Anxiety therapy at Here & Now Psychology helps adults get out of the loop of worry, avoidance, and reassurance-seeking. We're trying to change your relationship with the anxious thoughts rather than eliminating your anxious thoughts completely. I work with adults across California via telehealth, using an approach rooted in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
Anxiety has a way of convincing you that if you just think hard enough, plan enough, or avoid the right things, you'll finally feel safe. That may work in the short term. However, the anxiety, uncomfortable feeling, whatever you're avoiding always returns. The more you fight an anxious thought, the louder it tends to get in the long run, and the more real estate it takes up in your head.
ACT takes a different approach. Instead of trying to out-argue your own mind (which, if you've tried it, you already know doesn't hold up for long), you learn to hold anxious thoughts more loosely and let them have less power over what you do next, without needing to pretend they're not there in the first place.
The chronic "what if" spiral. Worry about everything under the sun, including the sun. Trouble settling into a moment without your mind jumping three steps ahead to one of an infinite number of things that could go wrong.
Sudden surges of fear or physical symptoms: racing heart, tight chest, dizziness, the fight or flight response kicking in when there's no actual threat in front of you. A sympathetic nervous system overload that then gets tangled up with a second layer of fear, the fear of having another attack.
Constant self-monitoring in conversations, replaying what you said for hours afterward, avoiding situations that actually matter to you because the anticipation feels unbearable.
Difficulty tolerating uncertainty about your body. Checking, researching, constantly asking AI about various symptoms, and finding that none of it actually settles the worry for more than a few minutes.
We start by getting specific about the pattern you're in: what triggers it, what you do in response, and what that costs you. Sessions are conducted online, via secure video, so we can do this work wherever you are in California. From there, the work is less about analyzing why you're anxious and more about practicing a different relationship to the anxious thoughts and sensations as they show up, in real time, in session and between sessions. Some of that involves noticing thoughts as thoughts rather than facts (easier said than done). Some of it involves getting clearer on what you actually want your life to look like, so anxiety has less room to quietly make your decisions for you.
In session, I'm not going to ask you to just do breathing exercises, "think more positively," or debate your anxious thoughts point by point. In my experience, most people have already been told those things and tried them without success. What I care about is helping you notice the pattern you're in, build some space around it (more on this later), and reconnect with what you'd be doing with your time and energy if anxiety weren't fighting with you for the steering wheel. Sometimes that's uncomfortable work. It's also, usually, the thing that actually creates meaningful change.
You can read more about how I approach therapy generally on my about page.
People who've tried therapy or CBT before and found that changing their thoughts wasn't quite enough on its own. People who are tired of white-knuckling their way through anxious moments, or who've noticed that reassurance (from Google, from a partner, from a doctor) only helps for a minute before the worry comes back. People who are ready to try something that might feel counterintuitive at first, because what they've been doing hasn't worked.
If your anxiety is mostly tied to work performance, deadlines, or the pressure to keep delivering, work stress and burnout therapy may be the closer fit.
Schedule a free 20-minute consultation. No pressure, no commitment. Just a conversation.
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