Stress, PTSD and Anxiety Therapists in El Cerrito, CA.

Anxiety can feel overwhelming and at times debilitating. Stress can increase this anxiety to even more unmanageable levels. Learning ways to manage stress can help reduce the anxious feelings. I can work with to learn tools and skills to help calm you and ground you when you begin to feel overwhelmed. The goal is for you to feel like you can manage the anxiety that starts rattling you and to have some tools that you can pull out to calm you down enough to be more effective in that moment. Together we can work to find ways for you to feel calmer, more grounded and more like yourself.

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.

Are you feeling stuck? When you’re depressed, anxious or overwhelmed, it feels that life is always difficult. Anxiety and stress can also immobilize us and make it difficult to take any action. Taking the time to work through challenges in therapy improve your life in ways you never imagined. I am a therapist who helps clients manage anxiety and break through depression. My style is warm and nonjudgmental, and I work collaboratively with a wide range of clients. I have a great deal of experience with postpartum depression and anxiety. Using insight-oriented psychotherapy and mindfulness techniques, I will help you find a way to stop feeling stuck and move forward.

Many persons seek the support of psychotherapy or counseling at some point in their lives. Some come for relief from troubling anxiety, stress or depression, while others come to understand reoccurring anger or conflicts with loved ones, or the lingering influences of childhood experiences that still impact their lives. Others come with fears of expressing themselves authentically or trusting others, desperate to liberate themselves from the constraints impeding their lives, but unsure if such freedom is even possible. If you are struggling with anxiety and stress, psychotherapy can help. To learn how, please consider calling me for an introductory conversation at 415-533-9724.

Anxiety and stress come in all shapes and sizes and can be thought of as acting on different levels, including the physiological, cognitive, and behavioral levels. These levels often interact with each other and can make it difficult to function in life. I can help you gain an objective understanding of your anxiety and stress and teach you skills to help you cope more effectively with future stressful events.

With anxiety and stress, we will work together to first learn to identify the sources of each and then we will work together in coming up with a plan for managing yourself when you feel overwhelmed. Then we will explore your circumstances and examine your lived experience to better understand what other choices you have for taking care of yourself if you are often feeling anxious and stressed.

Anxiety in all of its forms (social, panic attacks, fears and phobias, PTSD, health-related anxiety, and performance anxiety) are concerns that I have helped adults and children overcome for over 22 years. It is a specialized area of therapy I work with using approaches that bring somatic awareness and resolve the underlying trauma that has led to activation in the body and worried mind. My aim is to help you learn tools to help you cope better and empower you to understand the causes of anxiety leading to resolution and lasting change.

I assist hardworking professionals in managing anxiety and stress while upholding their commitment to excellence in both their careers and personal lives. My clients place significant value on their work, relationships, and family. Worries about disappointing others in their work and personal life contribute to exhaustion from negative thoughts while juggling various responsibilities. I believe that attaining a sense of engagement in life, striving for excellence in work, feeling loved and supported, and experiencing reduced anxiety and stress is achievable for you. I offer a complimentary 15-minute consultation for you to judge if we would be a good fit. You don't have to suffer alone.

I create a transformative experience that emphasizes your personal growth and well-being. My approach to anxiety recovery prioritizes the unique needs and goals of each client, fostering a safe and supportive environment where you can explore and overcome anxiety-related challenges. By focusing on practical strategies and personalized interventions, clients will gain the tools and insights needed to manage anxiety and stress more effectively. This tailored approach of somatic, emotion-focused, and attachment-focused therapeutic techniques will empower you to build resilience, enhance quality of life, and achieve a more balanced and fulfilling existence free from painful anxiety.

Anxiety and stress are not just clinical diagnoses. They are pervasive to the human condition. If you are alive, you are feeling them. They play a role in relationships, work, eating, sleeping... everything! However, it is not enough to simply "manage" them. We need to understand what scares us, what keeps us awake at night, what it is that matters to us. Because anxiety is experienced to some degree whenever something matters, it also points us to our desire and helps us to learn about what we want. Therapy can help us make use of our anxiety to give us a better sense of what we want from our lives and how to confront the fears that are on the way.

Anxiety often serves a useful function for humanity when it is not overused, facilitating us keeping our responsibilities and agreements, and remaining ethical and moral in our behavior. Yet, anxiety, leading to stress is the most common dysfunctional problem in today's high pressured world where stressors abound. Anxiety when overused, like too much anger, is self destructive to our minds and bodies. My therapy style assists you to get to the root of your anxiety, determining what secondary gain you may be getting from this behavior and weighing it against the cost. I can assist you to get to the source of your anxiety and learn behaviors thta will serve you and your family better in life.

