Stress, PTSD and Anxiety Therapists in Santa Cruz, CA.

We have so many demands on us these days that most people experience stress and anxiety on a daily basis. However, many don't feel there is a solution to feeling this way so the feeling of fear, worry or unease just continues. In therapy, we learn how to identify the emotions present, learn how to tolerate the emotions themselves, and begin to heal within.

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.

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 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

The anxiety disorders are usually very amenable to EMDR therapy, which deals with disturbing memories, negative beliefs, body sensations and emotions associated with the root of the anxiety. Stress leads to anxiety which leads to low serotonin levels and then poor functioning. The EMDR is a "non-drug" treatment for anxiety and stress. This is a preferable approach for real resolution rather than taking prescription medications for anxiety, which are the "benzos", highly addictive with regular use for just a few months, and difficult to get out of one's system. Anxiety, worrying, stressing, nervousness, phobias, fears, triggers, are common problems in our high strung culture but fixable.

Living with stress and anxiety will rob you of joy, being present and out of control. While this can feel difficult to manage, you are not alone! I use cognitive behavioral therapy to help you address the thoughts that lead to anxiousness and stress. We will implement practical tools and strategies to work through some of these feeling and thoughts together.

To live in this western world is to live with distress. Some stress is actually healthy for us and should be engaged with regularly (ie., exercise or sex) but there is a boundary between healthy stress and dis-stress. Distress is not pleasurable and in fact lays the foundation towards dis-ease and possibly towards addictive behaviors. Safety and connection will ease the distress. Using a polyvagal informed approach to therapy, we will explore how you learned to deal with overwhelm and what tools might be useful for you.

If you're struggling with racing thoughts, wanting things to be perfect and feeling frustrated when they and you are not, worrying about the future, worrying about the past, picking behavior (picking skin at lips, at fingers, etc...), feeling of panic and anything else that feels related to anxiety or stress, I can help. Anxiety is something that can propel us to do great things, but in excess it can severely limit us, make us doubt, and make us lose that spark that we bring into the world. I use ACT and other meditative/mindfulness techniques to drop the struggle with perfection, and embrace the unique talents you bring to the world. We'll let the anxieties rest, so you can shine.