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

Everyone experiences stress and anxiety at one time or another in their lives. Stress interferes in peoples lives at least moderately; however, chronic stress can affect your health, causing symptoms from headaches, high blood pressure, and chest pain to heart palpitations, skin rashes, and loss of sleep. Talk therapy has been proven to alleviate stress and in my practice I also use breathing, relaxation, and meditation techniques that help clients alleviate their stress symptoms.

If you're struggling with anxious thoughts, you may find it hard to focus. The fight or flight alarm is going off in your brain, constantly sending you messages starting with "what if...." If worrying is keeping you trapped in a hamster wheel, tired, but unable to rest, you may find yourself turning to addictive substances or behaviours to cope. As an addiction counsellor, I help clients cope with the anxious thoughts keeping them trapped in addictive behaviours. By uncovering these underlying thoughts, I help you develop coping skills so you can gain a sense of focus, clarity, confidence, and freedom from constantly overthinking. Send me a message and I'll guide you through the next steps.

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 and Stress are both rampant in our modern society. It is my belief that relationships are both the root cause as well as the solution to struggles with anxiety. I take a family systems approach to address these issues by raising the functioning of the relationships in my clients' lives and allowing them to regulate and feel more peace day to day.

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.

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.

Anxiety falls along a continuum from acceptable to crippling, debilitating anxiety requiring professional intervention. The major forms that anxiety takes are: Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Panic Disorder, Phobic Disorders, Social Anxiety Disorders and Obsessive Compulsive Disorders (OCD). A variety of proven therapeutic interventions are well established now, eg., Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Yoga, Tai Chi, Breathwork. By diving into therapy clients regain a sense of optimism, courage and confidence in relationships, workplace and career, driving, aging, life transitions and more.

Anxiety and stress come from a variety of sources for children and young adults. Further, the behavioral outcome of anxiety and stress varies from one individual to the next. While some may become isolated and avoid stressful situations, others can become behaviorally aggressive and aggitated. I work closely with my clients and families on identifying the underlying causes of this anxiety, and by using cognitive behavioral therapy and solution focused methods my clients learn the skills to manage and resolve these stressors.