I work with clients using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, mindfulness, Narrative Therapy, Expressive Arts, and psychoeducation to address anxiety and stress. Many folks are experiencing extreme stress as a result of all we have experienced in the last year. I'm able to work with clients experiencing burnout, increased anxiety, and higher stress relying on neuroscience as the guide.

Are you worried and stressed to the point of where the quality of your life is suffering? I am delighted to offer assistance in calming and soothing your thoughts and emotions of anxiety and frustration, even panic and avoidance of things that lead to disruption of an otherwise more enjoyable existence. You can find a whole new way of living through being assisted in coming to a gentle awareness(not forced) of what is feeding your anxiety or stress, and together we can create a plan for you to start softening the anxiousness and its effects on your system. Your body can come down into a more calm place and the mind loves to learn different, expansive ways of soothing yourself.

Free 30 minute zoom call - Anxiety can arise from several places - one is the mind - people can think & imagine scenarios in their minds that create anxiety, when their thoughts and imagination may not even be true. Anxiety is also common in people who did not have a safe & secure experience with caregivers as they were growing up. The brain ends up being wired in a way that reproduces anxiety. Fortunately, due to new research in the field of neuropsychology & neuroplasticity, this can be changed!

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.

There is an almost infinite list of causes for anxiety and stress, probably a few more if you live in a metropolitan area. Maybe your anxiety is decades old from trauma, family of origin, or chemically related. Perhaps it's situational and can be attributed to a recently suffered trauma, is work related, or relationship related. When you are stressed out or anxious, your brain doesn't function optimally. Instead, it functions in crisis mode and impairs your decision making ability and leaves you feeling too drained for the rest of your life. I will help you to regain your control by giving you concrete strategies and tools to manage them.

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.

Depression, anxiety, excessive worry, and challenges in relationships are rooted in insufficient emotional attunement in formative years. After providing you practical and effective tools that lower anxiety and reduce stress symptoms in the moment; I focus on really attuning to your experience and helping you experience being accepted. As our relationship develops, I find it normal that you will internalize an internal ability to experience yourself as acceptable. After this happens, you will find that the normal "pain in the ass life experiences" that you find will still be there, but you will have a different sense of self that will allow you to navigate them a deeper sense of self!

Anxiety and stress are most common conditions that result in physical ailments, disease and impairment in living. I show you how to use the whole body to both contain stress responses and to find a more solid, stable foundation with which to process anxious and stressed places. These are usually aspects of ourselves that do not feel safe or supported- so grounding in the whole body, breathing, letting the body unwind tension allows for a way to not get caught up in these stress patterns. Rather we then learn how to enter into the places of anxiety/stress- so that these parts of ourselves feel safe to experience, express and release what they have been carrying- including unresolved traumas.

Do you feel like you live at the intersection of Anxiety Avenue and Stress Street? In the atmosphere that most of us experience in this country, we are likely to reside near or on one of these corners. I can help with your phobias, whether they are external or internal. Stress relief is incredibly important for vitality and health. I know how crucial peace of mind is to a healthy life, and I am dedicated to helping you reach it.

Becoming aware of your habits and choosing to do things another way is an unfolding process. With mind-body approaches and awareness of how stress is held in the body we will uncover the source of your anxiety and stress while practicing practical and accessible tools to help you find an ease in your life and a comfort in your body. You can find calm in the stillness!

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.

I take a practical approach to treating anxiety and stress. I help you identify the sources of anxiety if you do not already know them. I support you in learning skills to regulate your emotions and increase awareness of body sensations and experiences in order to help you be able to control and reduce feelings of anxiety. I also use a combination of exposure therapy, if appropriate, and adjustment to lifestyle to help you reduce or eliminate sources of anxiety or stress. I know that every experience of anxiety or stress is unique and I will work with you to develop a plan of support tailored to your needs. I will provide a safe environment for you to challenge and overcome your fear/stress

Are you worried about things going out of your control? Do you experience overwhelming anxiety and panic attacks? Are you obsessed about someone or something that is driving you crazy? I can help you find the roots of your fears, worries and anxieties, identify destructive patterns, work through inner conflicts, and move on to peace, and a calm state of mind that you deserve.

Anxiety and stress are actually two different things. Where stress usually comes from actual and identifiable challenges, anxiety tends to be more arbitrary in that there isn't necessarily one specific cause. However, both anxiety and stress tend to develop based on one's specific context--that is what one has experienced through their lifetime. While some anxiety and stress is actually good for us (i.e. propels us toward action), excessive amounts can create both emotional and physical challenges. I work with clients from a top-down/bottom-up approach, working to help the brain to better control the bodily effects of stress and anxiety and the body to control the brain.