Stress, PTSD and Anxiety Therapists in West Los Angeles, CA.

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).

Do you feel a blanket of anxiety over you all day? Is it sometimes hard to get a good breathe? Ever experience feelings of panic? Stress and anxiety are the most common ailments affecting our present-day society. But you can change that! At CCRG, you'll learn proven methods to reduce your stress, live with peace, and get back your emotional health. Whether in a group setting at The Panic Assistance League or in individual coaching or counseling, your personal needs will be addressed and met.

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.

Stress or anxiety don’t always get in the way, but sometimes they do. Learn to identify the sources, recognize how they stop you, and change the impact they have on you and your life. Learn how old patterns shape your self-image, self-esteem, and expectations, and discover new ways of dealing with that. Fear doesn’t have to stop you from having what you want in life. And, sometimes it’s a valuable asset, like knowing which is the lion and which is the lamb. Psychotherapy with me helps you to sort out when to listen to the fears and when they no longer apply. You’ll also learn coping strategies that can help when you’re caught up in the fear. Your fears don’t have to control you.

We hold our anxiety and stress in our body. We feel tension, gut problems, hot flashes, disrupted sleep and more. I work with anxiety and stress by helping individuals learn and develop tools to re-regulate their nervous system. When we have a coherent and fluid nervous system, we can do difficult things without feeling paralyzed by overwhelming fear.

Learning to overcome stress and anxieties can be a challenge. Therapy can help you learn tools to understand the cause of your anxieties and stressors, their roles in your life and ways to reduce their impact on your life. Tools can include meditation, art therapy and various other techniques to identify the root cause while learning what works and does not work for you.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.