (biological, psychological and social) areas of life, and together we are able to develop a holistic and integrative plan that is adjusted to the client's changing life circumstances. When clients redesign their approach to life, they have greater insight, are transformed, and better skilled to attain a higher degree of life satisfaction.

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.

Anxiety comes in many forms, from a feeling of underlying pressure, stress, or persistent worry, to full-blown, terrifying panic attacks. The good news is that we know an enormous amount about how to treat anxiety. There's an inherent bind, though: anxious people are often anxious about trying therapy. I encourage you to just make the phone call, talk to us a little about what you're facing, and think about making an initial session appointment. The data shows that we will probably be able to help you.

Anxiety and stress are so prevalent in today's society. I can help you gather the tools you need to successfully handle those moments when you feel overwhelmed - even if those moments seem like they are all the time. I utilize psychodynamic and/or a cognitive behavioral approach to treating anxiety and stress. I also treat Obsessive Compulsive Disorder using Exposure and Response Prevention.

Anxiety tends to feed on itself, and can hit you just when you can least handle it. It can become a vicious cycle. Talking with me about your anxiety or panic attacks may seem hard, but can actually give you some immediate relief. For that relief to last, you need to allow yourself time - both to understand what triggers you, and to practice thinking in a different way that will help you respond differently. This helps to break the vicious cycle, and begins to create a virtuous cycle so you can handle more and more situations with less anxiety, or with confidence rather than fear. I'll walk with you through this, listening, helping you take each step, giving practical suggestions.

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.

With therapy, we work towards having a better relationship to anxiety, which eventually changes the anxiety itself. Using mindful awareness of the body and thoughts, and bringing in compassion, you can learn how to respond differently to fear and stress. You can override your instinctual responses to stress by finding calm - even if not in the moment initially - and eventually create new mental pathways of more tolerance and ease in difficult experiences.

Anxiety can be difficult for some to identify and sometimes it's hard to distinguish anxiety from depression. Anxiety and depression can be so closely knit that teasing them apart can be the first step towards generating understanding and emotional change. I will work collaboratively with you to understand what your personal and unique experience is with your anxiety. We will explore your history and make links between your past and present to help increase awareness and develop new ways of coping with your anxiety. My style is warm, empathic, and collaborative and I will work hard to help you better understand and manage your anxiety.

Anxiety and stress are felt when life overwhelms the capacity to experience. When events are too much to bear, too much to make sense of, or tolerate, we feel stress or anxiety. If unable to be with challenging life events we are left in this anxious state, held hostage by what cannot be digested or made sense of. I help people decrease stress and anxiety by increasing their ability to more fully inhabit themselves and be with their own experiences so that events of the past and present can be lived in and more comfortably felt. A sense of self, self-confidence, capacity, and control is restored.

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.

Everyone feels anxiety at some point in their lives but when it starts to interfere with your life, counseling can help. Although anxiety can feel debilitating, it is treatable. People with anxiety don’t always share the same symptoms, they vary from person to person. Therapy will help you to reclaim your life and function in a chronically stressful world.