Stress, PTSD and Anxiety Therapists in Milton, ON.

There are many approaches that are considered effective in addressing anxiety from: exploration of thoughts, behaviour, relaxation and/or mindfulness techniques, exposure therapy or exploration of unresolved issues/past conflicts contributing to present stress. The first step is building a trusting therapeutic relationship.Based on your unique goals for therapy, we will take an individualised approach to address your current experience of anxiety and/or stress.

I love working with people who wrestle with anxiety and stress, I love it because of the difference I witness in the lives and experiences of my clients. Employing a blend of mindfulness, somatic experiencing and neuroscience (polyvagal) techniques, the felt experience of anxiety can be managed in an entirely new way for you, and can lead to profound change in your life. I can not make it so that you never feel anxious again, but we can work to help you learn what to do when you experience the familiar sensations of anxiety, so that it doesn't take over your thoughts, body and life.

Anxiety and stress, sometimes they're manageable... sometimes they aren't. If you are having difficulty managing the anxiety and stress, I strive to work with people to navigate and explore their stressors to understand them and gain insight and perspective into those stress patterns so we can collaboratively devise empowering ways to manage them.

Dealing with anxiety is difficult as it is the body's natural response to a perceived threat and that response, is unique to each individual and can often present itself as a sense of discomfort, emotional reactions, physical sensations, and unhelpful behavioural patterns. Your anxiety can be triggered through situational or environmental events and can often feel chronic. Schedule a free consultation to me to see if I am the right fit to help you manage your anxiety.

All associates with New Leaf Psychology Centre offer therapy for stress and anxiety. Although the initial treatment approach for anxiety is often Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), treatment is individualized to address your personal situation. Therapy can help you reduce worries, increase your ability to face fears, and allow you to approach life more optimistically. Dr. Strauss specializes in work related stressors, such as overwork, increasing demands, interpersonal challenges with colleagues and management, and career decisions. Dr. Gilani specializes in health related anxieties and stress.

Therapy can help by providing a safe and confidential space to discuss what is happening in your life. You will learn to be more in tune with your symptoms and the messages they may be trying to convey. We will gradually explore your history to bring order and understanding to it while helping you to process and contain difficult emotions and over time finding strategies to manage and decrease these symptoms.

Low levels of anxiety can motivate us to accomplish goals and perform at our best. As the level of experienced anxiety creeps higher, it robs us of our joy and can make us feel overwhelmed resulting in either inactivity or a compulsion to be overactive yet not experiencing any lasting relief. Our sense of internal peace and calm is replaced by perpetual overthinking and fear. Let's work together to gain insight into the root cause of your anxiety so that we are able to empower you to reclaim your experience of joy and a sense of internal calm.

My approach to anxiety and stress focuses mainly on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, as it is an empirically-tested, evidence-based technique. It includes recognizing and addressing distorted thinking, grounding techniques, mindfulness, maintaining a journal, and self-care. Alongside CBT, we can explore the roots and possible causes of the anxiety. I have had great successes with clients who came to me with anxiety. One client in particular had social anxiety so severe, she would become physically sick, experience awful gastrointestinal issues, and eventually faint when in a social situation. As a result of therapy, her coping skills improved, until her anxiety all but disappeared.

Anxiety and stress are often treated as isolated problems but, in reality, they are signals from a system that has been running in survival mode for too long. My approach does not focus solely on symptom management but on helping clients understand why their system feels chronically unsafe, overwhelmed, or hypervigilant. Often, anxiety arises from relational injuries, unresolved emotional tension, or existential dislocation that lead to feeling trapped in a life that no longer fits. Together, we work to understand the architecture of your anxiety: what it is trying to tell you, how it was built, what it protects you from, and how to grow from it.

Anxiety and stress affect us all to varying degrees. There are numerous physical and emotional symptoms that are associated with anxiety and stress such as an increased heart rate, sweating, rumination and worry, to name a few. Anxiety can feel consuming and can keep us from engaging fully in our everyday life. Therapy can help you work with your feelings of anxiety and stress so that you feel empowered. Please contact me to schedule a free 15-minute consultation to see if we are a good fit.

It is normal to worry and feel stressed about life's problems and pressures. But when compounded symptoms begin to overwhelm us to the point where we are getting headaches, heart palpitations, a churning stomach, cold sweats, sleepless nights, weight loss, obsessive thoughts, a distressed GI tract - then we need help to break the adrenaline-fear cycle. Anxiety feeds on fear and needs to be confronted, appropriately and safely, with relaxation techniques, new perceptions and constructive thinking patterns. A counsellor can help you do this.