Stress, PTSD and Anxiety Therapists in Oceanside, NY.

Feelings of anxiety and stress are the number one reason people seek out therapy with me. We live in a fast paced and solution oriented world. Here in New York these pressures are often multiplied. This can lead to extreme stress and anxiety. With a focus on mindfulness and stress reduction I will use motivating techniques to both give you tools to minimize these feelings as well as ways to mitigate it in the future.

Many people have anxiety. Anxiety is the most common problem that clients bring into psychotherapy. Anxiety can create feelings of fear, worry, uneasiness, and dread. Sometimes you can say what it is bothering you. Your job or relationship may be causing you stress and you want to solve the problems. You don’t know how to deal with the mounting pressures. Friends will often say “don’t worry about it” but that doesn’t help. Sometimes you don’t really know what is bothering you it just is. I can show you how spot these feelings before they overwhelm you and what you can do about it. We’ll get clear on what has been difficult for you and how have you been feeling.

Dr. Joel and Dr. Sara work supportively and educatively to help you gain a sense of mastery with respect to your anxiety and stress. For over 40 years, we have helped the victims of abusive relationships, work stress, emotional burnout, identity concerns, & perfectionsitic personalities who partake in unhealthy habits. Clients have often reported a sense of relief and appreciation over being well-understood and accepted by Dr. Joel and Dr. Sara. Our practical and reasonable therapeutic approaches build your healthy self-esteem and provide you with the tools for enhanced growth and effectiveness while facing life's challenges. Often within a few sessions, clients feel better.

Anxiety is excessive worry about negative events that you expect to happen, but are not necessarily in the cards. The worry is enough to bring on dread, panic, obsessions, compulsions, and phobias. Usually, early life experiences – perhaps forgotten or suppressed -- taught you to anticipate the worst. Together, we will bring these memories into consciousness so you can consider if they still apply to you in your current life as an adult. This will help you stay more grounded in the reality of the here and now, which can significantly reduce anxious symptoms. I will also teach you calming techniques, including mindfulness practices and self-compassion to counter anxiety when it arises.

Anxiety and stress are signals that something is going wrong and you need to make changes. If you feel anxious or stressed ask yourself, " Who or what are you angry at? Or, what are you doing that is painful, without limits and leaves you in a state of Dis-Ease/ Anxious and Stressed? Many times your anxiety can be expressed in panic attacks which are overwhelmed emotions unable to be contained. Psychotherapy will help you to express these pent up emotions and burdens. It will teach you to: be assertive with yourself and others, learn to say "No", relax, set limits, take better care of yourself and learn to use anxiety as your friend and a warning signal that you need to make changes,

My method of working with clients on anxiety , stress and coping varies per individual. How we cope is greatly influenced by how we see the world. Mindset, life experiences, and our current situation can impact that. Overall, integrating Strength- Based, Mindfulness, NLP even DBT approaches enhances our ability to accept, and view our life with a fresh perspective. As we begin to see things through a different lens, this new perspective becomes a powerful tool in developing our mind as a muscle; an essential part of moving toward the life changes you seek. This opens the door to management of unwanted symptoms, anxiety, stress, feelings of overwhelm or low motivation and a path forward.

Stress is not only an internal problem but is evoked by environmental impingement such as family, business, and political currents. All individuals have varying levels of stress in their lives. One of the focuses of psychotherapy is to help with increasing a capacity to move through it. An enhanced capacity for imagination and creativity can be a result.

I teach clients tools that they can use to help calm them when they are feeling stressed. I also teach clients specific strategies to keep their stress and anxiety-related thoughts from interfering with their lives. I give clients positive and adaptive responses to stress. I explore with clients the root of their their fears and the importance of not letting those fears keep them from doing the things they want to do.

Our individual therapy sessions provide a space where you can explore your inner world and realign with your true values to more effectively manage life’s challenges. We take an engaged, collaborative approach—moving beyond the traditional sterile therapeutic model into a dynamic, interactive dialogue between you and your therapist. With thoughtful insight and gentle encouragement, we’ll help you sit with difficult emotions and examine the core beliefs that shape your life.

We embrace an expansive view of the individual and collaborate with clients to explore how their sense of self, past experiences, environment, and culture, impacts their current moods, relationships, experiences, and self-beliefs. We will work together in identifying what areas of life you would like to further explore to best reach your goals/growth in this process of self-discovery.

Anxiety is the way our minds let us know that something is bothering us. A LOT! When helping you work with your anxiety, I invite anxiety to join us on our journey of discovery; understanding what anxiety is trying to communicate with us and the world. By opening that door, we gain control of the anxiety and can begin lowering symptoms by addressing real life issues that may be causing this uncomfortable feeling within. I have helped anxious clients improve emotional balance, increase feelings of calmness, inner peace, as well as learning how to use anxiety as powerful tool and not a stumbling block.

We’ll start by getting on the same page: what is bringing you to therapy, what are our goals for incorporating medication, and what would it look like to truly feel “better?” We’ll discuss your past history with both psychotherapy and medication, the current challenges you’re facing, and what you hope to get out of this process. You and I will collaborate on a treatment plan that maps out how we’re going to get there.

Anxiety arises due to one's own natural energies being turned back on oneself. That is caused by lack of clarity on how to advance in life's many often complex situations. In therapy I help you uncover the root causes of anxiety, and to find the way to transcend specific current issues. This relieves the underlying anxieties that seem to arise from nowhere. I will help you see that the anxiety and circular, repeated thinking are due to deeply-held messages. These restrictive messages make it difficult to see the path forward, and can cause you to feel that authentic self-expression is dangerous, not wanted, and unhealthy.